FW: My opinion about Millsap's book

Juan

    If you want a free 10046 trace summarizer, try tracer.pl available at http://brainshed.com/software/ No guarantees, but seems good enough to hack around and learn a little about 10046 traces. Someone else on this list mentioned it awhile back, but I can't recall who. Sorry.

    I think when you really, really need to know what is going on in an Oracle application, Cary's method is the undisputed champion. There are easier methods that may solve many performance problems, but then you may only be guessing and making assumptions. If you are in a situation where it is better to be fast than right, then a different method may work fine.

    I think Cary has put many, many hours into perfecting his Hotsos profiler and has every right to enjoy the fruits of his labors, just like you deserve to get paid for your work. Eventually Oracle will probably include a good profiler with the database and that will settle that.

Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 11:30 AM To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: My opinion about Millsap's book

I was not going to buy that book, because I thought it was another book more  covering all about performance, but nothing in special. I read few comments in amazon and I didn't found nothing special.

When I saw his book name in tom kyte's list I decided to test, because Tom is a serious person, he was not going to put his book in his list only because he is his friend.

What I found is a very specialized book.

the title should be something like "conclusion from 15 years on tuning investigation"

The book have

An overview on tuning
An explanation why trace files are better than other method, why he don't invested time in tuning through global views or other methods. He has a long a deep analysis of interpretation from trace files. He has a statistical method, very very interesting to give to CEO's to demostrate several tuning problems.

What it don't have.
It don't have a global an comparitve analysis showing advantages and disadvantages of all tuning methods oracle has. you definitively will hve to buy his product Hotsos profiler (unless you are thinking in do it by your self) to put in practices the trace analysis he suggests.

Complaint
I don't know why hotsos store don't ansewr my request of this product, I understand they don't sell to specific countries or people, but at least they will have to take the time to explain that. I send several emails and receive no answer.

Who should read this book
My opinion is the following
If you are an expert who knows all in that book, you should read because it shares his own investigations on tuning. If you are a dba with some experience definetively have to buy it. if you are a newbie you have to buy it and read after the tuning oracle manuals.

If you don't buy you lose it.

This is the only book I could say you have to read with Oracle documentation  because it adds something very important that is not in the documentation.

Congratulations Millsap for your excellent job.  

Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco
OCP
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Tue Sep 28 2004 - 19:11:54 CDT