Read an Excerpt

PREFACE:

Preface

Oracle has become the industry standard for large-scale relational database systems, and the release of Oracle8iTM has made more information available to database administrators (DBAs). This book helps tie together the pieces of essential knowledge that allow you to solve problems more quickly. When common problems and their solutions are discussed, background has been provided to assist the reader in understanding why it worked, as well as how to fix it. When I first started writing this book, I recalled my earliest experiences with Oracle and more specifically Oracle's documentation. A core of essential knowledge is required to obtain proper value from official documentation, and until that level of knowledge is achieved, it can be a difficult climb. As a first-time user of the documentation, I found myself with six volumes, all opened to separate pages. I had to read sections from all of them to get the complete picture. The explanation given in this book of Oracle terms and concepts can help you overcome the initial barrier to understanding and navigating the official documentation.

Audience of this Book

If you are an Oracle DBA, this book is for you. The title of DBA means different things to different people. Ask some of your colleagues what they consider to be the role of a DBA; responses may vary. Some view a DBA as a manager of objects and data within a database. This person is sometimes called an application DBA. Others think of a DBA as someone who looks after the database instance, setting up the initialization parameters and space management. All of these skills are often expected from a DBA. This book covers all of theseareas.

DBAs working in a development environment realize that many of the problems with software are found in the early stage of the software development life cycle. Chapters in this book cover the initial setup of a database, sizing new objects, and tuning the application and database instance.

This book is also a benefit to DBAs working in a production environment. Being able to set up every database correctly from the beginning is the preference of most DBAs. However, many production DBAs must administer databases set up by employees or consultants no longer with an organization. This book provides many health checks a DBA can perform when faced with a production database of unknown quantity. It also contains working scripts that can be run to diagnose problems experienced after changes to the database. Some software projects do not have the budget for a full-time DBA, and it often falls to senior developers to perform some DBA tasks. Developers finding themselves in such situations would benefit from this book. However, please note that this is not a resource for people wishing to develop applications in PL/SQL, Java/JDBC, or Pro*C.

How to Use this Book

This book is intended to be a solid reference. I regularly find that my colleagues, much like other Oracle resources, attempt to explain some technical details about Oracle but neglect to provide details on how this knowledge can be usefully applied. For this reason, I worked under the framework of the following three questions:

• What is it?
• Why is it important?
• How do I use it?

It is my hope that this approach will help the reader find the necessary information.

Most importantly, Oracle DBAs, whether beginners or experts, can all glean something from this book. Each chapter does attempt to stand on its own, serving as a true reference manual that allows the reader to refer directly to the correct information. Each topic is initially covered at an elementary level, but there is advanced coverage for more experienced users. The intention is that less experienced readers can get the information they need while still being able to broaden their knowledge as their experience with Oracle increases. Whatever your level of experience, this book attempts to give you room to grow.

The following areas are covered:

• Chapters 1 through 4: DBMS Concepts, Administration, Sizing, and Configuration
• Chapter 5: Monitoring
• Chapters 6 and 7: Application and Database Tuning
• Chapter 8: New Features

Further Information

The 30 volumes of official Oracle manuals often discourage users. However, it is strongly recommended that any serious user purchase the Oracle Documentation CD-ROM. It is affordably priced and can be purchased separately or as part of the standard Oracle8iTM distribution. Having access to the official documentation is not a prerequisite to using this book; it does, however, complement the topics covered.

When tackling a subject as expansive as Oracle8iTM, there is always a trade-off between covering topics sufficiently, in a manner that is useful to the reader, and not creating a mammoth reference that becomes inaccessible to much of its intended audience. Justice cannot be done to topics like Parallel Server, Networking, and Backup and Recovery in a single chapter; each subject matter deserves its own book. For this reason, they are not covered here. However, a separate manual for each topic is available from Oracle and can offer plenty of insight for those wanting to know more.

Read More