Oracle Performance Tuning

Mark Gurry runs a consulting company, Mark Gurry and Associates, which provides both short-term and long-term consulting in Oracle tuning; database administration; development standards; application architecture and design; and general site audits and health checks. His short-term site audits and internal skills transfer are keenly sought after in Australia, and he plans to expand into the U.S. and Europe in early 1997. Mark's customers are in many areas, including the stock market; banking and finance; telecommunications; emergency services; local, state and federal governments; computer hardware manufacturers, and many others. Many of the sites he consults at have as many as 5,000 concurrent users and data bases that are several hundred gigabytes in size. Peter Corrigan is a director of CPT Open Systems, a division of CPT Consulting, an Australian-based consulting company that is internationally recognized for its depth of performance tuning experience and quality service. It focuses on performance tuning of client-server systems, primarily Oracle and UNIX. Clients include major Oracle sites throughout Australasia, spanning numerous industry groups in both the government and private sectors. The company plans expansion into other countries in the near future. Peter's major roles include consulting in areas of environment performance audits; capacity planning; database administration; standards development; and application design and tuning of data warehousing and client-server systems. Peter is also the codeveloper of numerous Oracle soft ware developments, including performance tuning tools, application development tools, and the internationally acclaimed Rainbow Financial package. In addition to writing books, Mark and Peter are frequent speakers on the topic of tuning and programming at the Oracle Asia Pacific user group conferences and the local Victorian Oracle user group. They have also presented their own tuning course material for Oracle Australia throughout the Australian states. Peter Corrigan runs a small consulting company in Australia called Gauntlet Computers and works as a senior database administrator and project leader developing ORACLE applications and tuning systems. His speciality areas include client-server architecture and application downsizing, and he is the co-developer of the Rainbow Financial package, sold internationally. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of tuning and programming at the ORACLE Asia Pacific user group conferences and the Victoria ORACLE user's group. As a database administrator on a financial IMS project about eight years ago, Mark Gurry was asked to investigate his company's database direction for the next five years. The number of users was up to 950, the cost of maintaining the mainframes was huge, and he'd heard about relational databases and downsizing. After much investigation, he chose ORACLE, and has stuck with the system ever since. He has worked as manager of Computing and Network Services, senior database administrator, senior ORACLE technical support, and other jobs. He now has a small consulting company called New Age Consultants. Mark has worked for many large organizations and is currently working for Telecom Australia, the largest computer site in Australia and one of the largest in the world. He has also spoken on tuning at ORACLE user group meetings and has given internal tuning courses at several of his larger client sites. He has been a senior team member on award-winning systems that have been developed using ORACLE.

• Preface. I: Overview. 1. Introduction to Oracle Performance Tuning Why Tuning? Who Tunes? When Do You Tune? A Look at Recent Versions How Much Tuning Is Enough? 2. What Causes Performance Problems? Problems with Design and Development Problems with System Resources Memory Problems and Tuning Disk I/O Problems and Tuning CPU Problems and Tuning Network Problems and Tuning. II: Tuning for Managers and Planners. 3. Planning and Managing the Tuning Process Managing the Problem of Response Time Managing the Problem of Long-Running Jobs Managing the Workload in Your System Making the Decision to Buy More Equipment Management Checkpoints Performance Hints for Managers. 