The number of blog views yesterday was the highest ever in a single day, so there might be a couple people interested that have not left a comment. I will see if there is a way that I can post the latest Beta version of my program to the blog in the next day or two.

I’d love to beta-test your application. We’ve been looking for a tool for performance tuning. OEM is helpful but can be a bit clunky. We’re currently running 10g but are upgrading to11g this summer.

Thanks,
Mark

The program only queries V$ performance views and not GV$ performance views, so that might create a bit of a challenge in a RAC environment.

Would be very interested in running this in a number of large PeopleSoft 11gR1/R2 RAC and Standalone environments.

Thanks,

Tony

having written a tool with some similar features (10046 trace file parser, snapper support, actual executions plans, etc. – see link on my name), I would love to try out your toy project!

Cheers,
Marcus

You might be able to test whether the program (hopefully) gracefully degrades when an older version of Oracle Database is encountered.

The original version of the program required configuration of ODBC connections to each database. That requirement was a hassle for some of the people who tested the first version that I allowed other people to use, so I switched to an OraOLEDB.Oracle connection. An unfortunate side effect of this change is that I was no longer able to log into the program as SYS AS SYSDBA for certain tasks such as accessing the X$ structures (specifically X$BH and the X$ structures needed for viewing the hidden initialization parameters). Setting the O7_DICTIONARY_ACCESSIBILITY parameter to TRUE will allow the program to connect as the SYS user (without AS SYSDBA), but doing so may represent a security risk.

The tool runs from a Windows client PC (XP with ADO 2.8+ installed, Vista, Windows 7 32/64 bit, Server 2003, Server 2008) and for some tasks, such as report generation, requires MIcrosoft Excel to be present on the PC (2000, XP, 2003, 2007, or 2010). The Windows interfaces need to be installed with the Oracle Client software, which should add the OraOLEDB functionality. The program writes nothing to the Oracle database that is monitored, although it might try to automatically adjust the MAX_DUMP_FILE_SIZE parameter if you attempt to enable a 10046 trace using the program, and the program senses that the MAX_DUMP_FILE_SIZE parameter is set far too small (installing the program is a matter of putting 2 files in a folder on the client computer). The user that logs into the program will need proper permissions to access the various V$ views and also access the various packages that enable 10046/10053 traces. Everything that is logged is written to a C:\OracleLog folder on the client computer, and unfortunately that likely means that User Access Control in Vista and Windows 7 will either need to be turned down or turned off completely.

One of the goals of the program was to assemble the various statistics from the different V$ views into a meaningful format that permits cross-analysis of the statistics from the different performance views. There are some non-performance tuning related areas of the program – the data dictionary reference that the program creates in Excel could be quite helpful. You can see some of the program’s other capabilities here:
http://hoopercharles.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/toy-project-for-performance-tuning/
http://hoopercharles.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/toy-project-for-performance-tuning-2/

The 10046 trace file parser is still a bit stuck in the land of Oracle Database 8.1 – it still expects to find p1, p2, and p3 on WAIT event lines if the Table and Object Lookup option is selected for trace file parsing (and for certain wait event analysis). Later versions of Oracle Database emitted obj parameters on the WAIT lines, and I believe that my program will use that obj value rather than trying to look up the OBJECT_ID value using the p1, p2, and p3 parameters. The 10046 trace file parser performs a trick to handle the extremely long cursor numbers found in Oracle Database 11.2.0.2 and later.

What I tried to do is to make everything in the program work with Oracle Database 10.2, and (hopefully) gracefully degrade when an older version of Oracle Database is encountered.

Logging of database performance is scriptable. The documentation from 2008 includes the following command line parameters to enable scripting:

-LC 20   Specifies Force a Log Capture when CPU Usage Exceeds value to 20%
-LI 30   Specifies Force a Log Capture if No Log Captured in Minutes value to 30 minutes
-LB   Specifies the Force a Log Capture when a Blocking Lock is Detected value to checked
-LW   Specifies the Force a Log Capture when a Wait Reason is Detected value to checked
-LR   Specifies the Capture SQL Execution Statistics for Wait Reasons value to checked
-LD   Specifies the Capture Segment Change Statistics value to checked
-LO   Specifies the Capture Operating System and Time Model Statistics value to checked
-LH   Specifies the Capture High Load SQL Statement Statistics value to checked
-LT   Specifies the Capture High Load SQL Statement Text value to checked
-LP   Specifies the Capture High Load SQL Statement Plan value to checked
-LHC 60   Species the minimum CPU time that is considered high load to 60 seconds accum.
-LHE 90   Species the minimum elapsed time that is considered high load to 90 seconds accum.
-LS   Specifies that Smart Logging should begin as soon as the login completes
-LE 240   Specifies that Smart Logging should end after 240 minutes
-LQ   Specifies that the program should quit (end) when logging ends
-D   The Database instance SID to which the program should connect.
-U   The user name to be used for connecting to the database instance.
-P   The password to be used for connecting to the database instance.

Thanks for the comment.

Great to hear from you again, and to see that you are following this blog. Also good to see that you are continuing to pursue deepening of various skills – those attributes will certainly pay off in the future. How is the reading of that Tom Kyte book coming along?