Oracle SAP Administration (O'Reilly Oracle) [Paperback]

Donald K. Burleson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1999

SAP is the leading vendor of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the world. (The name SAP is an acronym for the German "Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung", which roughly translates to "Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing".) Developed and marketed by SAP-AG, a Germany company that was founded in 1972 by IBM application developers, SAP has historically sold to the European market. During the 1990s, the company has increasingly dominated the U.S. market as well among large Fortune 500 companies. Nearly half the SAP user base is now in the U.S. Now that SAP-AG is beginning to penetrate the small to medium-size companies, client/server sales are accelerating.

The SAP system performs a wide range of business functions, from manufacturing, sales, and distribution to accounting and human resources. By linking together these business functions, SAP helps the entire enterprise run more smoothly. The system can be used with virtually any hardware or operating system and with most database systems. Oracle is the dominant DBMS - about 80% of SAP systems use Oracle. Conversely, about 20% of large Oracle sites run SAP -- and the numbers are growing. Although overall SAP numbers are tightly guarded, it appears that there are about 20,000 SAP sites, in 90 countries. SAP-AG's 1998 sales were approximately 8.47 billion.

Although there is voluminous documentation on using SAP and using Oracle, until now there has been no book that described the intersection between the two systems. Experienced Oracle administrators have a lot to learn when their organizations start using SAP. Oracle SAP administration differs from traditional Oracle administration in many ways. SAP provides its own tools for Oracle administration; Oracle DBAs need to learn how to use these tools -- and need to learn when the tools are not the best way to accomplish a task. There are special settings for initialization (INIT.ORA) parameters, special monitoring and tuning guidelines, and a variety of other special situations.

This concise book is aimed at experienced Oracle database administrators, system administrators, and developers who are using either Oracle8 or Oracle7. It emphasizes the differences between traditional Oracle administration and Oracle/SAP administration, and it supplements the Oracle and SAP documentation. The book covers the most useful administration tools, SAPDBA and SAPGUI. It provides recommendations for the most efficient placement of data files; monitoring databases; reorganizing tables, tablespaces, and indexes; backing up and recoving databases; and tuning Oracle/SAP databases for best performance. There are chapters on special issues for parallel processing and for very large SAP databases and a summary of additional resources for the Oracle/SAP administrator. The tried-and-true tips and techniques contained in this book should save you hundreds of hours of aggravation while you adapt to using Oracle and SAP in combination.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Tailored to the needs of people who know Oracle, SAP R/3, or a little of both, Oracle SAP Administration explains the conventions and utilities that integrate these software tools before getting into optimization techniques and strategies for achieving increased data safety. Appropriately, author Donald Burleson emphasizes optimization of disk-access operations. He relates two methods for identifying I/O hotspots--specifically, he shows how to examine the Oracle file statistics and how to use Unix's iostat utility to get a picture of what's going on. He then describes strategies for restructuring tablespaces to minimize holdups. He also discusses RAID implementations, their performance penalties, and the increased level of reliability they provide.

Beyond file system considerations, Oracle SAP Administration describes how to reorganize tables, tablespaces, and indexes to achieve top performance. You'll find explicit listings of SQL statements and Korn shell scripts that restructure databases, plus a wealth of diagrams that illustrate how inefficient databases differ from optimized ones (a concept that's not always easy to communicate in text). The author tackles Oracle's parallel-processing solutions and explains how they (particularly the ones that came before Oracle8) interact with SAP. A quick discussion of how very large Oracle/SAP databases behave rounds out this coverage of a robust enterprise duo. --David Wall

Topics covered: Naming conventions, SAPDBA, SAPGUI, optimizing file access, reorganizing Oracle objects for better performance, administration tasks and utilities, and Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) as it applies to SAP. Burleson uses SAP R/3 and Oracle versions 7 and 8 in his documentation.

About the Author

Donald K. Burleson has more than 17 years of experience as a database administrator. He has consulted with numerous Fortune 50 companies regarding their leveraging of Oracle technology, and has implemented dozens of mission-critical database systems. A former adjunct professor of Information Systems, Don has taught more than 100 university courses in information technology, and he excels at explaining complex theory in plain English. Don is also a popular speaker and has presented at dozens of national database conferences, including Oracle OpenWorld and the International Oracle Users Group (IOUG) conferences. Don serves as editor-in-chief of Oracle Internals, a popular Oracle DBA magazine. He has written seven other books on database systems: Practical Application of Object-Oriented Techniques to Relational Databases (John Wiley & Sons, 1994), Managing Distributed Databases: Building Bridges Between Database Islands (John Wiley & Sons, 1995), High Performance Oracle Database Applications (Coriolis Publishing, 1996), Oracle Databases on the Web (Coriolis Publishing, 1996), High Performance Oracle Data Warehousing (Coriolis Publishing, 1997), High Performance Oracle8 Tuning (Coriolis Publishing, 1997), and Inside the Database Object Model (CRC Press, 1997).

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st ed edition (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156592696X
• ISBN-13: 978-1565926967
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,279,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Donald K. Burleson is one of the world's most widely published Database experts with more than 20 years of full-time DBA experience.

He specializes in creating database architectures for very large online databases and he has worked with some of the world's most powerful and complex systems.

A former Adjunct Professor Emeritus, Burleson has written 30 books, published more than 100 articles in National Magazines, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Rampant TechPress.

Don is a popular lecturer and teacher and is a frequent speaker at Oracle Openworld and other international database conferences.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Much needed book, but keep looking..., April 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Oracle SAP Administration (O'Reilly Oracle) (Paperback)

This is a much-needed book in the SAP marketplace, but in its current form, this edition isn't it. As an experienced R/3 administrator, hoping to expand my understanding of the R/3 - Oracle integration points, I bought this book with high hopes. The author lost a great deal of credibility in my eyes with the number of glaring errors when discussing R/3. It is obvious that no R/3 Basis Administrator was asked to review the text for accuracy. Based on the number of errors I discovered in the first few chapters on R/3, I couldn't trust that the remainder of the text would be correct, as the subject matter advanced to topics I had less expertise on (i.e. Oracle). I do not question the authors expertise with Oracle. I do question his ability to write a book that creeps outside his area of expertise without outside assistance.

I understand that this book is targeted towards Oracle DBAs who are pushed into an SAP environment where the world as they know it turns upside down, and not necessarily for SAP Basis Administrators looking to learn more Oracle skills. Still, I think this book could have been so much more for the author and SAP administrators worldwide.

It is still a much needed book in the SAP market, and I reluctantly recommend buying it, but only after visiting OReilly's web site for the errata.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good ideas, bad technical (mis)information, February 21, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (St. Louis, Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oracle SAP Administration (O'Reilly Oracle) (Paperback)

I read this book primarily for its reorganization and tuning aspects. There were good ideas that nudged me in the right direction, but there was an unacceptable amount of technical incorrectness. The descriptions of how SAP stores data, many of the Oracle commands were in error. CLEAN IT UP!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst book I've ever bought, November 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Oracle SAP Administration (O'Reilly Oracle) (Paperback)

The author has definately tried take advantage of the fact that SAP System Admin Documentation is not so thorough and extensive.
It is clear that he has never worked with SAP before. The book is full of mistakes that even a Basis Administrator with 6 months experience would know. For example, the author says that the SAP SID must be 3 characters long, must start with the letter S followed by any other 2 characters, with SAP being the exception, like we all know this is a load of hogwash. Save your money, because in my opinion the author's only intention is to make some money out of you, despite his dismal inexperience in SAP. I will never buy another book written by the author.