Re: Your new book
I think Cary has put performance tuning on a solid math foundation, not just the Oracle one. I'm writing a little paper (not much yet) on why you can not optimise any other system right than the MVS environment and the Oracle database. The MySQL people are currently reading Cary's book and learning that they should not put in all those things we got in Oracle6 for ratios and stuff, but instead instrument the code right and allow the optimisers, the tools and the users to view session-based measurements of what went on. Windows, Linux, Unix, and all the other databases can't do that. That's my happy claim :). Mogens DENNIS WILLIAMS wrote: I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical foundation. My first education was engineering and I learned was that a practice that rests on a solid mathematical foundation is not easily overturned. A great example for we DBAs is relational database theory, which rests on relational algebra. Fads come and go that threaten to obsolete the relational database, but since none of them has a solid mathematical foundation, they soon fade. If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I also am not Cary . I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046 trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions. Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is *some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user actions the Oracle performance analyst can quickly and efficiently resolve Oracle performance problems that debilitate the business performance of Oracle based systems. This approach - to target problem business processes, find out why they run slowly and optimize them, is exactly what the RDBMS world needs (IMO). In addition the method Cary and Jeff describe predicts when it will (and more importantly) won't be of use. Is it more readable than others? Here I do have some reservations. The first and last third of the book are extremely readable, and the character and humour of the authors shines through. The formal central section will put off some (maybe a significant number) of readers though. Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' writes Someone told me that each equation I put in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation E=mc². Cary and Jeff have either not been given this advice, or ignored it in the interests of accuracy. The advantage that this gives is that the book has a formal methodology that puts others to shame - the disadvantage is that folk look at pages filled with equations full of queueing theory and Greek symbols and react badly. I hope that the advice is wrong, but fear that it may not be. Niall -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ] On Behalf Of Michael Milligan Sent: 21 October 2003 17:49 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Your new book Cary, I don't mean to ask you to brag, but can you please tell me if your new book, of which I've heard good things, is different in any way than other Oracle Performance Tuning books out. Does it take a different approach? Does it teach different methodologies? Is it more readable? I'd be very interested in your own assessment. What did you try to accomplish with this book? TIA, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this
Re: Your new book
What's wrong with having a Scandinavian accent?!? :-). I remember taking a class by Andre Bakker, a Dutch genius, who at one point was VP of Support in Oracle, when I joined Oracle. I couldn't figure out why on Earth you would want Oracle version 6 to run on a fax... until I realised a few hours into the presentation that he meant VAX. I felt sort of silly. April Wells wrote: I took a discrete structures for computer science math class as an undergrad. It was great, once I got past the Swedish accent of the instructor and figured out that contraposite was the contra opposite. Yes, a highly recommended class, even if you don't do well in it. It changes how you approach things. April Wells Oracle DBA/Oracle Apps DBA Corporate Systems Amarillo Texas /\ / \ / \ \ / \/ \ \ \ \ Few people really enjoy the simple pleasure of flying a kite Adam Wells age 11 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 9:14 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Re: RE: Your new book i took a discrete math class last summer at a state university. Id recommend for all technical people. I hadnt had math in 10 years and found it extremely difficult(half the class failed). the problem solving skills you get out of doing are incredible. No you dont learn new oracle commands but your able to solve problems easier. I found that understanding data modelling and general algorithm writing is easier now as well. It also blends well with undergraduate computer science classes(which I found to be more difficult than actually doing my job, btw). Im planning on taking more math over the next few years. Just not sure what to take. I dont really like it. Its one of those things that sucks to do while you learn it,but when your done your glad you did it. thanks for the in depth posts Carrie. From: Thater, William [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/10/23 Thu AM 09:39:24 EDT To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Your new book -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 7:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Niall, This is a very kind, and I believe (maybe it's only hopeful belief) a very accurate depiction of what the book is. I have read Hawking's note to which you refer. Honestly, I included the formulas for two reasons: 1) To communicate the relationships of trace lines to each other would have been virtually impossible to do economically with words. I really don't know how I would have done it, since there are so many necessary references to the central e ~ c + sum(ela) equation. 2) In the queueing chapter, I believe I needed to show people my work. Otherwise, I don't know how they could have confirmed or refuted my statements... [Shrek] oh how the last one brings back memories of teachers yelling at me yes that's the right answer, but you have to show your work! and me saying but that's the only answer that fits!... i lost every time.;-) and i got bad math grades too.;-) not having read the book yet, i for one, am glad you did show the work even if it is hard to follow. i like authors who don't think the reader has the lights on but no one's home.;-) -- Bill Shrek Thater ORACLE DBA I'm going to work my ticket if I can... -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist. The information contained in this communication, including attachments, is strictly confidential and for the intended use of the addressee only; it may also contain proprietary, price sensitive, or legally privileged information. Notice is hereby given that any disclosure, distribution, dissemination, use, or copying of the information by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited and may be illegal. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail, delete this communication, and destroy all copies. Corporate Systems, Inc. has taken reasonable precautions to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been swept for viruses. We specifically disclaim all liability and will accept no responsibility for any damage sustained as a result of software viruses and advise you to carry out your own virus checks before opening any attachment. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Mogens_N=F8rgaard?= 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
RE: Your new book
