Customer Reviews

High-Performance Oracle: Proven Methods for Achieving Optimum Performance and Availability

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When a medical study discovers that the preliminary results are so positive that it is saving a lot of patients' lives the researchers will stop the study to publish preliminary results and get the word out. I haven't finished reading this book. In fact I just got it last week and am only about 100 pages into it. But already I am convinced that this is the best Oracle book in recent memory. It is well written and extremely informative. The format steps a beginner through step by step, and along the way shows the intermediate and advanced Oracle DBA some very important fine points.

The title is a bit deceptive, in that although it certainly is a performance book, the approach is to build the RDBMS application from the ground up with good performance as the ultimate goal. This is the right way to go about getting good performance, as opposed to the crisis management approach applied to legacy systems after the fact. Most legacy applications that performance tuning experts see in the field have a hideous design created by people who no longer work with or for the company and, judging by the implementation, are currently in hiding, hoping that no one can trace the code to them. But if someone were to set up their database by using this book, step by step, it would be a pleasure to tune, though it probably wouldn't need it. There is a great chapter on Data Guard (standby database), and a lot of material that is obviously drawn from years of hands-on day-to-day work with the Oracle RDBMS 'in the trenches.' In short, buy this book, it's worth the money.

i love this book! It's maybe the first book to cover the end to end management of Oracle completely not just the server, in a modern way. Oracle brags about how admin is easier these days and this book shows why it's true. But there should be a warning on the cover. Old school DBAs who spend lots of time on row chaining, microplacement of database files, fragmentation, STATSPACK (which is covered) for performance etc won't like it. I finally ditched tar and dd for backups and started using RMAN based on the RMAN chapter in this book. I just wish i'd done it years ago, but i guess I was stuck in denial. If you want your eyes opened on how to manage Oracle in the future not the past buy this book!

Having spent many years in the Oracle industry its suprising how many mediocre books find their way onto bookstore shelves.

This item however, covers everything in a most comprehensive and realstic fashion, dispelling the many myths about Oracle database admin work, but more importantly all the non-DBA activities and essentials that people frequently ignore or overlook.

A works, that is without doubt based on many years practical field experience, fencing with both sys admins and application developers alike.

It covers virtually every element of making Oracle systems work in the real world and even manages to touch on Linux/RAC and Standby systems.

this book is pretty much the only Oracle book I've seen that covers 9.2 features in depth. Ingram's DbCool GUI software from author's website is a great companion to the book, but not mandatory. I use it daily alongside TOAD but DbCool is free (!?). DbCool explain plain shows the incredibly useful filter and access predicates new in 9.2 plan.
Buried away on the website for the book (see back page of book)is loads of free stuff which some Oracle consultants charge for, audit, healthcheck, jpeg space charts and nice doc on Change Manager and native compiling for PL/SQL and Java. Hats off to the author for all the free stuff and long may it continue. Book worth every penny.

I have read many Oracle books over the years, but this one has to be one of the best I have come across. Its focus is not simply on describing the hot new features of the RDBMS (although it does that as well), but rather on how they can be utilized to best effect within a complex database environment. The book is clearly written by someone with a wealth of experience managing solutions in a high availability environment where any outage hurts the bottom line. In a step-by-step approach Mr Ingram is laying out the foundations for what is ultimately a more manageable and better performing database environment. This book can save your firm money - highly recommended!!

I have dozens of books on Oracle and this one is right up there with the best. The author obviosuly has a wealth of experience and its the first Oracle book I've read that acknowledges some people run Oracle to actually achieve something in a business environment and not just for the academic exercise. Its therefore full of practical advice and is also bang up to date. I would certainly recommend it to any DBA in a mission-critical environment who wants to make their life a whole lot easier.

This book certainly is a book a DBA would like to own. It's down to earth spirit and approach is quite unique. It does cover many aspects of Oracle, and well. What I found weak with this book is that on many topics discussed, the cons are not as adequately treated, or at places, completely missing. As the saying goes, "what you don't know may hurt you."

I love this book! It covers many subjects areas in depth that other books just don't, see contents list. Oracle brags about why 9.2 can reduce admin overhead by 40% and this book shows you how. Old school DBAs that spend all their time on defrag, obsessed with file placement, STATSPACK for tuning etc probably won't like it. I finally stopped using dd and tar for backup and started using RMAN as a result of this book. Now i wish i did it years ago. If you want to manage Oracle in the future not the past, buy this book.

Geoff Ingram's book is one of the best Performance-based texts out on the market. Very few books provide the wealth of knowledge that Geoff Ingram does in this book. The sections on SQL tuning and Indexes provided information rarely covered in other Oracle books.

What I liked most from this book was Geoff's comments about Oracle and the ISV (Independent Software Vendor). I'm a performance engineer from a respected ISV that primarily uses Oracle as its RDBMS. His commentary was so on about how the ISV in most cases does not understand the role of Oracle in their solution as it relates to tuning...

I hope to see more books from Geoff Ingram in the future. It would be nice to see a follow-up book dedicated to SQL tuning...

Regards,

Steve

I bought this book just for one reason, Chapter 22 Oracle Real Application Clusters. I was expecting to have 200 pages just for this chapter, but it has only just enough pages to tell us what we really need to know strait to the point. After reading the this chapter I was so impressed with the clarity and usefulness of it that I decide to read the rest of the book.
I'm glad I did it. After many years in the business one would think that he knows a lot. Most of the time we forget that there is someone out there that know a bit more.
All the other 27 chapters are written in the same concise and precise way. This book is worth any single dollar.
Regardless if you are an expert or novice just read the book and keep it as a reference for the future.
Geoff, thanks.