With more than 400 databases supporting critical commercial, packaged and proprietary business applications, including payroll, dispatching, and a customer-facing order entry system, the international transportation company CSX wanted to take advantage of the enhanced functionality in Oracle Database while minimizing the business impact and downtime during the migration. To ensure the process went off without a hitch, CSX used Oracle Real Application Testing and Enterprise Manager.
The use of Oracle Real Application Testing helped CSX streamline the upgrade process and allowed it to complete the database upgrade in less than half the time required for the company’s previous database upgrade that involved a database footprint that was 30% smaller. Providing critical insight, Oracle Real Application Testing enabled CSX to fully assess the impact of infrastructure changes and fine-tune queries in a test environment before deploying the change in production.
CSX also used Oracle Enterprise Manager to analyze performance data from Oracle Real Application Testing’s SQL Performance Analyzer to evaluate the impact of both prepackaged and custom SQL workloads during the Oracle Database upgrades in its Oracle E-Business Suite environment. By capturing SQL workloads for different peak periods into SQL Tuning Sets, CSX was able to create a comprehensive library of SQL queries that can be used for validation of changes.
“Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Real Application Testing gave us the test environment needed that allowed us to mitigate post-upgrade performance issues and ensure a successful upgrade of 400 databases. The fact that the upgrade was completed with no business disruption and in half the time of our last upgrade was a crucial win for our organization,” said Maritza Gonzalez, Technical Director, Data Management, CSX Corporation.
In addition, CSX has implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c to monitor and manage a combination of more than 500 Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Cluster instances. Oracle Enterprise Manager provides centralized, standardized and reliable monitoring, which has allowed CSX to manage the growth in the number of servers and databases.