Re: Metrics for Management

From: Alan <alanshein_at_erols.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 12:33:50 -0400
Message-ID: <ah6ql4$qtvvr$1@ID-114862.news.dfncis.de>

Management has a way of telling you what they THINK they want to know rather than what they really NEED to know.

I always ask something like, "What are trying to find out?".

For example, the converstaion may go like this:

Mgr: How big is our database?
DBA: What do you really want know?
Mgr: How many mega/tera bytes of data do we have?
DBA: What do you really want to know?
Mgr: How many tables do we have in the database?
DBA: What do you really want to know?
Mgr: How many rows and columns, you know, how much data do we have?
DBA: Why are you asking? What are you trying to determine?
Mgr: I just need to know how much data we have.
DBA: How are you defining data? Number of individual facts about our

sales/inventory/service requests/.../...? Number of bytes of data, which, by the way, is kind of meaningless because some information is stored just to use it to connect to other information or identify meaning of other information or...etcetcetc...
Mgr: Well, I was at a cocktail party, and the CIO at Major Competitor Inc. was bragging about...
DBA: We have 5 oodlebytes.

"Vince Laurent" <vlaurent_at_NOSPAM.networkusa.net> wrote in message news:0gldju0d03i1po9e8n69qagmaukp932k6a_at_4ax.com...
> I got this e-mail the other day from one of our system support folks:
>
> "MANAGER asked me to identify Oracle metrics collected by OVO to be
> displayed on the Metrics database web page. I'm hoping that the three
> of you could give some direction on which metrics may by useful. If
> you have time, scan the list below and let me know which of the
> metrics could be used for capacity planning or fault prevention.
>
> Here are some I selected (let me know if you agree or disagree with
> their usefulness)
>
> # of segments approaching max extent (E017_SegMaxExtentCnt)
> Disk sort rate (E019_SortDiskRate)
> Total buffer cache hit % (E022_TotBufCacHitPct)
> Rate of background checkpoints completed (E035_BckgndCkptRate)
> Table spaces with low free space ; drill down (E206_TblSpFreePct)"
>
> What I am trying to figure out is what are good metrics both to keep
> MANAGEMENT happy as well as help me do my job? Right now I track
> database growth and number of users. What are any of you doing out
> in the real world?
>
> Thanks!
> Vince
Received on Thu Jul 18 2002 - 11:33:50 CDT