Ryan Actually the math that queueing theory is based on is not calculus. It may also help if you understand that a queue is a fancy French word for waiting line. See, doesn't it sound much more important academically if you say you study queueing theory than if you say you study waiting lines? Here is a link that may help get you started: http://www.new-destiny.co.uk/andrew/past_work/queueing_theory/Andy/statistic s.html Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 11:00 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book in more depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have to go beyond college level calculus ? - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- DENNIS WILLIAMS Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 6:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical foundation. My first education was engineering and I learned was that a practice that rests on a solid mathematical foundation is not easily overturned. A great example for we DBAs is relational database theory, which rests on relational algebra. Fads come and go that threaten to obsolete the relational database, but since none of them has a solid mathematical foundation, they soon fade. If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I also am not Cary . I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046 trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions. Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is *some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user
Re: Re: Your new book
if i want to improve my math skills how much undergraduate math would you recommend? From: Paul Drake [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/10/23 Thu AM 02:29:24 EDT To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Your new book Ryan, I do not recall seeing a single dy/dx or integrand in the text. The type of math that he used, I saw in high school, and that was in the US, at a public school. Cary easily could have used real math to prove his points. He didn't. He used graphical methods, visual basic and intuition. But mostly algebra. Back in the schools that I attended, pre-algebra was in 8th grade, geometry in ninth, Algebra II in 10th, Trig in 11th and Calculus senior year. Granted, I could have placed out of 3 courses freshman year of college, as my high school kicked arse. If it were more the norm, the US would still be riding a rising productivity curve. Too bad all that what is promoted most here is entertainment. If anything, it underscored the overall problem in the US, that we don't grow grad students natively, we import them. Yeah, you don't have to have a M.S. in Comp. Sci. to be a DBA, but being able to understand (not necessarily derive) things from first principles goes a long way. But then again, I'm skewed. Engineering undergrad at Carnegie Mellon has a way of making or breaking you. And then you realize at some point, how few people get such an opportunity. btw_1, Where is Bill Nye these days? btw_2 , Ryan, in engineering, one takes at least 4 semesters of university level mathematics. If you were on the H SS, H and best dressed or Humanities and Social Sciences track, you might never have seen an ordinary differential equation, even in a calc class. The real question is, did you memorize a few formulas to get by, or did you learn math? did you gain any understanding? understanding you take with you, long after the mesmorized formulas have been dissolved by enough thursday night martinis. one equation could explain more than an entire chapter of text. no sense cutting out the meat just to dumb it down. Paul Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book in more depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have to go beyond college level calculus ? - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- DENNIS WILLIAMS Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 6:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical
Re: Re: Your new book
As much as you can get. If not for Cary's book, you'll need abstract algebra for dealing with W2 forms and taxes. On 2003.10.23 08:12, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if i want to improve my math skills how much undergraduate math would you recommend? From: Paul Drake [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/10/23 Thu AM 02:29:24 EDT To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Your new book Ryan, I do not recall seeing a single dy/dx or integrand in the text. The type of math that he used, I saw in high school, and that was in the US, at a public school. Cary easily could have used real math to prove his points. He didn't. He used graphical methods, visual basic and intuition. But mostly algebra. Back in the schools that I attended, pre-algebra was in 8th grade, geometry in ninth, Algebra II in 10th, Trig in 11th and Calculus senior year. Granted, I could have placed out of 3 courses freshman year of college, as my high school kicked arse. If it were more the norm, the US would still be riding a rising productivity curve. Too bad all that what is promoted most here is entertainment. If anything, it underscored the overall problem in the US, that we don't grow grad students natively, we import them. Yeah, you don't have to have a M.S. in Comp. Sci. to be a DBA, but being able to understand (not necessarily derive) things from first principles goes a long way. But then again, I'm skewed. Engineering undergrad at Carnegie Mellon has a way of making or breaking you. And then you realize at some point, how few people get such an opportunity. btw_1, Where is Bill Nye these days? btw_2 , Ryan, in engineering, one takes at least 4 semesters of university level mathematics. If you were on the H SS, H and best dressed or Humanities and Social Sciences track, you might never have seen an ordinary differential equation, even in a calc class. The real question is, did you memorize a few formulas to get by, or did you learn math? did you gain any understanding? understanding you take with you, long after the mesmorized formulas have been dissolved by enough thursday night martinis. one equation could explain more than an entire chapter of text. no sense cutting out the meat just to dumb it down. Paul Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book in more depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have to go beyond college level calculus ? - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- DENNIS WILLIAMS Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 6:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others
RE: Your new book
Title: Message -Original Message-From: Cary Millsap [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 7:15 PMTo: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-LSubject: FW: Your new book Niall, This is a very kind, and I believe (maybe it's only hopeful belief) a very accurate depiction of what the book is. I have read Hawking's note to which you refer. Honestly, I included the formulas for two reasons: 1) To communicate the relationships of trace lines to each other would have been virtually impossible to do economically with words. I really don't know how I would have done it, since there are so many necessary references to the central e ~ c + sum(ela) equation. 2) In the queueing chapter, I believe I needed to show people my work. Otherwise, I don't know how they could have confirmed or refuted my statements...[Shrek] oh how the last one brings back memories of teachers yelling at me "yes that's the right answer, but you have to show your work!" and me saying "but that's the only answer that fits!"... i lost every time.;-) and i got bad math grades too.;-) not having read the book yet, i for one, am glad you did show the work even if it is hard to follow. i like authors who don't think the reader has the lights on but no one's home.;-) -- Bill "Shrek" Thater ORACLE DBA "I'm going to work my ticket if I can..." -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.
