Database options under UCM

Question

With regard to this thread: Few interesting facts about database under UCM 10g what Oracle database options can be effectively used under UCM? The comprehensive overview of the options can be obtained here: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/options/index.html
Real Application Clusters* - this option can be used to increase the database performance and availability. It is fully transparent to applications.
Partitioning* - this option can affect performance, enable hierarchical storage management (using cheaper hardware to store large amount of data) and help with disaster recovery (backup/restore). I believe, if documents are stored in the database, this option is a must. Even if a project does not use HSM, partitioning of large tables such as FILESTORAGE will enable: a) faster backups - once a partition is "closed", it will not change - therefore, future backups can work only with "open" partitions and unpartitioned data; b) faster restores - large tables can only be partially restored - e.g. few "last months" and the system can be running whilst restoring the remaining data. Watch out for partitioning of metadata tables, though (DOCMETA, REVISIONS, DOCUMENTS)! At least, there are no clear criteria how these tables should be partitioned - and various checks and validations may actually require to have those tables restored fully before you may perform such basic operations like check-in.
Advance Security* and Database Vault* - these options may increase security, when content is stored in the database (no one, not even administrators might be able to reach the content unless authorized). The only drawback to that is that even if content is stored in the database, in initial phases it is anyway stored in the filesystem (vault), too, and the minimum retention period is 1 day
I will also mention two options that might look appetizing, but UCM probably does not benefit from them too much:
Advanced Compression* - compresses data in the database. This, and Hybric Columnar Compression used in Exadata, can do the real magic when working with structured data (just read a report from Turkcell, who compressed 600 TB to 50 TB, which means by 12). For unstructured data, such as PDF or JPEG, the effect might be very small, though. Still, if you have a chance, give it a try.
Active Data Guard* - Data Guard is a technology for disaster recovery. Advantage of Active Data Guard is that it allows using of the secondary location for read only operations, rather than leaving it idle (stand-by); this means, you might decrease sizing of both locations. With UCM, also do not forget about CONTENT TRACKER (which might require a "write" operation even for otherwise read only ones, such as DOC_INFO, GET_SEARCH_RESULTS, or retrieving a content item), but db gurus know how to handle even that. Unfortunately, Active Data Guard cannot be used with UCM at the moment, because not all the data is stored in the database and the secondary location might not be fully synchronized.
In my opinion, other options are not so relevant for a UCM solution.

Answer 1

Compression and Deduplication of SecureFiles LOBs, which is part of the Advanced Compression Option, can potentially deliver huge space savings, and performance benefits. If the content is primarily Office documents, or XML documents, or character-based (email?), then it will likely compress very well. Also, if the same file is stored multiple times, deduplication will cause the Oracle database to store only one copy, rather than storing the same document multiple times. There's more info on Advanced Compression here: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/options/advanced-compression/index.html