ORACLE Performance Tuning

The Oracle relational database management system is the most popular database system in use today. Organizations, ranging from government agencies to small businesses, from large financial institutions to universities, use Oracle on computers as diverse as mainframes, minicomputers, workstations, PCs, and Macintoshes. Oracle offers tremendous power and flexibility, but at some cost. Demands for fast response, particularly in online transaction processing systems, make performance a major issue. With more organizations downsizing and adopting client-server and distributed database approaches, performance tuning has become all the more vital. Whether you're a manager, a designer, a programmer, a database admini- strator, or a system administrator, there's a lot you can do on your own to dramatically increase the performance of your existing Oracle system. Whether you are running RDBMS Version 6 or Version 7, you may find that this book can save you the cost of a new machine; at the very least, it will save you a lot of headaches.

The books in O'Reilly's Oracle series are authoritative -- they tell the whole story about complex topics, ranging from performance tuning to the use of packages in PL/SQL to new technologies like Power Objects. And they're independent; they're alternatives for readers who need to know how products and features really work. They're packed with real-world advice and techniques from practitioners in the field, and they come with disks containing code you can use immediately in your own applications. O'Reilly is the alternative for Oracle people who need to solve problems -- and solve them now. Performance tuning is crucial in any modern relational database management system. Too many organizations respond to Oracle performance problems by throwing money at these problems -- by buying larger and more expensive computers or by hiring expert consultants. But there's a lot you can do on your own to increase dramatically the performance of your existing system. Whatever version of Oracle you're running -- from Version 6 to Oracle8, proper tuning can save your organization a huge amount of money in additional equipment, extra memory, and hardware upgrades. The first edition of Oracle Performance Tuning has become a classic for programmers, managers, database administrators, system administrators, and anyone who cares about improving the performance of an Oracle system. This second edition is a complete rewrite; it adds 400 pages to the first edition, updating all the original information, incorporating new advice about disk striping and mirroring, RAID, client-server, distributed databases, MPPS, SMPs, and other architectures. It also includes new chapters on parallel server, parallel query, backup and recovery, the Oracle Performance Pack, and more.