Re: Reviews of Dan Tow's "SQL Tuning"?
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:03:12 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <be1da6d5-5f90-49dc-a316-8909287f239a_at_a12g2000pro.googlegroups.com>
On Jan 12, 3:14 pm, hpuxrac <johnbhur..._at_sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Wondering if Guy Harrison will get out a new or updated book at some
> point. I always thought his book was a great starting point for many
> developers new to oracle.
I have the second edition (copyright 2001) of Guy Harrison's "Oracle
SQL High-Performance Tuning". I recall being very impressed with the
book when I first read it cover to cover, and having just pulled it
off the shelf to review, there is a great deal of helpful information
in the book which may be of interest to the OP. But, stay away from
pages 215-216 of that book. A couple not so nice quotes from that
section of the book:
"On Windows NT/Windows 2000, the maximum number of blocks that can be
read [in a multiblock read] cannot exceed 128K (for 32 bit
versions)." I trusted that statement until this past summer until I
saw Oracle 10.2.0.2 on Windows 2000 executing 1MB multiblock reads
about 8 times faster than 256KB multiblock reads.
"The size of the Oracle block can have an influence on the efficiency
of full-table scans. Larger block sizes can often improve scan
performance." I think that Greg Rahn and Richard Foote have pretty
well put this one out to pasture.
"Improving the hit rate in the buffer cache" section title. I think
that Connor and Jonathan have pretty well demonstrated that this may
be a lost cause.
I believe that if Guy Harrison updated this book, and fixed those items which have later proven to be less than 100% reliable, he would have a very useful book.
Charles Hooper
IT Manager/Oracle DBA
K&M Machine-Fabricating, Inc.
Received on Mon Jan 12 2009 - 15:03:12 CST