Oracle Performance Tuning Tips and Techniques

Rating:
Summary: Outdated and disappointing...
Review: I am not questioning the amount of effort that has gone into the book, but some foundations upon which the book makes many of its claims are fundamentally flawed. For example, it is widely accepted (and has been conclusively proven) within the Oracle community that worrying about cache hit ratios, multiple extents, etc is a flawed methodology for tuning an Oracle database which will serves simply to misguide the novice.

Leave this book on the shelf...

Rating:
Summary: Most excellent helper
Review: I was happy with this book and it can help u find orcale tuning problems and find results fast.

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Summary: Sure, the best book about oracle Tuning
Review: I've bought a lot of books about Oracle tuning. And after having read all of them , it's obvious that ORACLE PERFORMANCE TUNING TIPS & TECHNIQUES is the best available. As a very good addition, get ORACLE8i INTERNAL SERVICES, ORACLE8i & UNIX PERFORMANCE TUNING, and ORACLE8i SQL HIGH PERFORMANCE TUNING. This is the perfect bookshelf for becoming a GURU ;-)

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Summary: Expert¿s tips and useful examples for immediate tuning
Review: In his book, Rich has merged his many years of Oracle performance tuning expertise with advanced insider techniques in an easy-to-understand way. Hundreds practical topics, undocumented references, experts tips and real life examples have made this book a must have for DBA's and any Oracle performance tuning personnel.

This book covers the tuning tips and techniques in using newest features in Oracle 8i as well as the original features in Oracle 7 or 8. As Rich's first sentence indicates, "Oracle is a symphony and you are the conductor, with an opportunity to create a world class performance", his book will help you to achieve this opportunity and to become a great tuning conductor of Oracle performance.

The first chapter of the book serves as highlight notes, which sets up five quick goals to instantly improve performance. Through the rest chapters of his entire book, readers will gain detail tuning knowledge about disk I/O, init.ora parameters, OEM, Explain Plan, table joins, hints, PL/SQL, parallel query, using V$ views, accessing x$ tables, new features and many more tips and techniques for reaching the best performance. After reading this book, be sure to share your thoughts with others in your review.

Rating:
Summary: A must have for DBA's and alike
Review: My review is focused on this book as it relates to a developer, rather than a DBA. A great deal of this book deals specifically with DBA-related activities which I will pass on reviewing for now.

It is a bit scary to think that I actually wrote queries before reading this book. The tips and techniques in this book provide a great deal of insight into how to tune the database and are truly invaluable.

"Tuning a database" is a rather silly way of describing the content of this book, because there are many aspects of that. You can tune the Oracle software itself (DBA), the structure of the data (Architect/Developer), or the SQL queries (Developer).

The coverage of SQL hints was absolutely invaluable for me -- and the author gives a great deal of information on why they need to be used. I come out of reading this book far more skilled on how the Oracle software actually parses and executes a query. The author gives in-depth coverage of the EXPLAIN PLAN and TRACE utilities, and more importantly he explains how to interpret the results.

One of the areas that the author explained very well was the use of indexes -- not just the basic rules (95/5), but how they should be used when the distribution of data is not linear in the column and how the parser decides to use the index in the rule-based vs. cost-based optimizing engine. Of course, the coverage on hints provides a way to override either engine, which is sometimes critical!

Another portion of the book I found of high value was the very large chapter on driving tables (for table joins). This is a complicated but very important issue (and a common cause of huge performance hangups). The author does a nice job of explaining this concept through a series of examples. Any developer who has never heard the term "driving table" needs to add this book to their shopping cart.

I would very much like to give this book a 5 star rating but I just have to take off a star for the poor writing style of the author. The author is an Oracle professional with real-world experience -- which probably helps the book in terms of topics covered, but does not help someone trying to read it. There are some instances where entire paragraphs are literally copied and pasted in different chapters.

Another problem is that he assumes a lot of knowledge in some chapters and almost none in others. Each chapter seems to be written for a different audience level. For example, he discusses in-memory hash tables in the chapter on join types -- which us C++ programmers know very well. However, a typical SQL developer probably does not know how a hash-table works or why it is better than using basic nested loops.

However, this book really does belong on the shelf of every developer who wants to really know Oracle.

Rating:
Summary: This is one of my favorites
Review: Richard Nieniec has not only proven himself as a dynamic speaker, but as a writer as well. This book if full of needed information for any DBA, and is presented extremely well. This is not one to be read to as a sleep aid!! I highly recommend this book for Jr. to intermediate DBA's who understand how crucial performance really is. Explanations are clear and logical. Most readers who have worked in the Database field for any length of time will enjoy the wit and charisma of the writers.

Rating:
Summary: Good 8i tuning book
Review: The guys who wrote this book know their stuff. The first chapter of the book will proabably address the majority of the problems that you will face with oracle performance tuning. The remaining chapters go in to detail on things to watch out for and various diagnostic tools and techniques.

It is a hefty tome that is not meant to be read cover to cover, so I would have thought the index would have been a little better.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book - Covers More Than Just Tuning
Review: This book covers tuning AND ongoing administration. VERY well written - presents information in a clear and concise format. There is alot of material and to get your money's worth you should read it several times to learn what it has to offer. I have already tuned two databases with cache hit ratios lagging around 30%. One now runs with all hit ratios ABOVE 99.5% and the other has hit ratios above 92%. Users users have noticed the increase in speed. Two more databases to go and this book will be close by my side.

Rating:
Summary: Outdated and disappointing...
Review: This book is well structured and offers lots of good tips to improve server side performances as well as application side improvements.

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Summary: Great book for DBA
Review: Very helpful. Thanks the author for his great work!