Hotsos for DBAs and Performance Analysts
Got Performance Problems?
One of the most difficult jobs for many DBAs is to respond to system performance crises. You may not know it yet, but one of the reasons it's so hard to fix performance problems is that you've been trained to look for them in the wrong places.
Your system’s performance problems aren’t where you might think they are.
What if you could learn a repeatable, scientific approach for finding and fixing performance problems that works every time? You'd cut your diagnosis time to a fraction of what it is today. You'd increase your management's confidence in your recommendations about how to invest into your system.
Hotsos can show you how.
Want to Be a Hero?
Most of the Oracle systems we look at work about twice as hard as they need to. The way most Oracle database administrators and performance analysts have been trained actually stimulates the problem.
What if you could identify and eliminate inefficiencies that would free up 50% of your systems' capacity? You'd make your applications faster for everyone. Your department could postpone your next hardware upgrade, and you might be able to avoid migrating your application to a costlier, more complex architecture. You might be able to save license fees by consolidating your applications onto fewer servers.
Hotsos can show you how.
Typical Problems
Hotsos can help you solve problems like the following:
“My users keep complaining about system performance, but all my system performance metrics look great. How can I fix the problems they're talking about?”
“I know what the performance problem is, but my boss is headed in a different direction. How can I convince him beyond the shadow of a doubt that I'm going the right way?”
“I'm sick of tuning by trial and error. Where can I find a repeatable, scientific approach for finding and fixing performance problems that works every time?”
“The business keeps telling me that an application needs to run faster, but I can't think of any way to make it happen on our existing system. How can I prove when it's time to upgrade our hardware?”
“We're consolidating servers, but I don't think we have enough hardware to handle all our workload. What can we do?”
The Solution
The solution begins with a simple realization:
Databases don't have performance problems, people do.
You've probably been taught by “experts” that to optimize an Oracle database, you have to create complicated conceptual models that integrate dozens of statistics about how efficiently different components of your system are responding to their input. But, as you've noticed, it is intensely difficult to do your job this way. In many cases, it may be impossible.
The right way to optimize the performance of an Oracle system is the way you optimize the performance of anything else. You answer the simple question, “What's taking so long?”
It sounds easy, and it is. ...After you unlearn and relearn a few things about how the Oracle kernel really works. That's where we come in.
How Hotsos Can Help
Hotsos offers the following products and services to help you solve problems faster and more permanently than you've ever imagined. Better yet, we can help you prevent them from happening in the first place:
Our new book, Optimizing Oracle Performance, describes why and how to measure end-to-end user response time as the basis of your performance improvement projects. Part I even describes the method in a language designed for your boss to appreciate.
Hotsos Symposium provides a rare opportunity to spend a few days with performance specialists like Tom Kyte, Jonathan Lewis, Cary Millsap, Mogens Nørgaard, and many others.
Our Performance Diagnosis I course can teach you how to diagnose and repair exactly the performance problem your end-users are fighting today.
The Hotsos Profiler can save days per project by doing the heavy lifting work of analyzing huge, complicated Oracle SQL trace data, a step that forms the backbone of response-time based performance improvement methods.
Many application performance problems require manipulation of application SQL as a repair step. Our SQL Optimization I course provides a solid foundation for a database administrator who needs to be able to help application developers optimize their SQL.
Laredo is software that helps you find performance problems before your users do. By recording execution plans for all your system's SQL, Laredo can tell you about any unintended side-effects that your proposed remedy action may inflict upon your users. Don't ever sweat dropping an index again.
If you get stuck on a problem, or if you just want a second opinion, we offer consulting services designed to give you the maximum impact for the smallest possible investment in time.
References
Here are a few nice things that our customers have had to say about working with us:
The day after I returned to work from the Hotsos Clinic, I reduced the response time of a query from 44 minutes to 0.41 seconds. The Clinic completely changed my view of tuning the database.
—Nagesh Pillarisetti, Schaumburg Illinois
The first time I used it, Hotsos Profiler helped me reduce the run time of a query from 6½ hours to less than 11 seconds.
—Guðmundur Jósepsson, Index Software Solutions & Consulting
Laredo has helped us find and fix SQL performance issues before shipping software upgrades to our customers, saving us untold support hours.
—John Schmidt, McKesson Corporation
