Optimizing Oracle Performance

Chapter 12. Case Studies

If you’ve read the whole book to this point, then, conceptually, you’re ready to do performance improvement projects in a whole new way. However, being “conceptually ready” to do something and actually committing yourself to the experience of doing it are two completely different things. Because the new Method R contradicts convention, it can be especially difficult to commit to using it. Virtually every book, paper, newsletter, web page, software tool, consultant, colleague, and friend who has ever occupied your attention before this book has given you advice about “tuning” that radically contradicts what I’m telling you to do here. In an attempt to convince you to try Method R, this chapter contains some examples to show you how it works in practice. My hope is that by showing you how my colleagues and I respond to some patterns that we commonly see in our optimization work, you’ll imagine more vividly how Method R can work for you.

Think of learning Method R in the same way that you learned to speak your native language. You began by observing other people performing the act you were trying to learn. Specifically, you did not learn how to speak as a child by studying syntax diagrams and declension tables. If you studied those things at all, you did so after you had gained significant familiarity with the language. Your teachers probably forced you to study them in school. Your educational system’s motive for exposing you to the underlying rules of the ...