Cary Millsap

Slow systems are frustrating. They waste time and money. But making consistently great decisions about performance can be easy, if you understand what's going on. This book explains in a clear and thoughtful voice why systems perform the way they do. It's for anybody who's curious about how computer programs and other processes use their time and about what you can do to improve them. Through a mix of personal vignettes and technical use cases, Cary Millsap reviews the process of improving performance and provides best practices for optimizing systems efficiently. You'll learn how to identify the information needed to improve a system, how to find the root causes of performance issues, and how to fix them. You'll also learn how performance optimization is both a skill set and a mindset, and how to develop both over time. If you're a computer professional whose success relies on software that goes fast, by the end of this book you'll be able to identify, view, scope, analyze, and remedy performance issues with consistency and confidence.

Oracle is the enterprise database of choice for the majority of businesses (holding 42% of the Unix/Linux and Windows market in 2002). The intent of this book is to present a 'big picture' of Oracle and Oracle development, covering: • How Oracle (and Oracle development), has evolved over the years (from being used to achieve local tactical objectives to a corporate resource used for mission-critical strategic applications) • Landmark projects with which the authors have been involved and lessons learned • Key techniques and processes that emerged along the way, in response to the challenges thrown up by various projects, and their relevance today. Ur innehållet: Section I: Introduction: A Brief History of Oracle - Dave Ensor; Oracle and the OakTable - Mogens Nørgaard.- Section II: Performance and Testing: You Probably Don't Tune Right - Mogens Nørgaard and Anjo Kolk; Waste Not, Want Not - Connor McDonald; Why I Invented YAPP - Anjo Kolk; Extended Trace Data - Cary Millsap; Direct Memory Access - Kyle Hailey; Compulsive Tuning Disorder - Gaja Vaidyanatha; Testing and Risk Management - David Ruthven.- Section III: Architecture and Scalability: Hardcore Parallel Server - James Morle; The RAC Revolution - James Morle; Join The BAARF Party (or Not) - Mogens Nørgaard and James Morle.- Section IV: Dont´t Try this at Home...: Dreadful Design - Jonathon Lewis; Bad CaRMa - Tim Gorman; Blackbox Mayhem - Tom Kyte.

Two Oracle scientists focus on optimizing Oracle performance rather than ineffectually "tuning" it, elaborating on methods that work to identify performance bottlenecks and predict and quantify the performance improvements expected from upgrades.