View Larger Image	Cary Millsap, Jeff Holt O'Reilly Media, Paperback, Published September 2003, 388 pages, ISBN 059600527X
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Oracle DBAs and developers are all too familiar with the outlay of time and resources, blown budgets, missed deadlines, and marginally effective performance fiddling that is commonplace with traditional methods of Oracle performance tuning. In this crucial book, Cary Millsap, former VP of Oracle's System Performance Group, clearly and concisely explains how to use Oracle's response time statistics to diagnose and repair performance problems. Cary also shows how "queueing theory" can be applied to response time statistics to predict the impact of upgrades and other system changes.

Optimizing Oracle Performance eliminates the time-consuming, trial-and-error guesswork inherent in most conventional approaches to tuning. You can determine exactly where a system's performance problem is, and with equal importance, where it is not, in just a few minutes--even if the problem is several years old.

Optimizing Oracle Performance cuts a path through the complexity of current tuning methods, and streamlines an approach that focuses on optimization techniques that any DBA can use quickly and successfully to make noticeable--even dramatic--improvements.

For example, the one thing database users care most about is response time. Naturally, DBAs focus much of their time and effort towards improving response time. But it is entirely too easy to spend hundreds of hours to improve important system metrics such as hit ratios, average latencies, and wait times, only to find users are unable to perceive the difference. And an expensive hardware upgrade may not help either.

It doesn't have to be that way. Technological advances have added impact, efficiency, measurability, predictive capacity, reliability, speed, and practicality to the science of Oracle performance optimization. Optimizing Oracle Performance shows you how to slash the frustration and expense associated with unraveling the true root cause of any type of performance problem, and reliably predict future performance.

The price of this essential book will be paid back in hours saved the first time its methods are used.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface

Part I. Method

1. A Better Way to Optimize

"You're Doing It Wrong"
Requirements of a Good Method
Three Important Advances
Tools for Analyzing Response Time
Method R

2. Targeting the Right User Actions

Specification Reliability
Making a Good Specification
Specification Over-Constraint

3. Targeting the Right Diagnostic Data

Expectations About Data Collection
Data Scope
Oracle Diagnostic Data Sources
For More Information

4. Targeting the Right Improvement Activity

A New Standard of Customer Care
How to Find the Economically Optimal Performance Improvement Activity
Making Sense of Your Diagnostic Data
Forecasting Project Net Payoff

Part II. Reference

5. Interpreting Extended SQL Trace Data

Trace File Walk-Through
Extended SQL Trace Data Reference
Response Time Accounting
Evolution of the Response Time Model
Walking the Clock
Forward Attribution
Detailed Trace File Walk-Through
Exercises

6. Collecting Extended SQL Trace Data

Understanding Your Application
Activating Extended SQL Trace
Finding Your Trace File(s)
Eliminating Collection Error
Exercises

7. Oracle Kernel Timings

Operating System Process Management
Oracle Kernel Timings
How Software Measures Itself
Unaccounted-for Time
Measurement Intrusion Effect
CPU Consumption Double-Counting
Quantization Error
Time Spent Not Executing
Un-Instrumented Oracle Kernel Code
Exercises

8. Oracle Fixed View Data

Deficiencies of Fixed View Data
Fixed View Reference
Useful Fixed View Queries
The Oracle "Wait Interface"
Exercises

9. Queueing Theory for the Oracle Practitioner

Performance Models
Queueing
Queueing Theory
The M/M/m Queueing Model
Perspective
Exercises

Part III. Deployment

10. Working the Resource Profile

How to Work a Resource Profile
How to Forecast Improvement
How to Tell When Your Work Is Done

11. Responding to the Diagnosis

Beyond the Resource Profile
Response Time Components
Eliminating Wasteful Work
Attributes of a Scalable Application

12. Case Studies

Case 1: Misled by System-Wide Data
Case 2: Large CPU Service Duration
Case 3: Large SQL*Net Event Duration
Case 4: Large Read Event Duration
Conclusion

Part IV. Appendixes

A. Glossary

B. Greek Alphabet

C. Optimizing Your Database Buffer Cache Hit Ratio

D. M/M/m Queueing Theory Formulas

E. References

Index

About the Author

Cary Millsap is the former Vice President of Oracle's System Performance Group and the cofounder of Hotsos, a company dedicated to Oracle system performance. Hotsos provides performance-improvement tools for Oracle environments and also delivers training in the form of clinics and symposiums. Cary is also a founding member of the Oak Table Network (http://www.oaktable.net), an informal association of "Oracle Scientists" well known throughout the Oracle community.

Nov 25, 2005     Steve Hodge from Southern Maine
Use math not myths to guide your performance tuning effort
Milsap and Holt reveal much about the cost-based optimizer and provide examples of finding performance problems in user-written applications. Oracle is guilty of publishing lots of folklore about how to make its database run well, but starting with Oracle 9i they've come clean. What was missing was someone who could put it all together and explain it well. This book coupled with Hotsos SQL Optimization training brings a new useful framework for evaluating problems and testing alternative scenarios for improvement, enabling performance-by-design.

