Oracle Performance Tuning Class - update

2002-10-05 Thread DENNIS WILLIAMS

List
   I spent last week at an official Oracle Education Oracle9i Performance
Tuning Class, and here is some of the non-technical stuff I learned.
   - Oracle is teaching the wait interface more and more. In fact, they are
updating the curriculum next month to emphasize the wait interface even more
(lucky me).
   - Just how the wait interface is emphasized may depend quite a bit on the
instructor, despite what the materials say. My observation is that our
opinions are based on what we have experienced and our interpretations of
those experiences. So we will probably still have some instructors that will
still feel that the wait interface is a passing fad and if you really want
to straighten out a database, you need to get in there and improve the BHR
(Buffer Hit Ratio).
   - My instructor was John Hibbard. He is excellent, and I would highly
recommend him. He went well beyond the class materials to providing papers
he has researched and presented himself, as well as other sources, including
papers from Cary Milsap and Jonathan Gennick who participate on this list.
When you get through his class, you really feel you have been taken to a
whole new level of Oracle knowledge. He is also heavily involved in
selecting and preparing the official Oracle training materials for the
courses he teaches. Besides Performance Tuning, he teaches several other
Oracle classes. Most of the people in my class happened to be more
experienced with Oracle, and John did a good job of answering advanced
questions with some depth, but not leaving the newbies in the dust.
   - A funny observation on buffer hit ratio vs. wait interface. The last
day of class is an opportunity to take a really screwed-up database and
apply a little of what you have learned. The first scenario is titled
"Buffer Cache". So you run the workload assignment and STATSPACK and look at
the BHR and say "wow, that is bad", increase the buffer pool, and rerun the
workload and STATSPACK. The BHR hasn't changed much, so the tendency is to
dumbly bump the buffer pool even more and go again. Then you look down at
the top 5 waits section just below on the first page of the STATSPACK report
and see that the big wait item is "Scattered Read". Then you go "dope slap"
and realize this schema is missing some critical indexes and table scanning
it's little heart out. I just found it ironic that some people have reported
that some of the Oracle instructors emphasize the BHR too much when the
first Workshop Scenario has a great example of why focusing on BHR can't
solve many problems. But again, we have experience vs. interpretation of
experience. A real died-in-the wool BHR fanatic would probably claim that
BHR had solved the problem because the first indication that something was
wrong was spotting the bad BHR, which led to other investigations.


Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 

-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS
  INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services
-
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may
also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).



RE: Oracle Performance Tuning Class - update

2002-10-07 Thread John Kanagaraj

I concur with Dennis. I too came off a Oracle Ed Tuning class last week and
had a good instructor (who btw used John Hibbard's excellent presentation on
Redo/RBS _as_well_as Cary's 'Why a 99.9% BHR is not Ok'). Maybe, just maybe,
we will get there (i.e. a Non-BHR world!)

John Kanagaraj
Oracle Applications DBA
DBSoft Inc
(W): 408-970-7002

Disappointments are inevitable in Life, but discouragement is optional. You
decide!

** The opinions and statements above are entirely my own and not those of my
employer or clients **


> -Original Message-
> From: DENNIS WILLIAMS [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 3:13 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: Oracle Performance Tuning Class - update
> 
> 
> List
>I spent last week at an official Oracle Education Oracle9i 
> Performance
> Tuning Class, and here is some of the non-technical stuff I learned.
>- Oracle is teaching the wait interface more and more. In 
> fact, they are
> updating the curriculum next month to emphasize the wait 
> interface even more
> (lucky me).
>- Just how the wait interface is emphasized may depend 
> quite a bit on the
> instructor, despite what the materials say. My observation is that our
> opinions are based on what we have experienced and our 
> interpretations of
> those experiences. So we will probably still have some 
> instructors that will
> still feel that the wait interface is a passing fad and if 
> you really want
> to straighten out a database, you need to get in there and 
> improve the BHR
> (Buffer Hit Ratio).
>- My instructor was John Hibbard. He is excellent, and I 
> would highly
> recommend him. He went well beyond the class materials to 
> providing papers
> he has researched and presented himself, as well as other 
> sources, including
> papers from Cary Milsap and Jonathan Gennick who participate 
> on this list.
> When you get through his class, you really feel you have been 
> taken to a
> whole new level of Oracle knowledge. He is also heavily involved in
> selecting and preparing the official Oracle training materials for the
> courses he teaches. Besides Performance Tuning, he teaches 
> several other
> Oracle classes. Most of the people in my class happened to be more
> experienced with Oracle, and John did a good job of answering advanced
> questions with some depth, but not leaving the newbies in the dust.
>- A funny observation on buffer hit ratio vs. wait 
> interface. The last
> day of class is an opportunity to take a really screwed-up 
> database and
> apply a little of what you have learned. The first scenario is titled
> "Buffer Cache". So you run the workload assignment and 
> STATSPACK and look at
> the BHR and say "wow, that is bad", increase the buffer pool, 
> and rerun the
> workload and STATSPACK. The BHR hasn't changed much, so the 
> tendency is to
> dumbly bump the buffer pool even more and go again. Then you 
> look down at
> the top 5 waits section just below on the first page of the 
> STATSPACK report
> and see that the big wait item is "Scattered Read". Then you 
> go "dope slap"
> and realize this schema is missing some critical indexes and 
> table scanning
> it's little heart out. I just found it ironic that some 
> people have reported
> that some of the Oracle instructors emphasize the BHR too 
> much when the
> first Workshop Scenario has a great example of why focusing 
> on BHR can't
> solve many problems. But again, we have experience vs. 
> interpretation of
> experience. A real died-in-the wool BHR fanatic would 
> probably claim that
> BHR had solved the problem because the first indication that 
> something was
> wrong was spotting the bad BHR, which led to other investigations.
> 
> 
> Dennis Williams
> DBA
> Lifetouch, Inc.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> 
> -- 
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> -- 
> Author: DENNIS WILLIAMS
>   INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
> San Diego, California-- Mailing list and web hosting services
> -
> To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
> to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
> the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
> (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may
> also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
> 
-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: John Kanagaraj
  INET: [EM