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Oracle Performance Tuning Training Course Syllabus

© 2007-2023 by Donald K. Burleson

Introduction to Oracle Performance Tuning

This section introduces participants to a series of tuning steps that can be used to improve the performance of the Oracle Server. The focus is on database issues rather than specific operating system performance issues. Students will learn how to recognize, troubleshoot, and resolve common performance-related problems in administering an Oracle database.

Learning Objectives - After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Apply sound database design principles to ensure high performance
• Identify appropriate metrics and tuning goals for measuring and monitoring performance
• Identify the critical performance tuning steps
• Interpret Oracle alert files
• Use Oracle trace files
• Use Oracle utilities for performance tuning
• Use the V$ utilities for tuning
• Employ tuning techniques for different types of applications

Tuning the Oracle instance and objects

This section takes an in-depth look into the memory internals of the Oracle SGA. Students will learn how to identify and diagnose Oracle memory performance problems, including problems in the library cache, data buffer cache and data dictionary cache. Once students complete the second course, they’ll be able to handle any SGA-related slowdown, and will have a set of pre-written SQL scripts that they can use to quickly identify performance problems.

Learning Objectives - After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Tune the Oracle shared pool
• Tune the data buffer cache
• Tune Oracle rollback segments
• Tune Oracle redo mechanisms Monitor and detect lock contention
• Identify Oracle sort operations

This area will examine the behavior of the Oracle instance and look into the behavior of the Oracle background process and the SGA memory.           The topics for this section will include iterations of recommendations for changes to init.ora parameters, changes to redo log and rollback segments, and changes of physical file locations on disk.

Oracle Instance Tuning

This section will also explore how to measures changes to the SGA performance and how to document the performance improvements.  

• Redo Logs – This section to introduce the performance characteristics of the Oracle online and archived redo logs.  
• UNDO (Rollback) segments – This section explores the interaction between the Oracle rollback segments and the performance of the Oracle database.  
• Data Buffer management - Buffer management issues will include the performance of Oracle with various values of db_block_size and the proper settings for db_block_buffers. This section will also look at allocation of the DEFAULT, KEEP and RECYCLE pools.  
• Shared pool issues – This section will discuss the management of the components of the shared pool with a focus on the management of activity in the library cache.  
• Sorting issues – This section will describe the management of the sort_area_size parameter and how to determine the optimal setting for disk versus memory sorting.  
• Default SQL optimizer mode – This section will explore the optimizer_mode initialization parameter and how the default parameter can effect the database performance.  
• Miscellaneous Initialization parameters – Other init.ora parameters such as cursor_space_for_time will be discussed.  
• Concurrency Management - This will describe Oracle's serialization and locking schemes and show how to manage locks.

Oracle object tuning

This area will include recommendations relating to the creation of new indexes, removing migrated/chained rows and the re-sequencing of popular tables into index order to reduce I/O.             The focus will be on the tradeoff between efficient space management and high performance of select and insert SQL statements

• Oracle index internals – This section will explain the relative benefits for b-tree, bitmapped and function-based indexing.           This section will also explain how to analyze indexes to determine those indexes that require re-building.  
• Oracle replication – This section will explore Oracle replication and explain the ramifications of replication versus database links for distributed data.  
• Oracle segment internals – This includes the high-water make and the effect on full-tale scans after deletes. This section also includes a section on the pctused parameter and the effect on space re-use and the performance of subsequent insert statements. There will also be a discussion of pctfree and how pctfree can be used to avoid row chaining. The freelists parameter will also be discussed with respect to buffer busy waits, and the freelist_groups parameter will be discussed for Oracle parallel Server.  
• Object access patterns – A technique will be introduced to explain all of the SQL in the library cache. This technique is indispensable for identify long-table full-table scans, identifying small tables for caching.

Tuning Oracle Data access

This section takes an in-depth look into the concepts and skills needed to tune Oracle with SQL Students will learn about the broader issues of tuning with SQL, and then delve into tuning with the Optimizers, the Explain Plan Utility, Hints, and other tuning techniques. After completing this course, students will be able to tune all Oracle SQL and take the actions required to ensure optimal SQL performance.

