Where to Find More Tuning Information
Tuning Oracle SQL is a complex subject. The information in this chapter serves only to give you a brief overview of some of the features Oracle provides to help you during the tuning process. There is a lot of other information out there that you should avail yourself of.
To start with, read the manual. The Oracle8 Server Tuning manual contains a great deal of tuning information, though some of it is more oriented towards tuning the database server itself rather than tuning individual SQL statements. The Server Tuning manual contains information on Oracle hints, the use of EXPLAIN PLAN, and the TKPROF utility. TKPROF is a bit difficult to use, but can provide a great deal more information about the cost of a query than you will get with EXPLAIN PLAN.
There are two good books on Oracle tuning I can recommend. One is Oracle Performance Tuning, 2nd edition, by Mark Gurry and Peter Corrigan (O’Reilly & Associates, 1996). The other is Oracle SQL High-Performance Tuning, by Guy Harrison (Prentice-Hall, 1997). Guy Harrison’s book is almost entirely focused on tuning SQL statements, as opposed to tuning the server, and it contains a great deal of helpful information for database programmers.
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