Re: Advice Wanted: Optimizing Oracle for a Production Environment

Hui, Kwok Miu wrote:
>
> Kyle wrote:
> > First, is it very important that I optimize the database before
> > implementation? and second, is 80 to 100 hours a realistic time frame?
>
> 1. Optimization is important to a database system, especially for OLTP.
> 2. Time spent on optimization depends on the size of your database.
> I think 3-4 day is a long time for a experienced DBA to do
> optimization
> on OS and System level.
>
> --
> Hui, Kwok Miu (Xu, Guo Miao) E-Mail: huikomix_at_dt.com.hk
> Oracle DBA & Unix Administrator Tel : (00852)2589 3369
> Cho Yang (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. Fax : (00852)2559 3049

I performance tune RDBMS engines ... that's all I do.

Is it important to tune an engine before going into production? YES!!! IT IS IMPERATIVE ... IMHO. Is 80 hours enough ... how long is a piece of rope?

There are generally two cycles to go through when performance tuning, the first is to tune macroscopicly ... look at the OS, are you making effective use of memory, disk, CPU, etc.. Then look at the server, does it seem to be working properly. You can usually use OS level tools to do this part of the job.

Once a server is "macro" tuned, that does not mean that your performance will be great, just that given the config, you are making good use of your resource. This macro tuning tends to take from 4 to 6 days depending upon the depth you go to.

The second part of the tuning cycle takes much more time. Here you will need to tune microscopicly. Look at each major query in the system, do you have transaction volumes and arrival rates for these queries? Have you looked at optimizer plans to make sure all of the necessary indexes are in place, is your data clean, are statistics in place ... could go on for a while, we'll just stop it here. This process can take weeks, and is usually done either in parallel with development, or while the system is live.

Good Luck Received on Fri Nov 22 1996 - 00:00:00 CET