The Application DBA

Experience has led to the realization that it is the role of the application DBA that provides the best chance for designing and creating well performing applications. Systems that perform well are designed that way and are equipped with the tools to allow the performance architect to quickly gather the information necessary to identify problems when they occur. We believe that the only way to do that is to get the application developer involved early in the performance process.

Oracle Logging Framework

Just released, the first version of the Oracle Logging Framework is now available on SourceForge here. More information can be found here at AppsDBA.com.

Oracle Instrumentation

Check out the AppsDBA paper Oracle Instrumentation. This is the original version. An edited version appeared in the IOUG SELECT Journal in the first quarter of 2009.

Trace File Event Timeline

The AppsDBA Interval Resource Profiler now includes the ability to create a trace file event timeline. The technique is described in more detail in blog posts starting here. This is a new technique that creates a graph of the events in a trace file grouped in approximately equal intervals. The advantage of this technique is to allow the visualization of event skew within a trace file. This may help illustrate scoping problems or event skew that might otherwise be hidden by the profile summary.

The new utility is a perl script called resource_event.pl. It requires the perl GD module, but a CSV file can also be created that can be imported into Excel for more sophisticated graphing.

"Conventional wisdom is opinion that has been repeated enough over time to become accepted as fact. While sometimes it can be fact, most times it is not." - Tom House, The Picture Perfect Pitcher, 2003