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Summary: OWI explained as it should be
Review: A lot of people have been talking about monitoring and tuning using the "wait interface". There are too many sites around with bits and pieces of the necessary information, but up until now there wasn't a complete source on the subject.
Having used Oracle since 1984, I have read just about every advanced book on Oracle databases. This one is right at the top of the list for anyone wanting to learn how to accurately monitor and tune Oracle databases.
Here at last is a single, complete and authoritative reference for all to use. And what I like the best: it is not restricted to a single version of Oracle. Simply the best reference right now.
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Summary: Buy this book.....
Review: Every Oracle DBA needs this book. Simple as that. It not only makes Oracle wait events understandable, it gives you an application to install to collect and analyze them. If you want to drill deep into the internals, it lets you do that, as well. This is good stuff.
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Summary: For Serious Performance Tuners...
Review: I have read through the entire book and found that while it can be a slow read, it is extremely thorough and complete and accurate. This is the absolute best tuning book for practical real world performance tuning that I have found.
If you are responsible for tuning a database or keep hearing user complaints about system performance, then this is the book you should be reading. While other books outline concepts, parameters as cure-alls or other techniques that do not always apply or might even make matters worse, this book provides a practical approach that is focused on analysis that help you gain solid insight into your system performance.
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Summary: OWI Laid Bare
Review: I received this book on Tuesday and I literally could not put it down. I consumed it like a great thriller. It contains a great deal of information that can be found no where else in print. Performance monitoring and tuning with the Oracle Wait Interface is still new to many Oracle DBAs, even seasoned ones, precisely because the details of how to gather and interpret the information have been difficult to come by - until now.If you've never heard of the Oracle Wait Interface (OWI), do yourself a huge favor and read this book. You will be thanking me all the way to the bank. The Oracle DBA performance tuning community has been moving in this direction for several years; don't get left behind. Even if you're an OWI tuning expert, the authors make you privy to their experiences with some of the most heavily loaded Oracle databases on the planet as well as where the skeletons are in the OWI closet. This book will help you take your tuning skills to the next level. You will learn how to identify where poorly performing sessions are spending their time, what is slowing them down, who they are competing with, and what those competitors are doing. OK great - what good is knowing all of that if you don't know what to do about it. The authors guide you through this as well with examples and explanations of why the problem occurs and why the solutions work. They point out key concepts to keep in mind when you're tackling a problem that isn't covered in the examples that will help you avoid the cookbook tuning trap. In addition to arming you with the details of the wait interface itself, the authors take you under the covers to lay bare the internal workings of the Oracle kernel's memory management and concurrency control structures so that you can make sense out of what the OWI is telling you. Then, in my favorite chapter, they walk you through the process of building your own OWI monitoring scripts. With these scripts watching the database, you will never again have to wonder what happened while you were asleep. Ever get paged in the middle of the night to solve a performance problem and have no earthly idea what caused it? Ever notice that most people will assume that a performance problem is in the database and it's up to you to prove that it isn't. With the OWI monitoring scripts in place, you will have an uncontestable record of what each session did and when it did it. The database will no longer be an easy target and you will become a highly respected, and yes, perhaps even feared DBA.
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Summary: Great book
Review: I recently attended a local OUG Meeting in which Richmond gave a presentation on the efficient use of the Oracle Wait Interface to diagnose and solve performance problems. His presentation and philosopy corroborated another source that I had read "Performance Tuning 101" Unfortunately, I didn't win one of the three copies that he was giving away at the meeting. Instead, I went straight back to the office to order this book. It is everything I expected and more. I particularly appreciate chapter 4 in which the authors provide step by step instruction on how to create your own tool for monitoring and collecting wait interface data. I just implemented this new tool in a production environment and have already been able to diagnose some potential application "issues". This book rocks.
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Summary: Comprehensive Reference...Required Reading
Review: If you are serious about solving Oracle performance issues, this book is required reading. If you are not serious, read it anyway so you can understand why you need to get serious. This book is not just an explanation of each wait event, but why it occurs and where to look for solutions. The coverage of the extensive changes in 10g and collection methods cannot be found anywhere else. This book lives up to the title!