4. Defining System Standards Selecting a Common Design Methodology Selecting Your Software Selecting Your Hardware Setting Up Screen and Report Templates Using Modular Programming Techniques Defining System Libraries Enforcing Program Version Control Establishing Documentation Standards Establishing Database Environment Standards Security Standards Performance Standards. III: Tuning for Designers and Analysts. 5. Designing for Performance Common Design Problems Choosing an Architecture Tuning Your Data Model Tuning Indexes Testing the Data Model for Performance Denormalizing a Database Constraints Triggers Packages, Procedures, and Functions Designing a Very Large Database Application Miscellaneous Design Considerations. IV: Tuning for Programmers. 6. Tuning SQL SQL Standards The SQL Optimizer SQL Tuning Common Sense in SQL SQL Performance Tips and Hints Using Indexes to Improve Performance SQL Tuning Alternatives Identifying Poor SQL Statements Adjusting SQL Statements Over Time. 7. Tuning PL/SQL PL/SQL and SQL What Does PL/SQL Offer? PL/SQL Limitations PL/SQL Coding Standards Tuning PL/SQL Exploiting the Power of PL/SQL Oracle PL/SQL Function Extensions. 8. Selecting a Locking Strategy What Is Locking? Releasing Locks Avoiding the Dreaded Deadlock Locking Considerations for Oracle Features Overriding the Default Locking Strategy Internal Lock Contention Lock Detection Scripts. V: Tuning for Database Administrators. 9. Tuning a New Database Steps in Setting Up a Database Tuning Memory Tuning Disk I/O Creating the Database Creating the Tablespaces Creating Rollback Segments Creating Tables Creating Indexes Creating Views Creating Users INIT.ORA Parameter Summary Creating Very Large Databases. 10. Diagnostic and Tuning Tools MONITOR: Monitoring System Activity Tables SQL_TRACE: Writing a Trace File TKPROF: Interpreting the Trace File EXPLAIN PLAN: Explaining the Optimizer's Plan ORADBX: Listing Events ANALYZE: Validating and Computing Statistics UTLBSTAT.sql and UTLESTAT.sql: Taking Snapshots Other Oracle Scripts Some Scripts of Our Own Oracle Performance Manager. 11. Monitoring and Tuning an Existing Database Identifying Untuned Application Code Tuning Memory Tuning Disk I/O Avoiding Contention. 12. Tuning Parallel Server Introduction to Parallel Server Parallel Server Architecture Parallel Server Locking Parallel Server Design Parallel Server Database Tuning Instances INIT.ORA Parameters Ongoing Tuning. 13. Tuning Parallel Query Introduction to Parallel Query PQO Design Considerations Constructing Your Database for PQO INIT.ORA Parameters Ongoing Tuning of Query Servers Creating Indexes in Parallel Using PQO to Speed Data Loads Performing Parallel Recovery 14. Tuning Database Backup and Recovery The DBA's Responsibility Backing Up the Database Preparing to Recover the Database Recovering the Database. VI: Tuning for System Administrators 15. Tuning Long-Running Jobs Correctly Sizing Tables and Indexes Exploiting Array Processing Optimizing INIT.ORA Parameters Disk Tuning Running Jobs in Parallel DBA Tuning for Long-Running Jobs Creating Overnight Extract Tables Index Operations Using PL/SQL to Speed Up Updates Inline Functions Minimizing the Number of Updates Tuning EXPORT and IMPORT Utilities. 16. Tuning in the Client-Server Environment What Is Client-Server? Network Topology Where Should You Put the Network Hardware? Client-Server Performance Issues Tuning Precompilers for Client-Server Tuning the Network Itself Tuning SQL*Net Client-Server: Adapting It in the Real World 17. Capacity Planning About Capacity Planning What Do You Need to Test? Capacity Planning Checklist 18. Tuning for Specific Systems UNIX-Specific Tuning VMS-Specific Tuning VII: Appendixes A. Summary of New Features Oracle7.0 Features Oracle7.1 Features Oracle7.2 Features Oracle7.3 Features B. Hot Tuning Tips Questions from Planners and Managers Questions from Analysts and Designers Questions from Programmers Questions from Database Administrators Questions from System Administrators C. Tuning Oracle Financials Introduction to Financials Tuning Installing Oracle Financials Database-Level Tuning Upgrading Oracle Financials Concurrent Request Processing Archiving and Purging The GL Optimizer Developer Utilities Financials Tips Resources for Financials Developers D. Oracle Performance Pack Oracle Performance Manager Oracle Lock Manager Oracle Topsessions Oracle Tablespace Manager Oracle Expert and Oracle Trace E. Tuning Oracle Forms 4.0 and 4.5 GUI Tips General Tips F. Tuning Case Studies Case Study Database 1 Case Study Database 2 G. Dynamic Performance Tables Index