Customer Reviews

Oracle Performance Tuning Tips and Techniques

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My review is focused on this book as it relates to a developer, rather than a DBA. A great deal of this book deals specifically with DBA-related activities which I will pass on reviewing for now.

It is a bit scary to think that I actually wrote queries before reading this book. The tips and techniques in this book provide a great deal of insight into how to tune the database and are truly invaluable.

"Tuning a database" is a rather silly way of describing the content of this book, because there are many aspects of that. You can tune the Oracle software itself (DBA), the structure of the data (Architect/Developer), or the SQL queries (Developer).

The coverage of SQL hints was absolutely invaluable for me -- and the author gives a great deal of information on why they need to be used. I come out of reading this book far more skilled on how the Oracle software actually parses and executes a query. The author gives in-depth coverage of the EXPLAIN PLAN and TRACE utilities, and more importantly he explains how to interpret the results.

One of the areas that the author explained very well was the use of indexes -- not just the basic rules (95/5), but how they should be used when the distribution of data is not linear in the column and how the parser decides to use the index in the rule-based vs. cost-based optimizing engine. Of course, the coverage on hints provides a way to override either engine, which is sometimes critical!

Another portion of the book I found of high value was the very large chapter on driving tables (for table joins). This is a complicated but very important issue (and a common cause of huge performance hangups). The author does a nice job of explaining this concept through a series of examples. Any developer who has never heard the term "driving table" needs to add this book to their shopping cart.

I would very much like to give this book a 5 star rating but I just have to take off a star for the poor writing style of the author. The author is an Oracle professional with real-world experience -- which probably helps the book in terms of topics covered, but does not help someone trying to read it. There are some instances where entire paragraphs are literally copied and pasted in different chapters.

Another problem is that he assumes a lot of knowledge in some chapters and almost none in others. Each chapter seems to be written for a different audience level. For example, he discusses in-memory hash tables in the chapter on join types -- which us C++ programmers know very well. However, a typical SQL developer probably does not know how a hash-table works or why it is better than using basic nested loops.

However, this book really does belong on the shelf of every developer who wants to really know Oracle.

This text offers some great tips and advice. If you haven't got time to read the whole book don't worry, chapter 1 provides a summary of the entire text. The book has been very well written and concepts are clearly explained with the aid of diagrams where applicable. The scripts presented throughout the book are quite useful although I have found some syntax errors. Soft copies of the scripts are available from the TUSC website anyhow. Overall this book is well suited to beginners and advanced DBAs. I look forward to reading more books from Rich and the team at TUSC.

I like this book not because it is a perfect book but it is a comprehensive discussion of Oracle Performance Tuning in a very deep level.

What I like the most is that the book sets a bridge between the academic theory and the real world. It is the first book I have ever read to tell the real numbers for major init.ora parameters. It suggests you the value of the SHARED_POOL_SIZE, DB_BLOCK_BUFFERS, LOG_BUFFERS and much more other parameters in certain conditions. Most books just say: if you set this parameter too high, you will cause this, if you set it too low, you will have that. But they never say how high is too high and how low is too low. So the readers still don't know how to set them. This is like you tell a new driver who is going to drive on the freeway at his first time: "Don't drive too fast, don't drive too slowly." But he may still don't know how fast is too fast, and how slow is too slow. This book tells you something like: "Don't go faster than 65 miles/hour, don't go slower than 45 miles/hour on the freeway in Wisconsin." It can't be more clear. Even though we still can't just follow the numbers because Oracle databases are much more complicated than driving on the free way. But the numbers give us some ideas about the parameters. We may set or modify ours by considering these suggested values and our specific situations.

I like the discussion on the undocumented init.ora parameters and x$ tables which most books don't touch with. But DBAs should know them.

In many cases the book gives you the two sides of tuning tips and shows the examples. E.g. cost based optimizer is not always better than rule based; CACHE hint is good for small tables, but bad for large tables; 95/5 rule for indexes...

The section `Tuning Using Simple Mathematical Techniques', which shows how a simple quadratic equation can predict the performance, is very interesting. It is my first time to know we can calculate the performance on the scientific basis.