What helped me the most was the explanation of how to understand extended SQL trace files without having to use tkprof.

As for Burleson's comment about the queueing theory being difficult to reckon with, I find it much easier to absorb than Neil J. Gunther's The Practical Performance Analyst....Those wanting to learn more without taking the "deep dive" should seek out his book as well and read chapter 2 "Queueing Theory for Those Who Can't Wait".

Aug 10, 2004     Andrew Zitelli from California
Exquisite book on Oracle Problem Diagnosis and Perf Optimization
This book by Cary Milsap and Jeff Holt is truly exceptional. I have worked with Oracle for over 10 years and have owned and read at least 150 Oracle related books over the past five years. I disposed of about 100 of these books as nearly worthless, including several Oracle Performance Tuning books. I found about 10 of the books to be excellent. Cary and Jeff's book is one of the three Oracle books I consider indispensable.

This book presents a scientific approach to problem diagnosis and performance optimization. This allows optimization efforts to be consistent and repeatable. This book takes Oracle problem diagnosis and tuning out of the realm of being a black art.

Although touted as a book specifically for performance optimization, the scientific approach to database problem diagnosis can be applicable during early development as well. For example, I am involved in the early development of a complex J2EE application with over 1000 underlying database tables. This application uses "container managed persistence" (CMP). In plain language this means the application server automatically generates all SQL database queries at runtime. Many of these queries are highly inefficient. The methodology described in this book has allowed me to identify numerous problems long before they would be apparent by other means. It has allowed me to precisely identify the causes of these inefficiencies. It has also been instrumental in testing proposed solutions, both inside Oracle, and in the J2EE application server.

I strongly recommend this book to all Oracle database administrators and developers.

May 24, 2004     Mike Boyle from Maryland
One great book
This book is by far the best I have ever read on optimizing Oracle. It really takes the guess work out of diagnosing performance problems. Do yourself a big favor. Read this book and then attend the course given by the author. You can learn a tremendous amount from the book but taking the class on top of it really brings things into perspective.

Apr 16, 2004     Peter Smolianski from Quantico, VA
Absolutely the best Oracle Performance book ever
Absolutely the best Oracle Performance book ever. Must have for any Oracle DBA.

Feb 29, 2004     Gautam Arora from NY, USA
This book has proven all previous concepts wrong.
I want to give more than 5 stars to this book.

Dec 27, 2003     Gudmundur Josepsson from Reykjavik, Iceland
Not only for DBAs
This book is essential for everybody who wants to improve his/her understanding of Oracle performance. It is not only for database administrators but also for developers, managers and others who are at least partially responsible for an Oracle database.

This is not a book full of tips and tricks that you can memorize like a parrot (and are off target as often as they are not). Instead, Optimizing Oracle Performance teaches a method and its goal is to make the reader understand how to identify Oracle performance problems, quickly and accurately.

The method taught in the book focuses on finding the real issues that are important to the business instead of looking at aggregate v$ views and trying to improve some ratio until you become blue in the face.

As a consultant, I've been using the book and Method R for several months with great success. My biggest pleasure in teaching Method R is seeing how quickly people who have never thought that performance tuning was part of their job pick up the method and get results.

Some people have complained that the book contains too much math. I don't agree. There actually isn't that much math in the book and most of it is high-school level. I think the complaints about the math mostly stem from the fact that the book uses Sigma (you know, the 'Sum' button in Excel) instead of the words 'sum of'. The math in the book is used to explain 'why' instead of taking the route of saying: "This is the truth. I don't bother to explain, just believe me."

If you buy this book and use Method R you will probably agree with the statement that if you think Oracle performance tuning is hard you're doing it wrong. Optimizing Oracle Performance teaches you how to do it right.

Oct 25, 2003     Donald K. Burleson from Kittrell, NC, USA
Worthy of a senior Oracle DBA
Cary's book has validated by belief that successful Oracle tuning requires an in-depth understanding of advanced software engineering concepts, including algorithm theory, queuing theory, Calculus, and multivariate statistics. Using these CS tools, Millsap explains the internals mechanisms of the Oracle engine.

After dusting-off my 1970's Calculus texts (thank God I took 4 semesters of Calculus), I was able to start this epic tome.

This is not an easy read! While not quite as slow as reading Ulysses (James Joyce), expect to spend many hours digesting and understanding the mathematical equations and concepts in this text.

For those with the appropriate College-level background (A Masters in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering), the book is wonderful (or so I'm told, I'm just an MBA).

Packed with queuing theory and advanced CS concepts, Millsap does a wonderful job applying the CS theory with the operational working of Oracle, especially with respect to wait event analysis.

The section of using SQL*trace and 10046 trace files are the hallmark of the Millsap approach, and Cary has done a wonderful job explaining this is plain English, with lot's of references to the v$ structures.

The only shortcoming of this book is that it may be too advanced for marginal Oracle professionals who do not possess the appropriate math and statistics background to appreciate the illustrations.

With respect to technical accuracy, the book is well annotated and researched, and the only issue I found was that Millsap's explanation of the pdf Poisson distributions were "fishy". (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

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