Oracle Performance Survival Guide: A Systematic Approach to Database Optimization 1st Edition

I have read Guy's book 3 times now, cover to cover, since I bought it in 2010 and every time I read it more material "gets into my head". I own half a dozen *great* Oracle 11g books but this one is my favourite. I have been specialising in Microsoft SQL Server since ~1998 until now and I was working with Oracle databases before 1999, since ~1984 (Oracle versions 5,6,7,8i and Oracle Rdb 1.0-7.0).Coming back to Oracle again after 10-12 years and Guy's book is exactly what I needed. A most definite BUY if you are Oracle tuner, troubleshooter, DBA or advanced developer.If I had to pick any negatives it would be that in a few cases Guy mentions a specific feature of Oracle and explains the do's and the dont's but does not provide the syntax on how to use/enable this particular feature. It's easy enough to search the Oracle manual for the syntax (which is what I do) but the near perfect book would be perfect if the syntax was provided in-line.

I like Guy's writing style and he always reveals fun details about Oracle.This is a real-world book for real working Oracle DBA's, not one of those "theory" books that fill the pages with listings from non-reproducible "test cases".His systematic approach is very similar to my own, and it was nice to see my own guidelines validated.At first, I wondered if this was just a plug for the Oracle tools that he sells through his employer, but there is enough fresh content in this book to justify its price!

Best sql perf tuning book!

Yesterday (19/11/2014) the book arrived. Thank you

Great book - illuminating and immediately useful. By far the most practical book on Oracle tuning.

Mr. Harrison has been a respected author in this field for more than a decade. His writing back in the days of version 8 first opened my eyes to the world of Oracle performance tuning. When I learned that he published this new book, updated and greatly expanded in scope, I just had to read and devour it.This book is an encyclopedic overview of all aspects of Oracle performance. Mr. Harrison takes a layered approach, starting at the top with application and data model design where the focus is minimizing the demand for database resources. He then moves down into database code internals, where the focus is maximizing concurrency through reduction of lock, latch, and mutex contention. The next step is to optimize memory usage to minimize the need for physical IO. Finally, he moves to the bottom layer, where the focus is on optimizing physical IO at the disk layer.Each of these layers is worthy of its own book, so to combine all these topics in a single book is an ambitious goal. Indeed, experienced readers will often want a bit more detail, or wonder why their favorite optimization was not mentioned. However, Mr. Harrison strikes a very good balance between depth and coverage. He also provides a very useful bibliography, including the Oracle documentation, books, and Internet sites and blogs.For each chapter, Mr. Harrison provides extraordinarily clear, concise, and helpful introductions and summaries. He also uses boxed borders to highlights particularly important points within the text. One can learn a great deal by simply reading these summaries and boxed items, and these can also be used to help the reader find relevant sections, which is especially valuable in a book of this length.This book is not the last word on SQL tuning, optimizer internals, Oracle troubleshooting, the SGA, nor latch contention. However, its coherent approach, useful summaries and highlights, and efficient organization, make it a valuable and essential guide to anyone wishing to expand their Oracle performance skill set.The target audience includes both application developers and DBAs. It covers 10g, 11g, 11gR2, with context from 8i and 9i.