Oracle High Performance Tuning for 9i and 10g [Paperback]

Gavin JT Powell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 22, 2003 | ISBN-10: 1555583059 | ISBN-13: 978-1555583057 | Edition: 1

There are three parts to tuning an Oracle database: data modeling, SQL code tuning and physical database configuration.

A data model contains tables and relationships between tables. Tuning a data model involves normalization and de-normalization. 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.

Poorly written SQL code is often a culprit of performance problems and is expensive to rectify. However, tuning of SQL code is generally cheaper than changing the data model. SQL code tends to be contained inside independent blocks within applications or stored procedures.

Physical database tuning involves hardware resource usage, networking and various other Oracle things such as configuration and file distribution. Physical configuration is often a culprit of poor performance where Oracle is installed with defaults, and never altered by an expert.

*Includes all three aspects of Oracle database tuning: data model tuning, SQL & PL/SQL code tuning, physical plus configuration tuning
*Contains experienced guidance and real-world examples using large datasets *Emphasizes development as opposed to operating system perspective

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Covers all aspects of database tuning: Data Modeling, SQL & PL/SQL and Physical Tuning

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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Digital Press; 1 edition (December 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555583059
• ISBN-13: 978-1555583057
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,661,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars a once over lightly of many topics not for knowledgeable dba, January 15, 2005

By 

real oracle geek "better doc at www.oracle.com" (Berea OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oracle High Performance Tuning for 9i and 10g (Paperback)

For lightweight or beginning oracle dba's this book may be useful. It is way too ambitious in what it attempts to cover and is not suitable for anyone that has much of a clue already what is going on in oracle.

Particularly pathetic is the over reliance of the author in testing performance of an application he apparently patched together, running on a pentium II windows machine with 128 meg of ram. Unfortunately he bases all his testing results of this machine. A semi decent sun or hp workstation can be had for under 1000 dollars ... even a more recent intel box running linux with a reasonable amount of memory would be a much better basis.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NICELY DONE!, January 8, 2004

By 

C. W. Lawson "OracleMagician" (SF East Bay, California: United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oracle High Performance Tuning for 9i and 10g (Paperback)

This is an extensive, even scholarly, book by Mr. Powell. He has obviously spent a great deal of effort to explain clearly and concisely some of the most important aspects of Oracle performance tuning.

Some areas that I found especially interesting were his explanations of the various lock mechanisms in the Oracle engine. The book is also very extensively illustrated with examples of execution plans, and many SQL examples. Another area of great use is the explanation of Partitioning-an area that most of us find very confusing.

Mr Powell wisely points out the advisability of developers getting the design right in the first place-preventative medicine, as it were.

The book is also interspersed with explanations of 10g additions. For instance, he shows the improvements to the Wait Event interface starting with 10g. Toward the end of the book, Gavin illustrates how to use the interesting utility Statspack.

All in all, a very nice exposition of a very tough subject.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Vague and primitive, January 20, 2006

By 

SM Talebzadeh (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oracle High Performance Tuning for 9i and 10g (Paperback)

I have read this book and regrettably found it primitive and obscure. The author seems to have a bit of Java and development knowledge but not much of knowledge as a designer or DBA. His explanation of various items are rudimentary and shallow. When he talks about Cost based optimizer and the way it is used in Oracle, it is pretty clear to me that the author is very light in understanding the basic concepts. There are also a lot of technical errors in describing various constructs and utilities. I think this book will be useful for newcomers but hardly is a "High Performance Tuning book" as the book's title says. There are much better books around. Any of Tom Kyte's books will leave this book standing.