Re: RE: Your new book
i took a discrete math class last summer at a state university. Id recommend for all technical people. I hadnt had math in 10 years and found it extremely difficult(half the class failed). the problem solving skills you get out of doing are incredible. No you dont learn new oracle commands but your able to solve problems easier. I found that understanding data modelling and general algorithm writing is easier now as well. It also blends well with undergraduate computer science classes(which I found to be more difficult than actually doing my job, btw). Im planning on taking more math over the next few years. Just not sure what to take. I dont really like it. Its one of those things that sucks to do while you learn it,but when your done your glad you did it. thanks for the in depth posts Carrie. From: Thater, William [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/10/23 Thu AM 09:39:24 EDT To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Your new book -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 7:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Niall, This is a very kind, and I believe (maybe it's only hopeful belief) a very accurate depiction of what the book is. I have read Hawking's note to which you refer. Honestly, I included the formulas for two reasons: 1) To communicate the relationships of trace lines to each other would have been virtually impossible to do economically with words. I really don't know how I would have done it, since there are so many necessary references to the central e ~ c + sum(ela) equation. 2) In the queueing chapter, I believe I needed to show people my work. Otherwise, I don't know how they could have confirmed or refuted my statements... [Shrek] oh how the last one brings back memories of teachers yelling at me yes that's the right answer, but you have to show your work! and me saying but that's the only answer that fits!... i lost every time.;-) and i got bad math grades too.;-) not having read the book yet, i for one, am glad you did show the work even if it is hard to follow. i like authors who don't think the reader has the lights on but no one's home.;-) -- Bill Shrek Thater ORACLE DBA I'm going to work my ticket if I can... -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist. Title: Message -Original Message-From: Cary Millsap [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 7:15 PMTo: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-LSubject: FW: Your new book Niall, This is a very kind, and I believe (maybe it's only hopeful belief) a very accurate depiction of what the book is. I have read Hawking's note to which you refer. Honestly, I included the formulas for two reasons: 1) To communicate the relationships of trace lines to each other would have been virtually impossible to do economically with words. I really don't know how I would have done it, since there are so many necessary references to the central e ~ c + sum(ela) equation. 2) In the queueing chapter, I believe I needed to show people my work. Otherwise, I don't know how they could have confirmed or refuted my statements...[Shrek] oh how the last one brings back memories of teachers yelling at me "yes that's the right answer, but you have to show your work!" and me saying "but that's the only answer that fits!"... i lost every time.;-) and i got bad math grades too.;-) not having read the book yet, i for one, am glad you did show the work even if it is hard to follow. i like authors who don't think the reader has the lights on but no one's home.;-) -- Bill "Shrek" Thater ORACLE DBA "I'm going to work my ticket if I can..." -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.
RE: RE: Your new book
Title: RE: RE: Your new book I took a discrete structures for computer science math class as an undergrad. It was great, once I got past the Swedish accent of the instructor and figured out that contraposite was the contra opposite. Yes, a highly recommended class, even if you don't do well in it. It changes how you approach things. April Wells Oracle DBA/Oracle Apps DBA Corporate Systems Amarillo Texas /\ / \ / \ \ / \/ \ \ \ \ Few people really enjoy the simple pleasure of flying a kite Adam Wells age 11 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 9:14 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Re: RE: Your new book i took a discrete math class last summer at a state university. Id recommend for all technical people. I hadnt had math in 10 years and found it extremely difficult(half the class failed). the problem solving skills you get out of doing are incredible. No you dont learn new oracle commands but your able to solve problems easier. I found that understanding data modelling and general algorithm writing is easier now as well. It also blends well with undergraduate computer science classes(which I found to be more difficult than actually doing my job, btw). Im planning on taking more math over the next few years. Just not sure what to take. I dont really like it. Its one of those things that sucks to do while you learn it,but when your done your glad you did it. thanks for the in depth posts Carrie. From: Thater, William [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/10/23 Thu AM 09:39:24 EDT To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Your new book -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 7:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Niall, This is a very kind, and I believe (maybe it's only hopeful belief) a very accurate depiction of what the book is. I have read Hawking's note to which you refer. Honestly, I included the formulas for two reasons: 1) To communicate the relationships of trace lines to each other would have been virtually impossible to do economically with words. I really don't know how I would have done it, since there are so many necessary references to the central e ~ c + sum(ela) equation. 2) In the queueing chapter, I believe I needed to show people my work. Otherwise, I don't know how they could have confirmed or refuted my statements... [Shrek] oh how the last one brings back memories of teachers yelling at me yes that's the right answer, but you have to show your work! and me saying but that's the only answer that fits!... i lost every time.;-) and i got bad math grades too.;-) not having read the book yet, i for one, am glad you did show the work even if it is hard to follow. i like authors who don't think the reader has the lights on but no one's home.;-) -- Bill Shrek Thater ORACLE DBA I'm going to work my ticket if I can... -- Gilwell song [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist. The information contained in this communication, including attachments, is strictly confidential and for the intended use of the addressee only; it may also contain proprietary, price sensitive, or legally privileged information. Notice is hereby given that any disclosure, distribution, dissemination, use, or copying of the information by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited and may be illegal. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail, delete this communication, and destroy all copies. Corporate Systems, Inc. has taken reasonable precautions to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been swept for viruses. We specifically disclaim all liability and will accept no responsibility for any damage sustained as a result of software viruses and advise you to carry out your own virus checks before opening any attachment.
