Ideal for those new to Oracle technology, this officially authorized guide teaches new DBAs the essentials of keeping anOracle database running at top performance. You'll get coverage of application, instance, database, I/O, OS, and contention tuning.

• For new Oracle DBAs, this is the only entry-level book on the market that teaches the essentials of keeping databases running at top performance.

• Covers releases 7.3 through 8i for NT, Linux, and Unix platforms.

• Presents core components of tuning Oracle databases in order of tuning priorities - most important/relevant issues up front.

• Topics are presented in a simple and easy-to-understand fashion.

• Provides practical, results-oriented methodology that can be understood by those new to Oracle databases.

• NEW "Myths & Folklore" feature sidebar element that contains a myth debunked and the expected performance gain measured in time or throughput.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Oracle Peformance Management

Chapter 2: The Method Behind the Madness

Chapter 3: Application Tuning: Issues that Concern a DBA

Chapter 4: Application Tuning: Tracking down Bad SQL

Chapter 5: Instance Tuning: Shared Pool Area

Chapter 6: Instance Tuning: Database Buffer Cache

Chapter 7: Instance Tuning: Redo Log Buffer & Everything Else

Chapter 8: Database Tuning

Chapter 9: Parallel Query Tuning

Chapter 10: Contention Tuning

Chapter 11: I/O Tuning

Chapter 12: O/S Tuning

Chapter 13: Wrapping It All Up

Appendix A: Glossary

Appendix B: Miscellaneous

Appendix C: References