Learning Objectives - After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Define the major features of Oracle SQL
• Tune using ANSI extensions
• Tune using the Explain Plan Utility
• Understand SQL Optimizer modes
• Tune using the rule-based optimizer
• Tune using the cost-based optimizer
• Tune using SQL hints

This area will examine all of the SQL within the Oracle library cache and determine the best opportunities for tuning of SQL. The focus on the SQL tuning will be to tune the most frequently executed statements first, and move down the list as time permits.           The areas for SQL tuning will be to optimize execution plans by removing unnecessary full-table scans, fully utilizing indexes, and implementing advanced hints to derive the optimal execution plan for each query. This may also involve replacing native SQL with PL/SQL procedures.           Tuning SQL statements using Oracle “hints” will be explained and techniques for testing SQL in a separate instance to determine the optimal execution plan and minimal run time will be explored.   

• Cost-based vs. Rule-based optimization – See the relative benefits of cost-based vs rule based optimization and see when to use rule and cost hints.
• Tuning with indexes – Learn a technique for identifying unnecessary full-table scans
• Tuning sub-queries –See the optimal execution plans for subqueries with the IN clause
• Tuning with hints – See the techniques for using the use_hash, use_aj and other important Oracle tuning hints.
• Tuning with Parallel query - This section describes how parallel query works, and how to best provide parallelism for Oracle.

Tuning the external environment

This section will teach students about external influences on Oracle performance, how to measure them, and how to ensure that the external environment is properly configured for Oracle. Students will learn how to take advantage of all the UNIX-based tools for monitoring, configuring, and tuning the external environment. The course also covers tuning issues related to the operating system, tuning for effective CPU usage, reorganizing tables to improve I/O performance and more.

The next section will focus on identifying and correcting external influences including RAM memory shortages, disk I/O bottlenecks, and CPU shortages. The external environment will be monitored using the vmstat and iostat utilities. This section will discuss the iterations of recommendations relating to environmental tuning such as OS dispatching priorities, swap space allocation, and other OS-specific issues.          

• vmstat utility – Interpreting the runque, page-in and the CPU metrics.
• iostat utility – Using the iostat utility to determine disk I/O access patterns and I/O bottlenecks.

This section will also includes an easy method for capturing environmental statistics inside Oracle tables for long-term analysis.

Learning Objectives - After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Define the major features of Oracle SQL
• Tune using ANSI extensions
• Tune using the Explain Plan Utility
• Understand SQL Optimizer modes
• Tune using the rule-based optimizer
• Tune using the cost-based optimizer
• Tune using SQL hints

Advanced Oracle Tuning Concepts

This section introduces students to advanced Oracle performance tuning tools and concepts associated with Oracle, and is designed to give students the skills to maximize the performance of their Oracle database.

Learning Objectives - After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Use data blocks efficiently to improve I/O performance
• Tune using the new Oracle Data Structures
• Use the Data Dictionary to monitor performance
• Define and use Oracle table and index partitions
• Tune with Oracle indexes for optimal performance
• Tune Oracle for Web Applications
• Describe and implement tuning techniques for Distributed Databases
• Tune the Oracle Parallel Server (OPS)

Prerequisites
In order to get the most from this course, students should have a basic understanding of the UNIX operating system, PL/SQL coding techniques, and the following Oracle database concepts:

• Oracle tables and tablespaces
• Oracle instances
• Oracle data dictionary

Please note that while the knowledge gained from this Oracle training may be valuable when preparing for Oracle certification exams, the content of this course is not for Oracle Certification, including the Certified Professional (OCP) or Oracle Certified Associate (OCA) programs.

Recommended Oracle Tuning book:

This course is designed for practicing Oracle professionals, Oracle developers and Systems Administrators professionals who have some basic experience with SQL statements. Prior experience with Oracle is not required, but experience using SQL with a relational database is highly desirable.

The goal of the Oracle Performance Tuning class is to provide a comprehensive toolkit to allow the DBA to quickly locate and tune a database workload.