FW: Re: Your new book
Golly. That depends on how much you want to improve and what you already know. Apart from Calculus, I have found Discrete Math, and Finite Math. I didn't think much of my Prob Stat class, but clearly it has its uses, too. I have not used a hair of Transformational Geometry since I took the course in 78. HTH, Bambi. -Original Message- Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 7:12 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L if i want to improve my math skills how much undergraduate math would you recommend? From: Paul Drake [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2003/10/23 Thu AM 02:29:24 EDT To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Your new book Ryan, I do not recall seeing a single dy/dx or integrand in the text. The type of math that he used, I saw in high school, and that was in the US, at a public school. Cary easily could have used real math to prove his points. He didn't. He used graphical methods, visual basic and intuition. But mostly algebra. Back in the schools that I attended, pre-algebra was in 8th grade, geometry in ninth, Algebra II in 10th, Trig in 11th and Calculus senior year. Granted, I could have placed out of 3 courses freshman year of college, as my high school kicked arse. If it were more the norm, the US would still be riding a rising productivity curve. Too bad all that what is promoted most here is entertainment. If anything, it underscored the overall problem in the US, that we don't grow grad students natively, we import them. Yeah, you don't have to have a M.S. in Comp. Sci. to be a DBA, but being able to understand (not necessarily derive) things from first principles goes a long way. But then again, I'm skewed. Engineering undergrad at Carnegie Mellon has a way of making or breaking you. And then you realize at some point, how few people get such an opportunity. btw_1, Where is Bill Nye these days? btw_2 , Ryan, in engineering, one takes at least 4 semesters of university level mathematics. If you were on the H SS, H and best dressed or Humanities and Social Sciences track, you might never have seen an ordinary differential equation, even in a calc class. The real question is, did you memorize a few formulas to get by, or did you learn math? did you gain any understanding? understanding you take with you, long after the mesmorized formulas have been dissolved by enough thursday night martinis. one equation could explain more than an entire chapter of text. no sense cutting out the meat just to dumb it down. Paul Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book in more depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have to go beyond college level calculus ? - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com
RE: Your new book
Cary, Is Mike Tanner's book Practical Queuing Analysis good in your opinion? Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 11:54 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I don't know exactly how to scope your question, so I'll answer the two things I think it might mean. For every chapter except for Chapter 9 (Queueing Theory), even college calculus would be extreme overkill, even if you're looking to *derive* all the formulas in those chapters. Understanding the formulas in Chapters 1-8 and 9-12 requires only that you understand that capital Sigma means sum. If you want to dig into the field of queueing theory in more depth, then the level of mathematical background depends on what your goals are. If you want to understand where the formulas come from, then you should probably begin with a good probability and statistics course. This is the foundation of queueing theory. If you buy a copy of the Gross Harris queueing theory book (I have a lot of queueing theory books, and this is by far my favorite), you can see where all the formulas come from. Much of the math in GH is way over my head. I haven't contributed much to the body of queueing theory knowledge except for integrating some pieces from different sources into a coherent plan for Oracle practitioners, offering some commonsense explanations of how to use the stuff, and discovering a couple of bugs in the literature (a big one in Jain's CDF, and a tiny one in GH's CDF). What I did do, I accomplished with computer science methods, not mathematical ones. You can see what I mean on page 236, which is probably my favorite page in the whole book. But, as I've said before, you don't have to know how to derive the formulas in order to use them. With the spreadsheet and Perl code I've written (available at oreilly.com), you can solve a large number of problems without even being able to *read* the formulas. personal-hypothesis I think that some people find the presence of Greek letters jarring (well, at least Don Burleson, from the looks of his review at amazon), but the Greek letters are just funny-looking names of things. Some of my friends implored me to use Latin characters instead of Greek ones, and I considered the case carefully. But in the end, I didn't presume to start rearranging the names of things that have been studied carefully by several generations of scientists since the early 1800s. See p228 for more info on this. /personal-hypothesis Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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: Your new book
That's one book that I don't have. A good friend of mine says it's very good, especially as an introduction. I browsed it in a bookstore once, and if my memory serves me correctly, the only reason I didn't buy it is that I felt like Gross Harris (which I already owned) covered everything I would have gotten had I bought the Tanner book. It's probably not a completely fair assessment, but it's all I had to work with in a 10-minute window. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- Michael Milligan Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 12:59 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Cary, Is Mike Tanner's book Practical Queuing Analysis good in your opinion? Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 11:54 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I don't know exactly how to scope your question, so I'll answer the two things I think it might mean. For every chapter except for Chapter 9 (Queueing Theory), even college calculus would be extreme overkill, even if you're looking to *derive* all the formulas in those chapters. Understanding the formulas in Chapters 1-8 and 9-12 requires only that you understand that capital Sigma means sum. If you want to dig into the field of queueing theory in more depth, then the level of mathematical background depends on what your goals are. If you want to understand where the formulas come from, then you should probably begin with a good probability and statistics course. This is the foundation of queueing theory. If you buy a copy of the Gross Harris queueing theory book (I have a lot of queueing theory books, and this is by far my favorite), you can see where all the formulas come from. Much of the math in GH is way over my head. I haven't contributed much to the body of queueing theory knowledge except for integrating some pieces from different sources into a coherent plan for Oracle practitioners, offering some commonsense explanations of how to use the stuff, and discovering a couple of bugs in the literature (a big one in Jain's CDF, and a tiny one in GH's CDF). What I did do, I accomplished with computer science methods, not mathematical ones. You can see what I mean on page 236, which is probably my favorite page in the whole book. But, as I've said before, you don't have to know how to derive the formulas in order to use them. With the spreadsheet and Perl code I've written (available at oreilly.com), you can solve a large number of problems without even being able to *read* the formulas. personal-hypothesis I think that some people find the presence of Greek letters jarring (well, at least Don Burleson, from the looks of his review at amazon), but the Greek letters are just funny-looking names of things. Some of my friends implored me to use Latin characters instead of Greek ones, and I considered the case carefully. But in the end, I didn't presume to start rearranging the names of things that have been studied carefully by several generations of scientists since the early 1800s. See p228 for more info on this. /personal-hypothesis Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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.net -- Author: Cary Millsap INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat
RE: Your new book
