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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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Chapter 23
Miscellaneous Configurations

This chapter looks at several miscellaneous configurations and describes how you can optimize these configurations. By looking at how the application accesses the data in the system and takes advantage of Oracle features, you can determine the best way to optimize that configuration. The following chart lists the configurations described in this chapter and the applications associated with each.


System Type Description

Financial systems Financial applications. These systems are used to run the financial operations of your business. These systems use financial applications such as Oracle Financials or SAP.
Replicated systems The replicated system is designed to duplicate copies of tables or subsets of tables to permit local access to this data. This chapter describes systems using Oracle’s Symmetric Replication package.
Distributed systems The distributed system allows for a set of servers to create a single view of a database, even though parts exist on different machines. This chapter describes systems using Oracle’s Distributed option.
Oracle TextServer 3.0 TextServer 3.0 with ConText is designed to allow for storage and processing of text documents. This system is a server for the Oracle TextServer product.
Oracle Office Server The Oracle Office system is designed to provide office services such as messaging, scheduling, and so on.
Oracle WebServer This system has new Oracle features to provide World Wide Web services from an Oracle database.

This chapter provides a brief overview of each type of system, lists the characteristics of that system, and provides a brief discussion on optimal configuration.

Financial Systems

Financial systems provide a rich set of applications used extensively in businesses around the world. These applications are sometimes known collectively as Oracle Financials. The Oracle Financials application set is built around the Oracle RDBMS and includes applications such as Oracle Human Resources, Oracle Payroll, Oracle Payables, Oracle Receivables, Oracle General Ledger, Oracle Assets, Oracle Inventory, Oracle Order Entry, Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Bills of Material, Oracle Engineering, Oracle Master Scheduling, Oracle Work in Progress, Oracle MRP, Oracle Capacity, Oracle Project Costing, and Oracle Project Billing.

These applications run many of the world’s mission-critical businesses. The applications are available for most platforms; both character-based and GUI-based versions of these applications are available.

Other financial systems that use the Oracle RDBMS include the SAP system. Although the applications themselves function quite differently from the Oracle applications (from the point of view of the RDBMS), they tend to operate in a similar fashion.

System Characteristics

In general, financial systems have some characteristics of OLTP and decision support systems and some characteristics that are unique to financials:

  Concurrent access. In these systems, online users perform different activities against the same database.
  Batch jobs. These batch jobs may involve inventory reports, payroll, manpower studies, and so on.
  Large amounts of data. These systems tend to be fairly large and heavily used.
  Random data access. The OLTP-type transactions cause large amounts of random I/O on the system.
  Sequential data access. The DSS-type queries cause large amounts of sequential I/O on the system.

During the day, the system may have many users simultaneously inputting data concerning accounts receivable, accounts payable, and human resources; at other times, the system is accessed more like a DSS system for reporting or payroll.

You experience both of these characteristics in this type of system. If possible, you should perform the reporting and payroll activities at off-peak times when the system is not as heavily loaded.

Design and Tuning Hints

Because the financial system tends to have characteristics of both the OLTP and DSS systems, the design of the system should take into account both characteristics. In designing this system, use the following goals to achieve optimal performance:

  Isolate sequential I/Os. Most of the time spent reading from or writing to the disk is spent seeking to where the data is located. If you can reduce seeks, you can achieve more I/Os per second.
  Spread out random I/Os. Random I/Os have a maximum rate per drive. By spreading the I/Os out across many drives, you can increase the overall rate.
  Avoid paging and swapping. Any time the system pages or swaps, performance is severely degraded. Avoid this at all costs.

All these factors contribute to the optimal data layout of the system. To achieve these goals, first look at the ways you can optimally organize the system.


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