Oracle8i Tuning and Administration: The Essential Reference - Softcover

Thorpe, Heidi

9780201704365: Oracle8i Tuning and Administration: The Essential Reference

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201704366 ISBN 13: 9780201704365

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 2000

A guide for both less-experienced and advanced database administrators, covering major areas of Oracle8i for which database administrators are typically responsible, such as sizing and reconfiguration, monitoring, and application and database tuning for better performance. Reviews fundamental Oracle concepts, summarizes the latest features of Oracle8i, and covers aspects including security, free space search algorithms, SQL statement tuning, online index creation, and statistics generation for long-running operations. Thorpe works for a major financial institution in Australia. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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From the Inside Flap:

Preface

Oracle has become the industry standard for large-scale relational database systems, and the release of Oracle8iTM has made more information available to database administrators (DBAs). This book helps tie together the pieces of essential knowledge that allow you to solve problems more quickly. When common problems and their solutions are discussed, background has been provided to assist the reader in understanding why it worked, as well as how to fix it. When I first started writing this book, I recalled my earliest experiences with Oracle and more specifically Oracle's documentation. A core of essential knowledge is required to obtain proper value from official documentation, and until that level of knowledge is achieved, it can be a difficult climb. As a first-time user of the documentation, I found myself with six volumes, all opened to separate pages. I had to read sections from all of them to get the complete picture. The explanation given in this book of Oracle terms and concepts can help you overcome the initial barrier to understanding and navigating the official documentation. Audience of this Book

If you are an Oracle DBA, this book is for you. The title of DBA means different things to different people. Ask some of your colleagues what they consider to be the role of a DBA; responses may vary. Some view a DBA as a manager of objects and data within a database. This person is sometimes called an application DBA. Others think of a DBA as someone who looks after the database instance, setting up the initialization parameters and space management. All of these skills are often expected from a DBA. This book covers all of these areas.

DBAs working in a development environment realize that many of the problems with software are found in the early stage of the software development life cycle. Chapters in this book cover the initial setup of a database, sizing new objects, and tuning the application and database instance.

This book is also a benefit to DBAs working in a production environment. Being able to set up every database correctly from the beginning is the preference of most DBAs. However, many production DBAs must administer databases set up by employees or consultants no longer with an organization. This book provides many health checks a DBA can perform when faced with a production database of unknown quantity. It also contains working scripts that can be run to diagnose problems experienced after changes to the database. Some software projects do not have the budget for a full-time DBA, and it often falls to senior developers to perform some DBA tasks. Developers finding themselves in such situations would benefit from this book. However, please note that this is not a resource for people wishing to develop applications in PL/SQL, Java/JDBC, or Pro*C. How to Use this Book

This book is intended to be a solid reference. I regularly find that my colleagues, much like other Oracle resources, attempt to explain some technical details about Oracle but neglect to provide details on how this knowledge can be usefully applied. For this reason, I worked under the framework of the following three questions:

What is it? Why is it important? How do I use it?

It is my hope that this approach will help the reader find the necessary information.

Most importantly, Oracle DBAs, whether beginners or experts, can all glean something from this book. Each chapter does attempt to stand on its own, serving as a true reference manual that allows the reader to refer directly to the correct information. Each topic is initially covered at an elementary level, but there is advanced coverage for more experienced users. The intention is that less experienced readers can get the information they need while still being able to broaden their knowledge as their experience with Oracle increases. Whatever your level of experience, this book attempts to give you room to grow.

The following areas are covered:

Chapters 1 through 4: DBMS Concepts, Administration, Sizing, and Configuration Chapter 5: Monitoring Chapters 6 and 7: Application and Database Tuning Chapter 8: New Features Further Information

The 30 volumes of official Oracle manuals often discourage users. However, it is strongly recommended that any serious user purchase the Oracle Documentation CD-ROM. It is affordably priced and can be purchased separately or as part of the standard Oracle8iTM distribution. Having access to the official documentation is not a prerequisite to using this book; it does, however, complement the topics covered.

When tackling a subject as expansive as Oracle8iTM, there is always a trade-off between covering topics sufficiently, in a manner that is useful to the reader, and not creating a mammoth reference that becomes inaccessible to much of its intended audience. Justice cannot be done to topics like Parallel Server, Networking, and Backup and Recovery in a single chapter; each subject matter deserves its own book. For this reason, they are not covered here. However, a separate manual for each topic is available from Oracle and can offer plenty of insight for those wanting to know more.

0201704366P04062001

From the Back Cover:

Poring over the 30 volumes of official Oracle documentation is a daunting task for any Oracle database administrator (DBA). Oracle8iTM Tuning and Administration: The Essential Reference distills the essentials of what you need to know to perform your job intelligently and skillfully. Bypassing obscure technical details, this book answers three essential questions for each topic listed below: What is it? Why is it important? How do I use it? Less experienced DBAs can now acquire the framework they need to understand important details in the Oracle documentation. Advanced DBAs will find this book a practical reference to effective configuration and troubleshooting. Oracle8iTM Tuning and Administration covers the major areas for which DBAs are typically responsible: administration, sizing and configuration, monitoring, and application and database tuning for better performance. In addition, the book reviews fundamental Oracle concepts and summarizes the newest features of Oracle8iTM. Specific topics covered include:

Security and auditing
Administering tables, views, constraints, indexes, data files, log
files, and more
Free space search algorithm
Using database blocks efficiently
Optimizing space management
Partitioning
Database, process, and object limits
Monitoring events, usage, waits, and log files
Query optimization hints
SQL statement tuning
Diagnosing performance problems and detecting runaway processes
Tuning the operating system, CPU, memory, and disk I/O
Tuning Private SQL and PL/SQL areas
Tuning and initialization parameters
New features for bitmapped indexes
The new SAMPLE function
Advanced queuing and sort improvements
Online index creation, rebuild, and defragmentation
Statistics generation for long-running operations

Concise and thorough, with an easy-access format, Oracle8iTM Tuning and Administration: The Essential Reference is the Oracle resource you will keep close at hand.

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