Title: Message I also am not Cary .I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046 trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions.Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is *some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user actions the Oracle performance analyst can quickly and efficiently resolve Oracle performance problems that debilitate the business performance of Oracle based systems. This approach - to target problem business processes, find out why they run slowly and optimize them, is exactly what the RDBMS world needs (IMO).In addition the method Cary and Jeff describe predicts when it will (and more importantly) won't be of use.Is it more readable than others? Here I do have some reservations. The first and last third of the book are extremely readable, and the character and humour of the authors shines through. The formal central section will put off some (maybe a significant number) of readers though. Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' writes "Someone told me that each equation I put in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation E=mc²." Cary and Jeff have either not been given this advice, or ignored it in the interests of accuracy. The advantage that this gives is that the book has a formal methodology that puts others to shame - the disadvantage is that folk look at pages filled with equations full of queueing theory and Greek symbols and react badly. I hope that the advice is wrong, but fear that it may not be. Niall -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Michael Milligan Sent: 21 October 2003 17:49 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Your new book Cary, I don't mean to ask you to brag, but can you please tell me if your new book, of which I've heard good things, is different in any way than other Oracle Performance Tuning books out. Does it take a different approach? Does it teach different methodologies? Is it more readable? I'd be very interested in your own assessment. What did you try to accomplish with this book? TIA, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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: Your new book
I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical foundation. My first education was engineering and I learned was that a practice that rests on a solid mathematical foundation is not easily overturned. A great example for we DBAs is relational database theory, which rests on relational algebra. Fads come and go that threaten to obsolete the relational database, but since none of them has a solid mathematical foundation, they soon fade. If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I also am not Cary . I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046 trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions. Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is *some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user actions the Oracle performance analyst can quickly and efficiently resolve Oracle performance problems that debilitate the business performance of Oracle based systems. This approach - to target problem business processes, find out why they run slowly and optimize them, is exactly what the RDBMS world needs (IMO). In addition the method Cary and Jeff describe predicts when it will (and more importantly) won't be of use. Is it more readable than others? Here I do have some reservations. The first and last third of the book are extremely readable, and the character and humour of the authors shines through. The formal central section will put off some (maybe a significant number) of readers though. Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' writes Someone told me that each equation I put in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation E=mc². Cary and Jeff have either not been given this advice, or ignored it in the interests of accuracy. The advantage that this gives is that the book has a formal methodology that puts others to shame - the disadvantage is that folk look at pages filled with equations full of queueing theory and Greek symbols and react badly. I hope that the advice is wrong, but fear that it may not be. Niall -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ] On Behalf Of Michael Milligan Sent: 21 October 2003 17:49 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Your new book Cary, I don't mean to ask you to brag, but can you please tell me if your new book, of which I've heard good things, is different in any way than other Oracle Performance Tuning books out. Does it take a different approach? Does it teach different methodologies? Is it more readable? I'd be very interested in your own assessment. What did you try to accomplish with this book? TIA, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services-- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com 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
Re: Your new book
I guess that your review is fair (and balanced, of course). In my review, I confessed the sin of having a math degree, so the perspective is necessarily, different. I believe that it probably is hard for a person equipped only with the high school math apparatus. To give credit where it's due, I have to say that the part about .trc file details and the perl scripts dealing with it are worth buying the book. On 10/22/2003 05:09:35 PM, Niall Litchfield wrote: I also am not Cary . I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046 trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions. Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is *some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user actions the Oracle performance analyst can quickly and efficiently resolve Oracle performance problems that debilitate the business performance of Oracle based systems. This approach - to target problem business processes, find out why they run slowly and optimize them, is exactly what the RDBMS world needs (IMO). In addition the method Cary and Jeff describe predicts when it will (and more importantly) won't be of use. Is it more readable than others? Here I do have some reservations. The first and last third of the book are extremely readable, and the character and humour of the authors shines through. The formal central section will put off some (maybe a significant number) of readers though. Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' writes Someone told me that each equation I put in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation E=mc². Cary and Jeff have either not been given this advice, or ignored it in the interests of accuracy. The advantage that this gives is that the book has a formal methodology that puts others to shame - the disadvantage is that folk look at pages filled with equations full of queueing theory and Greek symbols and react badly. I hope that the advice is wrong, but fear that it may not be. Niall -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Milligan Sent: 21 October 2003 17:49 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Your new book Cary, I don't mean to ask you to brag, but can you please tell me if your new book, of which I've heard good things, is different in any way than other Oracle Performance Tuning books out. Does it take a different approach? Does it teach different methodologies? Is it more readable? I'd be very interested in your own assessment. What did you try to accomplish with this book? TIA, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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). Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Note: This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended
RE: Your new book
Great comment. I believe your analogy to relational theory to be very apt. Back when we were all in junior high and our teachers were drawing those Venn diagrams on the board, we were probably thinking When will I ever use this stuff?. Personally, I use it every day. What you said about relational databases lasting because they are based on mathematical truths is true, I believe, and I would take it a step further. Understanding the principles of relational algebra, specifically those that apply directly to relational database theory, permits us to be far better practitioners. I know of many database experts who purport that the relational in RDBMS represents relating tables. I also know of many very, very intelligent, I would say brilliant, people who have not taken the time to learn relational theory, and do not understand why they end up frustrated when they try to make their RDBMS work like it's part of a linked list in their C++ program. They fight against the very theory that would free them if they understood it and worked with it. People pooh-pooh theory, and in particular relational theory, because it's not real world. I disagree wholeheartedly. The theory they pooh-pooh really equates to foundational principles. Like the principles of gravity. Those who make airplanes understand the principles involved very well. They don't fight against those truths. The use them to accomplish their goals. Their planes fly. I'm looking forward to Cary's book precisely because of the reasons you mentioned. Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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: Your new book
