Re: 3GB RAM usage by Oracle

Don Burleson wrote:

>> Most databases have performance problems for very simple reasons such
>> as . . . failure to build appropriate indexes, failure to gather
>> appropriate statistics.

[snip. particularly the dreadful cursor_sharing advice]

>
> Just last week I had a client who was having a huge CPU bottleneck,
> and the root cause was excessive parsing and REALLY bad SQL.

You are cheating, Don. How do you know that the cause was excessive parsing and really bad SQL? Because you looked and made sure??

Case closed if so. You've just diagnosed a tuning problem properly.

Now, having diagnosed the problem correctly, there are inevitably a range of possible fixes, ranging from retrofitting partitioning/materialised views, through re-writing the relevant parts of the application, to throwing hardware at the problem and hoping it will hide the cracks.

That is a very different matter indeed from buying more RAM and mucking about with the init.ora *first*, in the hope that extra hardware will save you the hassle of having to work out what the problem really is.

> They
> chose to spend $50k for faster processors (15 minutes to fix) rather
> than spend $100k to tune 2,000 SQL statements (6 weeks to fix).
>
> Now does that make sense?

Of course. If they are presented with evidence as to what the real, underlying, problem is, and given two choices: fix it for XXX, or hide it for XXX-$50K, then choosing to hide the problem by going the hardware route is a legitimate business decision. It might be a tad short-sighted, but those sorts of issues can be discussed at the time.

But that is not what was being criticised about your tuning posts here earlier, which were advocating 'more hardware will make the problem, whatever it is, go away' without taking the time and trouble to actually know what the problem is first. Now here you are saying you knew what your client's problem was...

You've just changed your tune, in other words (why am I not surprised?). And are singing from pretty much the same hymn sheet as everyone else here accordingly.

HJR
> Well, it depends on how you look at it.
> From a management perspective it made sense as they saved $50k and got
> a fast, unobtrusive solution to a complex problem.
>
> Was it elegant, heck no!
>
> Was it the "right" thing to do? You be the judge. . .
Received on Sat Aug 28 2004 - 21:10:08 CDT