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Oracle Performance Tuning and Optimization
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Edward Whalen
ISBN: 067230886x
Publication Date: 04/01/96

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Oracle Tools

Oracle offers several tools for the development of applications. Among them are the Developer/2000 tools, the Designer/2000 tools, and of course, Oracle Power Objects. These tools, like the third-party tools discussed later in this chapter, are all excellent products and should work very well for you.

Oracle has designed Developer/2000 and Oracle Power Objects to compete in different market segments. Although both products develop applications that run in the Microsoft Windows environment, Developer/2000 is more flexible and can create the same application in Windows, Macintosh, Motif, or character mode. Developer/2000 is also a much more complex and sophisticated tool; as such, it is more expensive and a little harder to operate.

Which tool is right for you really depends on the application you are writing and the environment you are writing it for. If your application must be deployed in several different environments, and more than one person is developing the application, you probably should think about Developer/2000. If you are developing a small departmental application for the Windows or Macintosh environment, you may do very well with Power Objects.

The following few sections describe each of the Oracle tools. The focus is on how to tune the applications these tools create. The sections contain hints on how to add performance optimizations to these application developer tools. I do not provide in-depth explanations about how to develop applications with these tools (that is beyond the scope of this book). I will, however, show pieces of a simple application developed to access the sample DOGS table as an example.

Developer/2000

Oracle Developer/2000 is a suite of tools designed to rapidly develop full-featured applications. The Developer/2000 tools consists of the following components:

  Forms Designer. Developer/2000 uses a drag-and-drop approach to designing forms applications. This approach simplifies the task of developing forms.
  Reports Designer. Developing reports is simplified through the use of graphical development tools that allow you to easily develop graphical reports.
  Graphics Designer. The graphics features allow you to easily add various chart types to your application.
  Procedure Builder. The Oracle Procedure Builder is an integrated environment for editing, developing, and debugging PL/SQL programs, stored procedures, and database triggers.

A very important feature of Developer/2000 is its ability to add online documentation to your application. I feel that documentation is a crucial part of any application.

Another major feature of Developer/2000 is its ability to develop a graphical application and then deploy that application in the Windows, Macintosh, and Motif environments without having to redevelop the application.

Oracle Developer/2000 is designed to work in a team environment; this means that many users can share logic and user-interface objects. The team approach to application development is one of the things that makes Developer/2000 suited for large applications.

The following sections look at Oracle Developer/2000 from a performance perspective to see how you can optimize applications developed with this tool.

Forms Designer

Forms Designer is the Developer/2000 tool for creating and deploying applications for the Windows, Macintosh, and Motif environments. The Forms Designer is key in quickly deploying applications in the Developer/2000 environment.

Applications developed with the Forms Designer are typically fairly optimized. To look at the SQL statements generated for a particular statement block, use the following steps:

1.  Choose the block in which you are interested from the Object Navigator (see Figure 35.1).


Figure 35.1  Selecting the PS/SQL Editor.

2.  Pull down and select the PL/SQL Editor from the Tools menu.
A PL/SQL window opens, which you can use to view or modify the SQL statements used in the Forms Designer (see Figure 35.2).


Figure 35.2  The PL/SQL Editor window.

Once you select the PL/SQL Editor, you can view both triggers and program units on several levels. The Forms Designer takes advantage of triggers for doing much of its programming.

By using the Object Navigator and the PL/SQL Editor, you can modify all the SQL statements used in the application. In this way, any inefficiencies you may find—or optimizations you may want to add—can be inserted into the code.


TIP:  The PL/SQL Editor is a great way to add hints to your SQL statements. The hints you add can inform the optimizer of such things as any additional parallelism you want to include.

It is entirely possible that there is no need to add additional optimization. However, by having the option to perform additional tuning and optimization on the SQL statements, you may be able to improve performance.


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