If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA I certainly hope this is a correct assessment. I will never forget a college course called Math 144 'Discrete Functions in Mathematics'. It was essentially Relational Algebra. I was confident that I had done well on the very first test of the semester. Then I got it back. I had scored a 32. That is out of 100. Apparently I didn't have quite the grasp on relational theory that I had hoped. I doubt the rest of the semester, nor the intervening years, have changed things much. So I certainly hope to be able put Cary's book to good use without relying too heavilly on my mathematical background. I don't dare say I am confident of it though, I still remember that 32. Steve McClure -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Steve McClure 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: Your new book
On 2003.10.22 20:19, Michael Milligan wrote: database experts who purport that the relational in RDBMS represents relating tables. Just for completeness, the definition of a relation is, quite literally, a subset of cartesian product. Set theory studies mostly relations of ordering and equivalence relations, while RDBMS are here to implement busines relations. And business doesn't care about the fact that every set can be well ordered. A great introduction is a book by Seymour Lipschutz called Set Theory. I would advise against studying it because RDBMS can be well understood even without Zorn's lemma and well-ordering theorem. -- Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Mladen Gogala 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: Your new book
Maybe your memory is suffering. Wasn't it a 42? :) Pete Controlling developers is like herding cats. Kevin Loney, Oracle DBA Handbook Oh no, it's not. It's much harder than that! Bruce Pihlamae, long-term Oracle DBA -Original Message- Steve McClure Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 10:49 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA I certainly hope this is a correct assessment. I will never forget a college course called Math 144 'Discrete Functions in Mathematics'. It was essentially Relational Algebra. I was confident that I had done well on the very first test of the semester. Then I got it back. I had scored a 32. That is out of 100. Apparently I didn't have quite the grasp on relational theory that I had hoped. I doubt the rest of the semester, nor the intervening years, have changed things much. So I certainly hope to be able put Cary's book to good use without relying too heavilly on my mathematical background. I don't dare say I am confident of it though, I still remember that 32. Steve McClure -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Steve McClure 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.net -- Author: Pete Sharman 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: Your new book
Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- DENNIS WILLIAMS Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 6:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical foundation. My first education was engineering and I learned was that a practice that rests on a solid mathematical foundation is not easily overturned. A great example for we DBAs is relational database theory, which rests on relational algebra. Fads come and go that threaten to obsolete the relational database, but since none of them has a solid mathematical foundation, they soon fade. If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I also am not Cary . I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046 trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions. Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is *some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user actions the Oracle performance analyst can quickly and efficiently resolve Oracle performance problems that debilitate the business performance of Oracle based systems. This approach - to target problem business processes, find out why they run slowly and optimize them, is exactly what the RDBMS world needs (IMO). In addition the method Cary and Jeff describe predicts when it will (and more importantly) won't be of use. Is it more readable than others? Here I do have some reservations. The first and last third of the book are extremely readable, and the character and humour of the authors shines through. The formal central section will put off some (maybe a significant number) of readers though. Stephen Hawking in 'A Brief History of Time' writes Someone told me that each equation I put in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation E=mc². Cary and Jeff have
Re: Your new book
if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book in more depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have to go beyond college level calculus ? - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- DENNIS WILLIAMS Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 6:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical foundation. My first education was engineering and I learned was that a practice that rests on a solid mathematical foundation is not easily overturned. A great example for we DBAs is relational database theory, which rests on relational algebra. Fads come and go that threaten to obsolete the relational database, but since none of them has a solid mathematical foundation, they soon fade. If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I also am not Cary . I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046 trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions. Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is *some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user actions the Oracle performance analyst can quickly and efficiently resolve Oracle performance problems that debilitate the business performance of Oracle based systems. This approach - to target problem business processes, find out why they run slowly and optimize them, is exactly what the RDBMS world needs (IMO). In addition the method Cary and Jeff describe predicts when it will (and more importantly) won't be of use. Is it more readable than others? Here I do have some reservations. The first and last third of the book are extremely readable, and the character and humour
Re: Your new book
No, you don't. I made mistake and tried to learn queuing theory from it. This book is not a course in queuing theory, it's a book about the optimization techniques and how to use queuing theory to actually predict the response time and write SLA's. It's not written in the usual form for mathematical texts, using theorem/proof/corollary layout. What you actually need to do is to skip the explanatory part of the chapter and concentrate on the definitions, formulas and their meaning. I do intend to look for an undergraduate level text in queuing theory, learn the basics and re-read the chapter when I have time. I don't make any promises that it will be soon, though. I must say that I admire Cary for laying out the internals of the work they do at Hostos in this way. This book gives Hotsos the utmost credibility, because now I understand the methods they use. I knew that Cary, Jeff, Anjo, Mogens and the gang are good, but promises about guaranteed response time sounded too good to be true. I couldn't help but wonder about the nature of the beast. It is explained to me now. I once was lost but now I'm found. I once was blind but now I see. It's an amazing book. On 2003.10.22 23:59, Ryan wrote: if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book in more depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have to go beyond college level calculus ? - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- DENNIS WILLIAMS Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 6:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical foundation. My first education was engineering and I learned was that a practice that rests on a solid mathematical foundation is not easily overturned. A great example for we DBAs is relational database theory, which rests on relational algebra. Fads come and go that threaten to obsolete the relational database, but since none of them has a solid mathematical foundation, they soon fade. If you gave me a quiz on relational algebra today, I'd probably flunk it, like many people that daily work with relational databases. But that doesn't stop us from making use of the fruits of the theory. Similarly, I don't think we need to understand Part II in detail to successfully use Cary's methods to tune an Oracle database. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I also am not Cary . I have however read Cary's
