Dropping ACID

Posted by & filed under Data Architecture, Database Engineering, Mongodb, MySQL, Oracle.

The de-facto durability story in MongoDB is essentially… there is none. Or at least single server durability. OMFG! No ACID WTF! &^%#^#?! For the next generation of internet scale, downtime intolerant systems, ACID may not be a desirable property. Traditional data stores like Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL all have a durability design built in. They… Read more »

Backing up Oracle optimizer statistics

Posted by & filed under Oracle.

Oracle 10g has some neat features for keeping track of old statistics. Pre-10g It used to be important to backup your statistics before you analyzed a table just in case your plans went crazy. Now Oracle does this for you automatically. There is a great post on Doug’s Oracle Blog that talks about this with some examples…. Read more »

Performance Tuning: Be Proactive

Posted by & filed under Oracle.

I see many articles out there talking about performance tuning using the Oracle waits interface. While I am not contending that technique; I believe it to be sound, and use this technique every day. What I am saying, is performance tuning in this manner, or the ‘traditional’ manner, is inherently reactive. Reactive performance tuning has… Read more »

Using Statspack Effectively

Posted by & filed under Oracle.

Statspack has been around since Oracle 8.1.5 and many DBAs regularly use it to diagnose and troubleshoot problems. Most of the time the stock report ($ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/spreport.sql) is what is used. While good, this report only shows a snapshot of the performance at a given place in time. Sure one could run multiple reports and then… Read more »