Rating: 
Summary: Revolutionary
Review: If you want a quick checklist of whats wrong with your Oracle systems - do not buy this book. If you want validation of your existing tuning techniques - so not buy this book. If you want to be told what to do without thinking - do not buy this book. If on the other hand you are fed up with received wisdom that does not work, you recognize that performance tuning is a valuable skill for your business and you wish to learn an effective scientific and repeatable approach to improving the performance of your business systems, don't just buy this book but live it. Cary and Jeff take a rigorous, scientific approach to performance tuning that is especially suited to Oracle systems and by both formal proof and real world example show that the mystery of Oracle performance is controllable by you. The only downside comes from explaining to your boss that the thousands you spent on automated performance tools were wasted. A word about the Math. 2/3 of the book has no math at all in it. The remainder of the book was perfectly understandable to this reader, whose academic background is Economics and Philosophy not maths or computer science. Don't be put off by the idea that the book has equations, a competent High School student can follow the relevant mathematical arguments.
Rating:
Summary: This is an Oracle classic....
Review: In a style that will be appreciated by the beginner, intermediate and advanced DBA/Developer, Cary and Jeff introduce the reader to the world of the Oracle wait interface. This book has depth, the contents are full of meat, and it's not a rehash of every other Oracle book published in the last 10 years. In these pages is something for everyone. Cary introduces the wait interface, and how it can be used for tuning. The book presents the topic in a clear and concise fashion. The book is full of detail such as concise information on the internal workings of Oracle trace files and how to use them to your advantage when tuning your Oracle database. They demonstrate the power of the 10046 event and it's potential. Putting all of this together into a performance tuning method he calls Method-R, they lead us from tuning by guess work into a world of facts and using accurate measures to generate appropriate tuning responses. This book IS required reading for any DBA who wants to be elevated to the level of a tuning deity. I've already dog eared a goodly number of pages!
Rating:
Summary: Leading edge
Review: It's surprising how often people say things without knowing what they're talking about. That's a good, short description of almost everything that's been said about Oracle tuning over the last 15 years. Surprisingly, the facts about tuning Oracle are pretty simple. Most of the results you will achieve come from doing one thing -- tuning individual SQL statements. The author of this book is one of the few Oracle experts around, and he has created a product called HOTSOS, which is essentially an enhanced version of TKPROF. At times this book reads like the world's best infomercial, designed to promote the author's product. Still, 99% of Oracle professionals will benefit from this book, even if you don't buy the author's product. It explains very clearly how to DIAGNOSE Oracle performance problems, and it shows an entire approach to tuning that's invaluable. By the way, there's absolutely no need to know calculus or any other advanced math to understand this book. This rumor apparently got started by some blowhard, pretending to be an expert, but mainly interested in self promotion and telling the world, "I know calculus!" In fact, anyone with basic knowledge of SQL could understand this book and benefit from it.
Rating:
Summary: Scientific approach to performance tuning
Review: The book is beyond comparision. Cary has taken performance tuning to a much spoken about scientific level. While I had the initial fear that its going to be formulas and ratios again. I was happy to find that it was not ratios, rather its based on scientific approach to performance tuning.
Rating:
Summary: Scientific approach to performance tuning
Review: The book is beyond comparision. Cary has taken performance tuning to a much spoken about scientific level. While I had the initial fear that its going to be formulas and ratios again. I was happy to find that it was not ratios, rather its based on scientific approach to performance tuning.
Rating: 
Summary: Not really the best approach anymore
Review: This book does not consider the issues relating to the Oracle wait interface is is too dated.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book is a great starting point for beginners (like myself) or a good reference for even experienced Oracle DBAs. It is just what you would expect from an O'Reilly book, it is very readable and presents information in a logical manner. It is refreshing to finally find a book about Oracle performance that does more than provide a collection of "tips" that you can try and then cross your fingers hoping it will improve things. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and it will definitely stay in my library. I give it only 4 stars instead of 5 because of a couple reasons.
1. The author really pushes his hotsos profiler, which I don't mind too much. What did bother me a little bit is that in his case studies and any time showed "Method R" in action, he used the output of the profiler as a starting point. It would have been nice to assume the reader is not going to purchase the profiler and proceed from that point instead of always starting at the resource profile which the profiler outputs. This is a little nitpicky I admit. 2. I would have liked to see an expanded section on seeing Method R in action, or even downloadable sql scripts that you could run on a database and then find the bottleneck in its execution. Overall, I definitely would recommend this book. It is well worth the money and time.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book beyond compare
Review: This is a remarkable book. Excellent discussions on a scientific approach to performance tuning the Oracle database. I love this book, actually we have decided to purchase one for each of our team members.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book beyond compare
Review: This is a remarkable book. Excellent discussions on a scientific approach to performance tuning the Oracle database. I love this book, actually we have decided to purchase one for each of our team members.
Rating:
Summary: Must have book for every DBA
Review: This is a very unusual book. It doesn't contain the usual description of V$ tables or pictures of disk distribution.
It does contain, however, extremely useful reference of the trace file format, which was not available except in the form of Metalink notes. It also gives a solid mathematical foundation to performance engineering as well as numerous useful examples. Combined with Cary's clear and easy to follow writing style, this book certainly is a must have for any oracle DBA.
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