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

Foreword

With the explosion of the Internet phenomena, tens of millions of individuals today get access to and retrieve multimedia data through the World Wide Web. The ease of locating information is provided by sophisticated search mechanisms; the appliance-style interfaces on Web pages is fueling the desire for more data at one’s fingertips. And although the personal computer users of today have caught onto online services, the billions of users who can’t afford PCs or find them too hard to use will be able to afford and use the next generation of Web appliances. These appliances will offer an even richer multimedia environment than today’s PCs for a fraction of the price.

As the Web becomes the next generation “killer app” for the desktop, billions of people who want and need access to data will both increase the amount of data in databases and the number of users on the supporting systems. The result of this increased demand for information is that database server system tuning is increasingly important.

Because relational databases have become the mainstream data storage “vehicle” for modern applications, the flexibility in design and implementation of the underlying database structure, physical file layouts, and tuning parameters can generate wide variations in performance. Although throwing hardware at the problem is often the easy solution, tuning the database application first is usually much more cost effective. Although many books have been written on this subject, you’ll find this one to be complete and thorough in its methodologies and execution steps for tuning your Oracle database.

In the time I’ve known Ed Whalen, he’s been extremely thorough and professional with regard to system performance and tuning—and the following pages are pure Ed. I congratulate him on this accomplishment—particularly because he was somehow able to create this volume and work 110 percent on his day job.

Bonnie Crater

Vice President

Oracle Corporation