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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent book!! October 23, 2012 Reviewer: Dhanesh from SFO, CA   I’m working as an Oracle Performance Engineer for an Indian IT major. I first came to know about Craig’s book from an excellent review written by Coskan Gundogar on his blog. After reading his review I decided to add this book to my wish list. So when I came to United States on a short term engagement I ordered the book from OraPub website. I would say this book is one of the best oracle performance tuning books I have read so far. Believe me, I have a collection of oracle/Linux tuning books (Good, Bad and Ugly!!) but this book outshines most of them. I really loved the way he explained the oracle concepts, internals and algorithms in his book.  Chapters on Buffer cache and shared pool are excellent and very well written. I’m not saying it’s a perfect book, you may find some mistakes here and there but overall it’s a very well written and organized book.  Thanks Craig, great work!!! Was this review helpful to you?

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Book you must read October 23, 2012 Reviewer: Galina Matveeva from Bondi, NSW Australia   Your Oracle Performance Fire fighting book is awesome with info that cannot be get from anywhere else. Was this review helpful to you?

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Outstanding work April 27, 2012 Reviewer: vk from Germantown, MD United States   This book consolidates the essential internals in a very interesting style. The amount of insight provided is simply spectacular. I hope there will be a future edition that covers RAC also. Was this review helpful to you?

117 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

Information You Hardly Find Anywhere Else February 27, 2012 Reviewer: Anonymous Person from Berlin, Berlin Germany   As a Consultant with a focus on Oracle Troubleshooting I have used lots of the information from the book in practice. To appreciate the book, you need to be aware that, in many cases Oracle documentation and literature won't tell you how things are implemented. Few people explore Oracle functionalities the unconventional way. Some, including Craig Shallahamer, use software tools to understand what's exactly going on. Craig also uses the brilliant technique to read through Oracle Patents. Where else would you find details about mutexes, how they differ to latches and what positive or disastrous impact they can have? Who else explains the touch count algorithm in detail? Where, except in the Firefighting book, can one find a detailed explanation of In Memory Undo. Who even knew IMU existed before Craig Shallahamer explained it? Where else do you find information about cache buffer chains and their implementation? Thank you Craig, you saved me months of research. Was this review helpful to you?

152 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

Breathtaking book February 27, 2012 Reviewer: Lazar Nakinov from Frankfurt am Main, Hessen Germany   The best and most technical book I have ever read about Oracle Performance. By the way it's written you can tell than Craig is telling a story of his life. In my 7+ years of professional Oracle DBA carrier I have seen many books related to performance, but none of them matches this one. Its contents are so consolidated and in depth explained, that literally took me hours to read it. There is no other place on the net that in 400+ pages covers brilliant "problem-solution" approach for problems that many database administrators are facing in real life. All chapters are amazing, but my favorite one is the chapter for buffer cache internals; pure art! But Craig goes even beyond that; he strives to convert Oracle centric terminology into a simplified & summarized performance representation using ORTA which is clearly understandable by non technical personnel. After reading this book I was able to determine my system response time and to exactly pin point areas where tuning can be improved. Was this review helpful to you?

123 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

A great book... February 27, 2012 Reviewer: Adrian Sperlea from Hamburg, Hamburg Germany   This book help me to think about oracle and not just read about it, in documentation, white papers, opinions, etc..... Many time i was just confused when i read about pinning, LRU, MRU, latches, buckets...... This book has the quality, for the first time in my case to present complex alghorithms in a very direct and in a pedagogical way. I am working with Oracle for many years and i wished to have the chance and read such a book years ago... I remember many years of guessing and looking at Oracle with fears and treating it like a black box. This book changed my way of thinking and burst my knowledge and capabilities in working with Oracle. I recommend it to any Oracle professional which tries to understand what happened inside the box and not just using it. it presents concepts and helps a lot in learning you how to think and solve yourself the problems in the future with a solid background in maths and statistics.... Was this review helpful to you?

127 of 127 people found the following review helpful:

One of three books that is ALWAYS open on my desk February 27, 2012 Reviewer: Dwayne King from Ottawa, ON Canada   I tend to choose my books fairly carefully.  With the amount of information that is out there on the web for free, there's a lot more competition for my training dollars. I had been reading whitepapers by Craig (OraPub) online for years, and was lucky enough to attend a course he ran in Toronto a few years ago - it was easily the best money I had ever spent. This book really opened my eyes to a lot of the internals that determine how much performance you're going to be able to squeeze out of your database.  Many "Rules of thumb" are explained (or disproved).  If you've read any of Tom Kyte's books or postings you it's a similar style. All conclusions are based on real math and performance is explained in a way that both makes sense, and can be experimentally proven.  You are walked through each step in identifying, classifying, and resolving the most common performance problems you'll see. I have bought this book for myself, and several of my customers. Was this review helpful to you?

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

Thanks ... February 27, 2012 Reviewer: jagodeugrlu from Belgrade,Serbia   I have long searching for a clear word and finally I succeeded. This is an amazing book, written in perfect style. Craig thank you for all your effort, thank you for this wonderful book. Thanks for every word that echoes in eternity. Wonderful work, God bless you. Was this review helpful to you?

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

Unique information and clarity February 27, 2012 Reviewer: Sigrid Keydana from München, Bayern Germany   This book is unique: the way it vividly illustrates the design of central Oracle features, it gives you an understanding of how Oracle really works, what all those fuzzy every-day terms really mean... For example, when describing the library cache, Craig clearly distinguishes between a cursor's handle and its associated information in the SGA. Based on this distinction, he defines terms like "load", "session cached cursors" etc. in a way that gives these terms a clearly defined meaning, something I wasn't able to find anywhere in the documentation. Needless to say, such concreteness and clarity of understanding open up a whole new approach to instance tuning. This feeling you get for the way Oracle works is what striked me the most - but there's so much more to this book: it contains the most concise and to-the-point guideline of how to diagnose Oracle performance, from dynamic views to operating system analysis. In sum, it's just perfect in its information-to-pages ratio! Was this review helpful to you?

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

A book packed with really useful information February 27, 2012 Reviewer: Magnus Johansson from Gothenburg Sweden   I found this book very useful and recommend it highly. The information has been very useful to me. I have been able to understand why certain scenarios are seen. I also know how to analyze and fix them. Craig has a very easy language and excellent way of explaining technical details. Which I also experienced in his class. Was this review helpful to you?