RE: Your new book
I don't know exactly how to scope your question, so I'll answer the two things I think it might mean. For every chapter except for Chapter 9 (Queueing Theory), even college calculus would be extreme overkill, even if you're looking to *derive* all the formulas in those chapters. Understanding the formulas in Chapters 1-8 and 9-12 requires only that you understand that capital Sigma means sum. If you want to dig into the field of queueing theory in more depth, then the level of mathematical background depends on what your goals are. If you want to understand where the formulas come from, then you should probably begin with a good probability and statistics course. This is the foundation of queueing theory. If you buy a copy of the Gross Harris queueing theory book (I have a lot of queueing theory books, and this is by far my favorite), you can see where all the formulas come from. Much of the math in GH is way over my head. I haven't contributed much to the body of queueing theory knowledge except for integrating some pieces from different sources into a coherent plan for Oracle practitioners, offering some commonsense explanations of how to use the stuff, and discovering a couple of bugs in the literature (a big one in Jain's CDF, and a tiny one in GH's CDF). What I did do, I accomplished with computer science methods, not mathematical ones. You can see what I mean on page 236, which is probably my favorite page in the whole book. But, as I've said before, you don't have to know how to derive the formulas in order to use them. With the spreadsheet and Perl code I've written (available at oreilly.com), you can solve a large number of problems without even being able to *read* the formulas. personal-hypothesis I think that some people find the presence of Greek letters jarring (well, at least Don Burleson, from the looks of his review at amazon), but the Greek letters are just funny-looking names of things. Some of my friends implored me to use Latin characters instead of Greek ones, and I considered the case carefully. But in the end, I didn't presume to start rearranging the names of things that have been studied carefully by several generations of scientists since the early 1800s. See p228 for more info on this. /personal-hypothesis Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- Ryan Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 11:00 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book in more depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have to go beyond college level calculus ? - Original Message - To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium
Re: Your new book
Ryan, I do not recall seeing a single dy/dx or integrand in the text. Thetype of math that he used, I saw in high school, and that was in the US, at a public school. Cary easily could have used "real" math to prove his points. He didn't. He used graphical methods, visual basic and intuition. But mostly algebra. Back in the schools that I attended, pre-algebra was in 8th grade, geometry in ninth, Algebra II in 10th, Trig in 11th and Calculus senior year. Granted, I could have placed out of 3 courses freshman year of college, as my high school kicked arse. If it were more the norm, the US would still beriding a rising productivity curve. Too bad all that what is promoted most here is "entertainment". If anything, it underscored the overall problem in the US, that we don't grow grad students natively, we import them. Yeah, you don't have to have a M.S. in Comp. Sci. to be a DBA, but being able to understand (not necessarily derive) things from first principles goes a long way. But then again, I'm skewed. Engineering undergrad at Carnegie Mellon has a way of making or breaking you. And then you realize at some point, how few people get such an opportunity. btw_1, Where is Bill Nye these days? btw_2 , Ryan, in engineering, one takes at least4 semesters of university level mathematics.If you were on the "H SS", "H and best dressed" or Humanities and Social Sciences track, you might never have seen an ordinary differential equation, even in a calc class. The real question is, did you memorize a few formulas to get by, or did you learn math? did you gain any understanding?understanding you take with you, long after the mesmorized formulas have been dissolved by enough thursday night martinis. one equation could explain more than an entire chapter of text. no sense cutting out the meat just to dumb it down. Paul Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if someone wants to dig into the type of math you are using in your book inmore depth, what level of math expertise would you recommend? Do you have togo beyond college level calculus ?- Original Message -To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 10:54 PM Dennis, Thanks. In fact, I feel the same way about this as many of you who have written about the book in the prior two days. I think the material that ended up being Part II needed to be studied, refined, and documented. And I believe it is important that this material be written in a BOOK instead of only in some electronic medium. Without Part II, I'm not sure many readers would have accepted the possibility of the rather remarkable results I promise in Parts I and III. As it happens, Part II seems to have begun serving a number of uses, some of which I didn't anticipate, including: - Those who want to take our work further can do so without having to reinvent everything we've learned. - Those who want to debate our approach can argue about it on an unambiguous technical foundation. - Forcing ourselves to write everything down in a consumer-ready format guided our making the Hotsos Profiler into a much more robust and complete product than it would have been otherwise. - Similarly, it tightened the content in our educational courses considerably. We now have excellent training material for Hotsos employees, and perhaps (if O'Reilly is lucky) university students of Oracle performance analysis around the world. - Funny enough, it turns out that some of the MySQL guys are at least considering the idea to integrate much better response time instrumentation into their kernel as a result of the book. But Mr. Milligan is absolutely right: you don't have to be able to prove why something works in order to use it. I tried to design Parts I and III to give you what you need to make the method work, regardless of whether you are interested in proving out the theory. I just didn't feel like it would be responsible to sell Part III without including Part II. Cary Millsap Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.hotsos.com Upcoming events: - Performance Diagnosis 101: 10/28 Phoenix, 11/19 Sydney - SQL Optimization 101: 12/8-12 Dallas - Hotsos Symposium 2004: March 7-10 Dallas - Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details... -Original Message- DENNIS WILLIAMS Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 6:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L I think Cary deserves a vote of appreciation for Part II of his book. I feel (based on the comments of others, haven't waded through it myself yet) that he has put Oracle performance tuning on a solid mathematical foundation. My first education was engineering and I learned was that a practice that rests on a solid mathematical foundation is not easily overturned. A great example for we DBAs is relational database theory, which rests on relational algebra. Fads come and go that threaten to obsolete the relational database, but since none of them has a solid mathematical foundation, they soon fade. If you gave me a quiz on
RE: Your new book
I wouldn't want anyone to think that I personally think that the math is a mistake for the book, my concern is that it may hurt sales unnecessarily. I don't think that DB's amazon review helps much either, but it is revealing. Niall -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mladen Gogala Sent: 22 October 2003 22:30 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Re: Your new book I guess that your review is fair (and balanced, of course). In my review, I confessed the sin of having a math degree, so the perspective is necessarily, different. I believe that it probably is hard for a person equipped only with the high school math apparatus. To give credit where it's due, I have to say that the part about .trc file details and the perl scripts dealing with it are worth buying the book. snip stuff -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Niall Litchfield 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: Your new book
