Oracle Performance Survival Guide: A Systematic Approach to Database Optimization [Paperback]

Guy Harrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0137011954 | ISBN-13: 978-0137011957 | Edition: 1

Oracle Performance Survival Guide

 

A Systematic Approach to Database Optimization

 

The fast, complete, start-to-finish guide to optimizing Oracle performance

 

Oracle Performance Survival Guide offers a structured, systematic, start-to-finish methodology for optimizing Oracle performance as efficiently as possible. Leading Oracle expert Guy Harrison shows how to maximize your tuning investment by focusing on causes rather than symptoms, and by quickly identifying the areas that deliver the greatest “bang for the buck.”

 

Writing for DBAs and developers with all levels of experience, Harrison covers every area of Oracle performance management, from application design through SQL tuning, contention management through memory and physical IO management. He also presents up-to-the-minute guidance for optimizing the performance of the Oracle 11g Release 2. 

 

You’ll start by mastering Oracle structured performance tuning principles and tools, including techniques for tracing and monitoring Oracle execution. Harrison illuminates the interaction between applications and databases, guides you through choosing tuning tools, and introduces upfront design techniques that lead to higher-performance applications. He also presents a collection of downloadable scripts for reporting on all aspects of database performance.

 

Coverage includes

     •    “Tuning by layers,” the most effective, highest-value approach to Oracle performance optimization

     •    Making the most of Oracle’s core tools for tracing, monitoring, and diagnosing performance

     •    Highly efficient database logical and physical design, indexing, transaction design, and API use

     •    SQL and PL/SQL tuning, including the use of parallel SQL techniques

     •    Minimizing contention for locks, latches, shared memory, and other database resources

     •    Optimizing memory and physical disk IO

     •    Tuning Real Application Cluster (RAC) databases

 

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Guy Harrisonhas worked with Oracle databases as a developer, administrator, and performance expert for more than two decades. He is the author of many articles and several books on database technology, including Oracle SQL High Performance Tuning(Prentice Hall) and MySql Stored Procedure Programming(with Steven Feuerstein, O’Reilly). Guy is currently a director of development at Quest Software and is the chief architect of Quest’s popular Spotlight product family. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife Jenni and children Chris, Kate, Mike, and William. You can find Guy on the Web at http://www.guyharrison.net

Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (October 19, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0137011954
• ISBN-13: 978-0137011957
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 1.6 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #309,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > Performance Optimization

More About the Author

Guy Harrison has worked with Oracle databases as a developer, administrator and performance expert for more than two decades. He is the author of many articles and several books on database technology including Oracle Performance Survival Guide and MySql Stored Procedure Programming .

Guy is currently a Director of Development at Quest Software and is the Chief Architect of Quest's popular Spotlight(tm) product family. He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife Jenni and children Chris, Kate, Mike and William.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Encyclopedic overview of all aspects of Oracle performance, with a layered approach March 16, 2010

By David M. Abercrombie

Format:Paperback

Mr. Harrison has been a respected author in this field for more than a decade. His writing back in the days of version 8 first opened my eyes to the world of Oracle performance tuning. When I learned that he published this new book, updated and greatly expanded in scope, I just had to read and devour it.

This book is an encyclopedic overview of all aspects of Oracle performance. Mr. Harrison takes a layered approach, starting at the top with application and data model design where the focus is minimizing the demand for database resources. He then moves down into database code internals, where the focus is maximizing concurrency through reduction of lock, latch, and mutex contention. The next step is to optimize memory usage to minimize the need for physical IO. Finally, he moves to the bottom layer, where the focus is on optimizing physical IO at the disk layer.

Each of these layers is worthy of its own book, so to combine all these topics in a single book is an ambitious goal. Indeed, experienced readers will often want a bit more detail, or wonder why their favorite optimization was not mentioned. However, Mr. Harrison strikes a very good balance between depth and coverage. He also provides a very useful bibliography, including the Oracle documentation, books, and Internet sites and blogs.

For each chapter, Mr. Harrison provides extraordinarily clear, concise, and helpful introductions and summaries. He also uses boxed borders to highlights particularly important points within the text. One can learn a great deal by simply reading these summaries and boxed items, and these can also be used to help the reader find relevant sections, which is especially valuable in a book of this length.

This book is not the last word on SQL tuning, optimizer internals, Oracle troubleshooting, the SGA, nor latch contention. However, its coherent approach, useful summaries and highlights, and efficient organization, make it a valuable and essential guide to anyone wishing to expand their Oracle performance skill set.

The target audience includes both application developers and DBAs. It covers 10g, 11g, 11gR2, with context from 8i and 9i.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars must have book for Oracle 10g/11g tuners, DBAs and troubleshooters June 9, 2012

By Yuri Budilov

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have read Guy's book 3 times now, cover to cover, since I bought it in 2010 and every time I read it more material "gets into my head". I own half a dozen *great* Oracle 11g books but this one is my favourite. I have been specialising in Microsoft SQL Server since ~1998 until now and I was working with Oracle databases before 1999, since ~1984 (Oracle versions 5,6,7,8i and Oracle Rdb 1.0-7.0).
Coming back to Oracle again after 10-12 years and Guy's book is exactly what I needed. A most definite BUY if you are Oracle tuner, troubleshooter, DBA or advanced developer.
If I had to pick any negatives it would be that in a few cases Guy mentions a specific feature of Oracle and explains the do's and the dont's but does not provide the syntax on how to use/enable this particular feature. It's easy enough to search the Oracle manual for the syntax (which is what I do) but the near perfect book would be perfect if the syntax was provided in-line.

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book! August 7, 2010

By Donald Burleson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I like Guy's writing style and he always reveals fun details about Oracle.

This is a real-world book for real working Oracle DBA's, not one of those "theory" books that fill the pages with listings from non-reproducible "test cases".

His systematic approach is very similar to my own, and it was nice to see my own guidelines validated.

At first, I wondered if this was just a plug for the Oracle tools that he sells through his employer, but there is enough fresh content in this book to justify its price!