Rating: 
Summary: Performance tune Oracle to a new level
Review: Another reviewer mentions "this book fills in all the gaps in analyzing Oracle performance that exist in other published works", and I disagree. This book creates gaps in most other Oracle performance analysis books. This is a tremendous book.Some difficult material that is covered with detailed and simple explanations. If you can read and follow through with the examples you will definately come to understand even these parts. The gaps Millsap and Holt create in other Oracle performance tuning books are 'assumptions', 'generalizations' and 'inaccuracy' because this book teaches the reader how to precisely identify user's Oracle performance problems, and exactly what to fix. Having read this book in depth, I'll continue by saying this book also shows how to fix Oracle Performance problems. But, I almost guarantee if you are not prepared to learn the material, and follow the Method R, you may disagree this book shows 'how'. This book is five stars because its the only reference currently available (first of class in my opionion) that provides 100% business value to Oracle performance tuning of existing systems (Oracle 7 through 10). Experience Oracle DBAs and Developers may have problems with this book because it will cause you to think about Oracle Performance in a new, refreshing way by directly improving user's response times. Hopefully, you will read this book with an open mind and capture why Method R is so powerful to solve all sorts of Oracle performance tuning problems. Great job Millsap and Holt.
Rating:
Summary: Performance tune Oracle to a new level
Review: Another reviewer mentions "this book fills in all the gaps in analyzing Oracle performance that exist in other published works", and I disagree. This book creates gaps in most other Oracle performance analysis books. This is a tremendous book. Some difficult material that is covered with detailed and simple explanations. If you can read and follow through with the examples you will definately come to understand even these parts. The gaps Millsap and Holt create in other Oracle performance tuning books are 'assumptions', 'generalizations' and 'inaccuracy' because this book teaches the reader how to precisely identify user's Oracle performance problems, and exactly what to fix. Having read this book in depth, I'll continue by saying this book also shows how to fix Oracle Performance problems. But, I almost guarantee if you are not prepared to learn the material, and follow the Method R, you may disagree this book shows 'how'. This book is five stars because its the only reference currently available (first of class in my opionion) that provides 100% business value to Oracle performance tuning of existing systems (Oracle 7 through 10). Experience Oracle DBAs and Developers may have problems with this book because it will cause you to think about Oracle Performance in a new, refreshing way by directly improving user's response times. Hopefully, you will read this book with an open mind and capture why Method R is so powerful to solve all sorts of Oracle performance tuning problems. Great job Millsap and Holt.
Rating:
Summary: Takes Oracle tuning to a new level!
Review: Cary and Jeff have created mathematical techniques to uncover the root causes of Oracle performance. For years Cary has tuned Oracle databases at client sites and conducted seminars to teach other DBAs his methods. Now he has compiled his methods into a comprehensive manual. While all other books on this topic make general statements, perhaps backed by a test or two, Cary and Jeff provide a rigorous mathematical foundation for their method. But even there, they strive to make the math as comprehensible as possible. This will take Oracle tuning to a new level of scientific precision.
I have been the lead DBA at my company for 8 years now and have also experienced many of the problems he described. Some DBAs still rely on the old buffer cache hit ratio method. Recently I had a production database experience its highest buffer hit ratio. This occured while the database was nearly unusable due to a problem query! So I can vouch that there must be a better way.
Thank you Cary and Jeff for contributing this advancement to Oracle performance tuning. I would strongly recommend that every Oracle DBA have this book on their bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic internals coverage, worthy of the senior DBA
Review: 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!) Otherwise, this is an outstanding technical resource, worthy of the practicing Oracle database administrator.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Even after correctly identifying the performance problem root causes based on 1) knowledge of how Oracle really works and 2) *some* supporting data, you are likely to encounter the following armchair-expert assertions: 1) "Everybody knows databases are I/O bound - getting the RAID device reconfigured to 0+1 from 5 is guaranteed to resolve this!" 2) "This thing needs more iron! There's nothing here that another 6 CPUs can't handle." 3) "All we need to do is spend 6 hours each night re-computing statistics." 4) "I'll just keep reorging the tables weekly." And I heard all of those in just one project (the two order of magnitude improvement solution: changing the optimizer mode)! The challenge is often convincing a client - who has his own opinions and does not know you very well yet - that your inexpensive proposal is the best answer. This book give solid instructions for quantitative response-time attribution (e.g. the ability to say, "Even if you purchased the fastest SAN on earth, response time for this process would not improve by more than 6%."). My only *initial* disappointments were 1) the time spent promoting www.hotsos.com and 2) the small number of scripts available to be downloaded. After finishing this work, I don't begrudge the authors one bit; they gave us insight into the foundation of their business and provided more than enough tips to arm you - the performance tuner - without requiring software purchases. The output of tkprof (starting in 9i) is adequate for employing the extraordinary "Method R." We've all used the well-known rules-of-thumb and seen how getting hit ratios up to "recommended" levels accomplishes nothing. This book is *liberating* in the Shawshank Redemption sense of the word.
Rating: 
Summary: good analysis
Review: Ground breaking approach. Cary takes the use of wait interface to new level. Very well explained with examples. It is good to see much of the information from many of his whiet papers have been transferred into the book.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding coverage of extended sql trace
Review: I found Cary's book outstanding.
1. Coverage on generating and understanding extended sql trace is excellent.
2. One of the very few book on Oracle tuning, which deals with a "methodology". I have read several books before this on optimizing Oracle performance and none explains any methodology. This book instead of diving straight into v$ view and statspack data, first makes a ground of what approach should be taken. So its like, what needs to be done and then how to do that.
I find this book incredibly useful.
Thanks
bipul
Rating:
Summary: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK
Review: I want to have an advantage over all the other Oracle DBAs! I've been reading Cary Millsap's papers since the 70s and always found them to be right on the money. His VLDB paper is a classic. He is THE Oracle guru. I'm only half-way through the book and consider it money well spent.
Rating:
Summary: Very theoretical and insightful
Review: I was amazed at the amount of equations in this book. It is a very theoretical text and has gads of illustrations for internal timings and other super-detailed information. I'm going to have to read it at least twice to fully-appreciate it, and I fear that some of the theory will not apply to my systems. The only objestion I saw is that there was very little material on solutions, and the book focus is on finding issues, with not enough about how to fix the problem. Other than that, I was satisfied and commend the author for writing what surely must be the most theoretical and mathematical Oracle book anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Simply excellent
Review: I've been working with Oracle software for the last 6 years, and read all books by leading experts such as Tom Kyte, Steve Adams, Donald Burleson, Mike Ault, Jonathan Lewis, Christopher Lawson, and I cal tell you that Cary's work is a "top shelf", probably ranks right next to the famous Steve's 120-page masterpiece. It is NOT a casual reading, and you probably will have to re-read some sections to fully understand what Cary is trying to explain. His walkthrough the extended SQL trace file is just unmatchable. You can write your own SQL trace file parser right off that book. If you are a DBA working on complex performance problems, you will not solve them without this book. Every corporation should purchase a copy and give it to every DBA in the company! And make sure they read it cover to cover.
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