I'm not Cary but a satisfied reader who read the book in a very detailed way and probably caused some headache to Cary. Allow me, nevertheless, to respond to your question. Cary's book IS different because it does not cover the classical approach to tuning and explaining in detail all well known and less well known V$ and X$ tables. The only thing in the book that can be considered classic, is a lecture in proper business conduct. Cary, unfortunately, regards performance optimization projects as business and not art or an opportunity to express one's personality. Nuff said. That part is covered in Chris Lawson's book in a similar fashion. Then there is a very detailed reference of .trc files format, and DBMS_SUPPORT package, together with perl scripts to parse them and accounting principles for various forms of spent time (elapsed, spent CPU time and alike.) Parts of that can be found on Metalink, but not described with such clarity and in such detail. A part that not everybody will enjoy is a part of queuing theory which helps predict the exact response times. Cary is, actually, taking things one step further and he explains how the exact response time can be calculated from 10046 trace files. That is what they do at Hotsos. Shortcoming of that part is that BCS in math is recommended. Fortunately for me, I have a batchelor degree in math, so I was able to follow. Even as layman not consecrated into the deepest mysteries of mathematics and even if you don't know what a Bannach fixed point theorem or a Cauchy sequence is, you can still learn interesting things about predictability and principles from that chapter. As an additional value, there are many practical interesting examples from the Hotsos practice. It was almost a feeling of deja vu, something like: ah THAT is what those guys at Hotsos are doing! Add an extraordinary clarity and subtle sense of humor and you get an excellent book which I hat to rate as a strong buy. On 10/21/2003 12:49:25 PM, Michael Milligan wrote: Cary, I don't mean to ask you to brag, but can you please tell me if your new book, of which I've heard good things, is different in any way than other Oracle Performance Tuning books out. Does it take a different approach? Does it teach different methodologies? Is it more readable? I'd be very interested in your own assessment. What did you try to accomplish with this book? TIA, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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). Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Note: This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. Wang Trading LLC and any of its subsidiaries each reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorized to state them to be the views of any such entity. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Mladen Gogala 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
RE: Your new book
MLaden, Thank you very, very much for a great review. I hope you'll post that to Amazon. As a matter of fact, I enjoy queuing theory. I remember almost buying a book called Practical Queuing Analysis by Mike Tanner. I was a biology major in college, so I may muddle through the math, but it'll be good for me anyway. Thanks again for taking the time to write that great review, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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: Your new book
I'll try to correct spelling errors before I post it to the Amazon, but I will do it, despite the fact that I'm not very fond of Amazon. On 10/21/2003 03:09:32 PM, Michael Milligan wrote: MLaden, Thank you very, very much for a great review. I hope you'll post that to Amazon. As a matter of fact, I enjoy queuing theory. I remember almost buying a book called Practical Queuing Analysis by Mike Tanner. I was a biology major in college, so I may muddle through the math, but it'll be good for me anyway. Thanks again for taking the time to write that great review, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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). Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Note: This message is for the named person's use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mistransmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. Wang Trading LLC and any of its subsidiaries each reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorized to state them to be the views of any such entity. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Mladen Gogala 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: Your new book
Well I got the honor of being the first to publish a review on Amazon for Cary's book it is a good read! Robert -Original Message- To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: 10/21/2003 2:24 PM I'll try to correct spelling errors before I post it to the Amazon, but I will do it, despite the fact that I'm not very fond of Amazon. On 10/21/2003 03:09:32 PM, Michael Milligan wrote: MLaden, Thank you very, very much for a great review. I hope you'll post that to Amazon. As a matter of fact, I enjoy queuing theory. I remember almost buying a book called Practical Queuing Analysis by Mike Tanner. I was a biology major in college, so I may muddle through the math, but it'll be good for me anyway. Thanks again for taking the time to write that great review, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Freeman Robert - IL 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: Your new book
Is it (review) as good as Mladen's? -:) Igor Neyman, OCP DBA [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Freeman Robert - IL Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 2:54 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Well I got the honor of being the first to publish a review on Amazon for Cary's book it is a good read! Robert -Original Message- To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: 10/21/2003 2:24 PM I'll try to correct spelling errors before I post it to the Amazon, but I will do it, despite the fact that I'm not very fond of Amazon. On 10/21/2003 03:09:32 PM, Michael Milligan wrote: MLaden, Thank you very, very much for a great review. I hope you'll post that to Amazon. As a matter of fact, I enjoy queuing theory. I remember almost buying a book called Practical Queuing Analysis by Mike Tanner. I was a biology major in college, so I may muddle through the math, but it'll be good for me anyway. Thanks again for taking the time to write that great review, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Freeman Robert - IL 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.net -- Author: Igor Neyman 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: Your new book
I think so! :-) RF -Original Message- To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: 10/21/2003 3:04 PM Is it (review) as good as Mladen's? -:) Igor Neyman, OCP DBA [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- Freeman Robert - IL Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 2:54 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Well I got the honor of being the first to publish a review on Amazon for Cary's book it is a good read! Robert -Original Message- To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: 10/21/2003 2:24 PM I'll try to correct spelling errors before I post it to the Amazon, but I will do it, despite the fact that I'm not very fond of Amazon. On 10/21/2003 03:09:32 PM, Michael Milligan wrote: MLaden, Thank you very, very much for a great review. I hope you'll post that to Amazon. As a matter of fact, I enjoy queuing theory. I remember almost buying a book called Practical Queuing Analysis by Mike Tanner. I was a biology major in college, so I may muddle through the math, but it'll be good for me anyway. Thanks again for taking the time to write that great review, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Freeman Robert - IL 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.net -- Author: Igor Neyman 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.net -- Author: Freeman Robert - IL 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: Your new book
MLaden, Thank you very, very much for a great review. I hope you'll post that to Amazon. As a matter of fact, I enjoy queuing theory. I remember almost buying a book called Practical Queuing Analysis by Mike Tanner. I was a biology major in college, so I may muddle through the math, but it'll be good for me anyway. Thanks again for taking the time to write that great review, Michael Milligan Oracle DBA Ingenix, Inc. 2525 Lake Park Blvd. Salt Lake City, Utah 84120 wrk 801-982-3081 mbl 801-628-6058 [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail, including attachments, may include confidential and/or proprietary information, and may be used only by the person or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or his or her authorized agent, the reader is hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message and delete this e-mail immediately. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Michael Milligan 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).
