Oracle 24x7 Tips and Techniques

Maintaining near-flawless database uptime is a source of anxiety for countless database administrators. In Oracle 24x7 Tips & Techniques, Venkat S. Devraj has compiled an unprecedented collection of guidelines and suggestions as a "working Oracle professional's book on high availability."

Although it is the author's aim to avoid detailed theory and focus on practical solutions to the problem, the early portions of the book contain some high-level topics such as defining your organization's exact uptime requirements and precisely characterizing what constitutes an emergency for your installation. These areas are often quickly glossed over in other guides, but the presentation here is precise and quite useful in striving for the holy grail of 24-hour uptime.

The meat of the book is a series of targeted techniques for architecting a truly reliable system. Devraj looks at it all--from hardware to operating systems to internal configurations of Oracle and wise maintenance procedures. He does an excellent job of putting each topic in perspective with explanations of exactly what impact each strategy will have.

There's a plethora of useful information here. However, it is decidedly aimed at seasoned Oracle professionals. New Oracle users and administrators may find themselves lost, but more expert Oracle jockeys will be grateful for this material. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Hardware component selection, operating systems and network issues, application analysis, installation and configuration, upgrades, migrations, backup and recovery procedures, database maintenance, growth management, log interpretation, corruption identification, Oracle Parallel Server, advanced replication, and third-party solutions.