Oracle Data Warehouse Tuning for 10g [Paperback]

Gavin JT Powell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1555583350 | ISBN-13: 978-1555583354 | Publication Date: August 30, 2005 | Edition: 1

"This book should satisfy those who want a different perspective than the official Oracle documentation. It will cover all important aspects of a data warehouse while giving the necessary examples to make the reading a lively experience."
- Tim Donar, Author and Systems Architect
for Enterprise Data Warehouses

Tuning a data warehouse database focuses on large
transactions, mostly requiring what is known as throughput. Throughput is the passing of large amounts of information through a server, network
and Internet environment, backwards and forwards, constantly! The ultimate objective of a data warehouse is the production of meaningful and useful reporting, from historical and archived data. The trick is to make the reports print within an acceptable time frame.

A data model contains tables and relationships between tables. Tuning a data model involves Normalization and Denormalization. Different approaches are required depending on the application, such as OLTP or a Data Warehouse. Inappropriate database design can make SQL code impossible to tune. Poor data modeling can have a most profound effect on database performance since all SQL code is constructed from the data model.

* Takes users beyond basics to critical issues in running most efficient data warehouse applications
* Illustrates how to keep data going in and out in the most productive way possible
* Focus is placed on Data Warehouse performance tuning

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

How to keep data going in and out in the most efficient way possible

About the Author

Gavin Powell, BSc. Comp.Sci., OCP (Oracle8i Certified Professional) has fifteen years of computer industry experience. Diverse experience in database administration and database development in both relational and object databases. Applications development experience is procedural and object-oriented. He also has some systems administration experience. His extensive consulting experience includes software vendors, internet .COM's (some unfortunately have met with their demise), accounting, banking, financial services, the travel industry, construction, retail, mining, shipping, education and general advisory capacity. Gavin Powell has worked with many software products, tools and programming languages. These tools include items in the list shown below. He has authored two successful books Oracle .High performance Tuning and the just released Oracle SQL

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Digital Press; 1 edition (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555583350
• ISBN-13: 978-1555583354
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,446,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A desirable Book to have for Data Warehouse Tuning, September 24, 2005

By 

Amish Shah (Apex, NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oracle Data Warehouse Tuning for 10g (Paperback)

This is probably the only book, and best book I have seen on
Data Warehouse tuning. Mr Powell has done a very good job in
clearly explaining some of the oracle features frequently used in a Data Warehouse like Star Queries, Star Query Transformations, Materialized Views, Dimensions objects. He has given very practical hints and performance recommendation as to when to use some of these features and how they can be tuned. The best thing I liked whether you are a new/intermediate/advanced developer/DBA, the book is loaded with examples showing how small changes affect the cost of some queries using oracle built in explain plan features. Other good feature of the book is the most of topics covered like Bitmap Indexing, Materialized view, etc. he has explained the potential pitfalls of those features and when not to use them, giving the developer/architect of the Data Warehouse system to help choosing proper design/implementation.

He has also covered the partioning and parallel processing a very essential for data warehouse tuning, however you may find this particular topic in other books.

The new features like model clause and how optimizer rewrites the query are well explained. Loading and extraction a key portion of Data Warehouse Architecture is covered.
He does cover the Tuning Hardware Resources of Data Warehousing, but as the author mentions in the preface he gives lot better information on tuning the application/query and architecture in the book rather than tuning the hardware underneath and if we use those concepts correctly tuning of hardware resources should be the last thing we may have to do.
Where ever needed he has explained how this feature is behaved in 10g and sometimes compared with previous version.
I do like and agree with his tuning approach and intutively used it myself at my job all the time, where I tune my database application on a low grade machine where resources are not state of the art, where I can see maximum benefit of my tuning, rather than tuning my application on high grade machine where my application's performance shortcoming will be hidden. I think this book will be very useful for data modeler/developers/DBA or whoever is already using Data Warehouse application or are planning to use/develop a Data Warehouse system. I thank Mr Powell for sharing the knowledge and experience he has gained in this field with other developers/DBAs etc.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Show and tell book no insight, June 21, 2006

By 

Eric L. Yen (Covia, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oracle Data Warehouse Tuning for 10g (Paperback)

I bought this book with the expectation that the author would be able to provide some insight. I was wrong. This books does explain Concepts and Example of DW. This books is good if your just getting into DW. It would better to download the Oracle Concepts Guide and the DW Guide.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great DW Book, July 17, 2009

By 

T. Roach - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oracle Data Warehouse Tuning for 10g (Kindle Edition)

I love this book. Whether you are advanced or a beginner, you can utilize the information in these pages.

The beginning tends to be basic to help the non DW DBA's understand DW concepts. The Author then gets into the meat of the book with great examples.

Some of the information explained within:

Dimensions and Dimension Objects
MV And Query Rewrite
Partitioning
Parallel Processing
Bitmap Indexes
Bitmap Join Indexes
DW Data Modeling
Effective DW Indexing
Optmization of Data Loading
SQL and MODEL clause
Snowflake versus Star Schemas
Star Transformations

and much much more. The author also explains the pros and cons as well as pitfalls of each approach.

If you want a book that gives you the What, how, and most importantly why. Then I would highly recommend this book. It costs more than other books, but I don't regret it as I feel it's worth every cent and more.