There are a few conflicts with Oracle Documentation. E.g. on P189 and P191, the suggested value for LOG_CHECKPOINT_INTERVAL is 0. However, the Oracle8 Documentation says: "Note that specifying a value of 0 (zero) for the interval might cause interval checkpoints to be initiated very frequently ... Hence, setting the value to 0 is not recommended."

The Chapter 9 is unnecessary repetitious.

It would be better if there were an appendix for the quadratic equations instead of using many pages to discuss them in the text. Because it may be boring for those who have known them well, it may be still not very clear for those who don't know much about them.

On P404, Y0 should be 0 instead of 1 because Y0 is the time needed when 0 rows selected. There should be only one assumption: you need 0 second if you select 0 rows.

Overall it is a very good book for DBAs who are in the real world with couple years tuning experience.

I've bought a lot of books about Oracle tuning. And after having read all of them , it's obvious that ORACLE PERFORMANCE TUNING TIPS & TECHNIQUES is the best available. As a very good addition, get ORACLE8i INTERNAL SERVICES, ORACLE8i & UNIX PERFORMANCE TUNING, and ORACLE8i SQL HIGH PERFORMANCE TUNING. This is the perfect bookshelf for becoming a GURU ;-)

Richard Nieniec has not only proven himself as a dynamic speaker, but as a writer as well. This book if full of needed information for any DBA, and is presented extremely well. This is not one to be read to as a sleep aid!! I highly recommend this book for Jr. to intermediate DBA's who understand how crucial performance really is. Explanations are clear and logical. Most readers who have worked in the Database field for any length of time will enjoy the wit and charisma of the writers.

A book that every Oracle DBA should have! I found it by chance in Miami before beginning to work in a very important project as Oracle DBA. This book helped me a lot in finding how to tune Oracle to the bound! Reading this book made me be a better DBA. Many things are very useful but one of the best is the Tuning Plan Rich recommends to ensure everything is tuned . It's excellent. Besides, Rich is a very clear writer, so each subject is very well explained. I have no words to say 'Thanks to Rich by writing this book'!

This book covers tuning AND ongoing administration. VERY well written - presents information in a clear and concise format. There is alot of material and to get your money's worth you should read it several times to learn what it has to offer. I have already tuned two databases with cache hit ratios lagging around 30%. One now runs with all hit ratios ABOVE 99.5% and the other has hit ratios above 92%. Users users have noticed the increase in speed. Two more databases to go and this book will be close by my side.

In his book, Rich has merged his many years of Oracle performance tuning expertise with advanced insider techniques in an easy-to-understand way. Hundreds practical topics, undocumented references, experts tips and real life examples have made this book a must have for DBA's and any Oracle performance tuning personnel.

This book covers the tuning tips and techniques in using newest features in Oracle 8i as well as the original features in Oracle 7 or 8. As Rich's first sentence indicates, "Oracle is a symphony and you are the conductor, with an opportunity to create a world class performance", his book will help you to achieve this opportunity and to become a great tuning conductor of Oracle performance.

The first chapter of the book serves as highlight notes, which sets up five quick goals to instantly improve performance. Through the rest chapters of his entire book, readers will gain detail tuning knowledge about disk I/O, init.ora parameters, OEM, Explain Plan, table joins, hints, PL/SQL, parallel query, using V$ views, accessing x$ tables, new features and many more tips and techniques for reaching the best performance. After reading this book, be sure to share your thoughts with others in your review.

Knowledge is dripping off every page of this book. Reading chapter 1 alone helped me greatly increase the performance of an Oracle instance. This is the only tuning book you will ever need for Oracle 8.

Just wanted to tell you all that Chapter 4 just saved my bacon! And I even read the other chapters!. Solve the problem of a buffer cache down to 60% without rebooting? The tip on pinning tables in cache got it back up to 99%! This is a valuable book in a crisis when your years of experience deserts you. Do yourself a favor and go hear Rich as well as GET THIS BOOK. Blokes like him are rare. So keep up the entertaining presentations and your continuing de-mystification of database tuning.