Niall,
This is a very kind, and I believe (maybe
it’s only hopeful belief) a very accurate depiction of what the book is. I
have read Hawking’s note to which you refer. Honestly, I included the
formulas for two reasons:
1)
To communicate the
relationships of trace lines to each other would have been virtually impossible
to do economically with words. I really don’t know how I would have done
it, since there are so many necessary references to the central e ~ c + sum(ela)
equation.
2)
In the queueing chapter,
I believe I needed to show people my work. Otherwise, I don’t know how
they could have confirmed or refuted my statements…
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Niall
Litchfield
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003
4:10 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
ORACLE-L
Subject: RE: Your new book
I also am
not Cary .....
I have however read Cary's book from cover to cover (including spending rather
too long on a romantic weekend in paris with my wife contemplating a 10046
trace parsing project :(). I Am rereading and intend to require my fellow DBAs
and sysadmins to read it. However to attempt to answer your questions.
Yes it is different from every other tuning book out there (though there is
*some* overlap with Christpher Lawson's 'the art and science of oracle
performance tuning'). The difference is exactly in the approach - the central
thesis of the book is (something like) that by utilizing well specified and
targeted extended sqltrace data for problem user actions the Oracle performance
analyst can quickly and efficiently resolve Oracle performance problems that
debilitate the business performance of Oracle based systems. This approach - to
target problem business processes, find out why they run slowly and optimize
them, is exactly what the RDBMS world needs (IMO).
In addition the method Cary and Jeff describe predicts when it will (and more
importantly) won't be of use.
Is it more readable than others? Here I do have some reservations. The first
and last third of the book are extremely readable, and the character and humour
of the authors shines through. The formal central section will put off
some (maybe a significant number) of readers though. Stephen Hawking in 'A
Brief History of Time' writes "Someone told me that each equation I put in
the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations
at all. In the end, however, I did
put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation E=mc�." Cary and Jeff have either
not been given this advice, or ignored it in the interests of accuracy. The
advantage that this gives is that the book has a formal methodology that puts
others to shame - the disadvantage is that folk look at pages filled with
equations full of queueing theory and Greek symbols and react badly. I hope
that the advice is wrong, but fear that it may not be.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
On
> Behalf Of Michael Milligan
> Sent: 21 October 2003 17:49
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: Your new book
>
>
> Cary,
>
> I don't mean to ask you to brag, but can you please tell me
> if your new book, of which I've heard good things, is
> different in any way than other Oracle Performance Tuning
> books out. Does it take a different approach? Does it teach
> different methodologies? Is it more readable? I'd be very
> interested in your own assessment. What did you try to
> accomplish with this book?
>
> TIA,
>
> Michael Milligan
> Oracle DBA
> Ingenix, Inc.
> 2525 Lake Park Blvd.
> Salt Lake City, Utah 84120
> wrk 801-982-3081
> mbl 801-628-6058
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