A concise treatment of several important aspects of Oracle internals. Although it is not a tuning guide, the information presented in this book is foundational for advanced performance tuning, particularly on systems with large numbers of active users. Senior DBAs in many companies have appreciated the depth of insight that this book offers on otherwise undocumented and mysterious aspects of Oracle internals and performance. The book is also popular within Oracle Corporation as a clear and concise reference.
This is a very important book for Oracle developers. It develops the thesis that database applications should seek to exploit the chosen database's strengths rather than attempting to be database independent. Tom has a very clear understanding of Oracle's strengths and he explains them in a way that will inspire and motivate you to make the most of them. You'll never want to touch a different database again!
Tom also tells many cautionary tales about the perils of ignorance. There are many things about the Oracle database that you do not need to know, but there are some that are vital to your success as an Oracle developer. This book tells you what is important, and seldom bores you with what is not. If you read this book and take it to heart, you will avoid many pitfalls that could otherwise make your project fail.
Whatever the job, Oracle offers many different ways to do it, and they are not all equal. This book is an invaluable aid in deciding which features to choose and how to use them. Each feature is clearly explained with some real-world illustrations of how it might be used. The author then examines the potential functionality, performance, security, and maintenance traps associated with the feature and concludes with some helpful guidelines on when and how to use it (or not).
The style is relaxed and personal, but there is no lack of technical accuracy, and although the main arguments and recommendations are accessible to relative newcomers to Oracle, many of the detailed explanations assume considerable familiarity with Oracle system architecture and performance issues. In summary, this book is particularly valuable for people who are designing new Oracle-based systems, but has plenty of practical advice for all Oracle developers and DBAs.
This book is packed with useful information that is otherwise hard to find. It covers Oracle, Unix and hardware issues in approximately equal depth. The focus is on issues that can affect the scalability of large OLTP Oracle systems. Because of the expansive scope, some issues are only lightly treated. Nevertheless, there are many nuggets of highly detailed and invaluable technical information.
This is the second edition of Guy Harrison's classic SQL statement tuning book. This edition includes new material for Oracle8i.