Richmond, Kirti and K. take the time to research everything that they present. They do not simply rehash Oracle documentation, nor do they make unfounded assertions. This scientific approach offers reassurance that what you read is what you really see, not some slick marketing designed to sell you additional products or services.
The book is packed with examples, scenarios, code (especially the direct sga attach program).
The bottom line is that the book shows you why you should use the wait interface, how to use it, what to look for and what it means to the system.
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Summary: If you like YAPP, just get it!
Review: if you're into the whole wait event thang, get this book. This is a great resource. Very interesting reading! Chapter 4 presents an event data collector (page 86: Sampling for performance data using pl/sql procedure), a very nice idea. The logoff trigger discussed in the same chapter is nice too. Chapter 5 gives a good overview of some of the most important I/O related wait events. Chapter 6, Locks and latches. Chapter 7, latency related wait events. And then there's tons more, look inside the book and see what I mean...
All in all, this is one of the best Oracle books of the past six months. My other favorite would be 'Oracle Insights' from Oaktable press.
I've implemented the data collector mentioned inchapter 4 to diagnose some performance problems. If you're interested, you can download the code for free from my website, www rhdba dot com. Look under Oracle SQL Scripts -> Event data collector.
Other must have books:
- Tom Kyte's 'Expert one-on-one' and 'Effective Oracle by Design'
- Cary Millsap and Jeff Holt 'Optimizing Oracle Performance'
- Oaktable press 'Oracle Insights'
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Summary: Performance Tuning Fundamentals with New Insights
Review: Invaluable Oracle 10G performance tuning and diagnostics guide providing a contemporary, methodical approach to quickly identifying and eliminating critical Oracle bottlenecks in an effective and efficient manner i.e. unlike many technical books this one is extremely useful yet doesn't weigh more than your laptop. In particular, I found chapter 4 outstanding: provides a specific, concrete methodology for monitoring and collecting key wait event statistics using a combination of a logoff trigger and real time sampling with consideration to minimizing any additional overhead while simultaneously capturing all relevant wait statistics necessary for an accurate diagnosis. This is the first time I have come across this methodology and in testing I found it to be almost ingenious...and had I thought of it first I am sure it would fully qualify.
In short, this is the single most concise Oracle 10G tuning book on my shelf or the bookstores (actually, I own more Oracle books) providing a contemporary approach to efficient Oracle performance tuning, a brand-new performance statistics collection methodology [to me], and a great reference regarding the interpretation of standard Oracle wait events as well as traditional methods of Oracle tracing.
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Summary: Authoratative landmark work on Oracle internals
Review: The book is simply spectacular, both for the quality of its writing as well as the depth of the material. Practical? Indeed, indispensible!
The three authors, Richmond Shee, Kirti Deshpande, and K Gopalakrishnan, have done a wonderful job in organizing a enormous subject area into manageable chunks. They have also managed to render potentially bone-dry source material into very readable text, interspersed heavily with code examples and output, sidebars, and analogies. This is a good read as well as an authoritative reference. I'm still unable to read it steadily for long periods of time, as the analogy of trying to drink from a fire-hose is relevant here. But picking it up and reading different sections, treating it like a reference, has proved rewarding. Richmond, Kirti, and K had an absolute "dream team" of reviewers on this book in Kyle Hailey, John Kanagaraj, Craig Shallahamer, and Graham Wood. The combined efforts of the three authors and the four technical editors blows my mind.
All I can say is - get it! You may (like me) not read it immediately. But, keep it handy. Along with the Google, Ixora, Asktom, JLComp, MetaLink websites, this book is the place to find explanation for the unexplainable in Oracle. Start skimming through it and recognize situations that had previously baffled now being explained (and proved) in full. It is like a light coming on.
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Summary: "OWI: Practical Guide..." is a must-have tuning companion
Review: This book is very well organized, as it progresses from what wait events are and where they can be found, to interpretation of important events and common causes, and finally how to collect data and monitor events for problem resolution.
In the past, understanding wait events has been a random walk, where I have attempted to decipher specific wait events that were troublesome in my environment. This has often been a tedious and frustrating exercise. This book puts it all together in a concise, meaningful way that results in a strategy to pro-actively monitor and diagnose wait-related problems. No more digging around looking for bits and pieces of information related to wait events, this book has everything you need to manage, monitor, and tune your database environments.
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