Introduction
Oracle Application Continuity is the high availability feature for your application. Database planned maintenance and outage events no longer impact applications availability.
Do you want to learn how, try it, and implement it in production? But where to start from documentation, white papers, blog posts, videos, demos, and hands-on labs? This blog post gives an overview of available resources and an example learning path, starting with the simplest test, going into technical details, and progressing to production.
See it in Action
If you are completely new to Application Continuity and never have seen it in action, watch these two very short demos to have an idea of why you should learn and use it:
- Transparent Application Continuity with Oracle Active Data Guard – 1min – by Ludovico Caldara
- Oracle Database 12c: Application Continuity – 3min – by Dominic Giles
Implicitly, now you already know that Application Continuity works with Oracle RAC and Active Data Guard.
Autonomous is Simple
If you have never tried Application Continuity yourself before, I highly encourage you to do so.
How do you try it without learning more about it first? The answer is simple: Autonomous. All you need is SQL*Plus and an Autonomous Database that can also be an Always Free resource. Follow this blog post, and you will be done in less than 5 minutes:
After that, you can say, “I used it myself, and it works”.
Do it! Yourself!
Do it yourself again. This time the “classical” way using Oracle RAC on VM DB System, where you can cover more scenarios like stopping and relocating a service or causing a database instance or node to crash. Follow these free workshops on Oracle LiveLabs:
- Application Continuity Fundamentals
- Application Continuity made simple with Universal Connection Pool
You don’t even need your own tenancy. Click “Start”, then “Run on LiveLabs Sandbox”, and Oracle provides you access to a preconfigured Oracle Cloud environment for free:
Time to Read
Now it’s time to go into more detail and understand the Application Continuity features and related technologies. The following blog posts provide technical insights:
- Application Continuity – A Database Feature for Developers – by Ian Cookson, who is the product manager for Application Continuity.
- Database Outage? Who cares???
Lean Back! Stay Focused!
In the world of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, it’s becoming harder for many to continue focusing while watching videos longer than a minute. So, this is a good exercise 😉 And it will pay off!
- Application Continuity for Developers – 49min – by Ian Cookson
- Run applications without interruptions – 45min – by Ian Cookson
- Build your applications with zero downtime and application continuity – 51min – by Ian Cookson
- Never-down applications with Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture – 21min – by Markus Michalewicz
Don’t play the video on one screen while you answer your emails on another. I do so sometimes. But it really doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t have the time, pause, and get back later.
Single Source of Truth
Whenever it comes to production, and actually, development and test environments as well, as you want to have the same setting across all stages, read the documentation as a single source of truth.
Blog posts are a good starting point to give you an idea and get you started. But for production work, always go to the official Oracle documentation:
- Using Application Continuity on Autonomous Database – Shared Exadata Infrastructure
- Code for Continuous Availability – Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure
- Workload Management with Dynamic Database Services – Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide
- Ensuring Application Continuity – Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide
- Client Failover – Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration
- Achieving Continuous Availability For Your Applications – High Availability Overview and Best Practices
- How PDB Relocation Works – Oracle Database 19c Administrator’s Guide
For JDBCS driver and Universal Connection Pool (UCP):
- Application Continuity for Java – JDBC Developer’s Guide
- Ensuring Application Continuity – Universal Connection Pool Developer’s Guide
Check the Checklist
Ok, there is another “Single” source of truth: White Papers, or, now called Technical Briefs, officially released by Oracle. They provide recommendations, best practices, and checklists to follow to ensure the best configuration for the best high availability:
- Application Checklist for Continuous Service with Autonomous Database on Shared Infrastructure
- Best Practices for Applications Using Autonomous Database – Dedicated
- Application Checklist for Continuous Service for MAA Solutions
- Best Practices for Adopting Transparent Application Continuity
- Application Continuity for the Oracle Database
Always Remember
The product page for Application Continuity, which you can notice very easily:
Here you find more demos, videos, technical articles for current and older releases, Oracle Open World presentations, and more.
Summary
Learn about Oracle Application Continuity and achieve higher availability for your application. Start small and get an idea about the feature and its benefits, do it yourself following hands-on labs, take the next step into the technical details, and always refer to the official documentation and technical briefs for production deployments. FOLLOW BEST PRACTICES and SUCCEED!
Database Heartbeat 