Optimizing Oracle Performance [Paperback]

Cary Millsap (Author), Jeff Holt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 2003

Oracle system performance inefficiencies often go undetected for months or even years--even under intense scrutiny--because traditional Oracle performance analysis methods and tools are fundamentally flawed. They're unreliable and inefficient.

Oracle DBAs and developers are all too familiar with the outlay of time and resources, blown budgets, missed deadlines, and marginally effective performance fiddling that is commonplace with traditional methods of Oracle performance tuning. In this crucial book, Cary Millsap, former VP of Oracle's System Performance Group, clearly and concisely explains how to use Oracle's response time statistics to diagnose and repair performance problems. Cary also shows how "queueing theory" can be applied to response time statistics to predict the impact of upgrades and other system changes.

Optimizing Oracle Performance eliminates the time-consuming, trial-and-error guesswork inherent in most conventional approaches to tuning. You can determine exactly where a system's performance problem is, and with equal importance, where it is not, in just a few minutes--even if the problem is several years old.

Optimizing Oracle Performance cuts a path through the complexity of current tuning methods, and streamlines an approach that focuses on optimization techniques that any DBA can use quickly and successfully to make noticeable--even dramatic--improvements.

For example, the one thing database users care most about is response time. Naturally, DBAs focus much of their time and effort towards improving response time. But it is entirely too easy to spend hundreds of hours to improve important system metrics such as hit ratios, average latencies, and wait times, only to find users are unable to perceive the difference. And an expensive hardware upgrade may not help either.

It doesn't have to be that way. Technological advances have added impact, efficiency, measurability, predictive capacity, reliability, speed, and practicality to the science of Oracle performance optimization. Optimizing Oracle Performance shows you how to slash the frustration and expense associated with unraveling the true root cause of any type of performance problem, and reliably predict future performance.

The price of this essential book will be paid back in hours saved the first time its methods are used.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Cary Millsap is the former Vice President of Oracle's System Performance Group and the cofounder of Hotsos, a company dedicated to Oracle system performance. Hotsos provides performance-improvement tools for Oracle environments and also delivers training in the form of clinics and symposiums. Cary is also a founding member of the Oak Table Network (http://www.oaktable.net), an informal association of "Oracle Scientists" well known throughout the Oracle community.

Jeff Holt is one of the world's most productive Oracle performance optimization specialists. He has tremendous experience in constructing training programs and software tools to optimize the system performance management process. He is a former support analyst and consultant at Oracle Corporation, where he served as a technology leader in the System Performance Group. He is the Hotsos Tools lead designer and developer, the author of several technical papers, a Hotsos founding employee, and a Hotsos Clinic principal developer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 388 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media (September 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 059600527X
• ISBN-13: 978-0596005276
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Leading edge, February 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Optimizing Oracle Performance (Paperback)

It's surprising how often people say things without knowing what they're talking about. That's a good, short description of almost everything that's been said about Oracle tuning over the last 15 years.

Surprisingly, the facts about tuning Oracle are pretty simple. Most of the results you will achieve come from doing one thing -- tuning individual SQL statements.

The author of this book is one of the few Oracle experts around, and he has created a product called HOTSOS, which is essentially an enhanced version of TKPROF. At times this book reads like the world's best infomercial, designed to promote the author's product.

Still, 99% of Oracle professionals will benefit from this book, even if you don't buy the author's product. It explains very clearly how to DIAGNOSE Oracle performance problems, and it shows an entire approach to tuning that's invaluable.

By the way, there's absolutely no need to know calculus or any other advanced math to understand this book. This rumor apparently got started by some blowhard, pretending to be an expert, but mainly interested in self promotion and telling the world, "I know calculus!" In fact, anyone with basic knowledge of SQL could understand this book and benefit from it.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is an Oracle classic...., September 26, 2003

By 

Robert G. Freeman "Robert G. Freeman" (Riverton, Ut. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Optimizing Oracle Performance (Paperback)

In a style that will be appreciated by the beginner, intermediate and advanced DBA/Developer, Cary and Jeff introduce the reader to the world of the Oracle wait interface. This book has depth, the contents are full of meat, and it's not a rehash of every other Oracle book published in the last 10 years. In these pages is something for everyone. Cary introduces the wait interface, and how it can be used for tuning. The book presents the topic in a clear and concise fashion.

The book is full of detail such as concise information on the internal workings of Oracle trace files and how to use them to your advantage when tuning your Oracle database. They demonstrate the power of the 10046 event and it's potential.

Putting all of this together into a performance tuning method he calls Method-R, they lead us from tuning by guess work into a world of facts and using accurate measures to generate appropriate tuning responses.

This book IS required reading for any DBA who wants to be elevated to the level of a tuning deity. I've already dog eared a goodly number of pages!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, March 24, 2004

By 

Kireet M Reddy (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Optimizing Oracle Performance (Paperback)

This book is a great starting point for beginners (like myself) or a good reference for even experienced Oracle DBAs. It is just what you would expect from an O'Reilly book, it is very readable and presents information in a logical manner. It is refreshing to finally find a book about Oracle performance that does more than provide a collection of "tips" that you can try and then cross your fingers hoping it will improve things. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and it will definitely stay in my library.

I give it only 4 stars instead of 5 because of a couple reasons.
1. The author really pushes his hotsos profiler, which I don't mind too much. What did bother me a little bit is that in his case studies and any time showed "Method R" in action, he used the output of the profiler as a starting point. It would have been nice to assume the reader is not going to purchase the profiler and proceed from that point instead of always starting at the resource profile which the profiler outputs. This is a little nitpicky I admit.

2. I would have liked to see an expanded section on seeing Method R in action, or even downloadable sql scripts that you could run on a database and then find the bottleneck in its execution.

Overall, I definitely would recommend this book. It is well worth the money and time.