Contents
CHAPTER 1 Developing Successful Oracle Applications
How (and How Not) to Develop Database Applications
Understanding Oracle Architecture
Understanding Concurrency Control
"How Do I Make It Run Faster?"
The DBA-Developer Relationship
CHAPTER 2 Architecture Overview
Defining Database and Instance
The SGA and Background Processes
Mechanics of Connecting over TCP/IP
Legacy init.ora Parameter Files
Server Parameter Files (SPFILEs)
Trace Files Generated in Response to Internal Errors
A Brief Review of File System Mechanisms
The Storage Hierarchy in an Oracle Database
Dictionary-Managed and Locally-Managed Tablespaces
The Process Global Area and User Global Area
Automatic PGA Memory Management
Choosing Between Manual and Auto Memory Management
Automatic SGA Memory Management
Dedicated Server vs. Shared Server
Dedicated/Shared Server Wrap-Up
CHAPTER 6 Locking and Latching
Optimistic or Pessimistic Locking?
Manual Locking and User-Defined Locks
CHAPTER 7 Concurrency and Multi-Versioning
What Are Concurrency Controls?
Implications of Multi-Version Read Consistency
A Common Data Warehousing Technique That Fails
An Explanation for Higher Than Expected I/O on Hot Tables
Consistent Reads and Current Reads
Why Is a Restart Important to Us?
Transaction Control Statements
Integrity Constraints and Transactions
DEFERRABLE Constraints and Cascading Updates
How Autonomous Transactions Work
When to Use Autonomous Transactions
How Redo and Undo Work Together
Example INSERT-UPDATE-DELETE Scenario
Commit and Rollback Processing
Redo Generation and BEFORE/AFTER Triggers
Can I Turn Off Redo Log Generation?
Why Can't I Allocate a New Log?
Temporary Tables and Redo/Undo
What Generates the Most and Least Undo?
ORA-01555: snapshot too old Error
Index Organized Tables Wrap-Up
Index Clustered Tables Wrap-Up
When Should You Use a B*Tree Index?
When Should You Use a Bitmap Index?
Important Implementation Details
A Simple Function-Based Index Example
Indexing Only Some of the Rows
Implementing Selective Uniqueness
Function-Based Indexes Wrap-Up
Frequently Asked Questions and Myths About Indexes
Do Nulls and Indexes Work Together?
Should Foreign Keys Be Indexed?
Why Isn't My Index Getting Used?
Myth: Space Is Never Reused in an Index
Myth: Most Discriminating Elements Should Be First
An Overview of Oracle Datatypes
Character and Binary String Types
BINARY_FLOAT/BINARY_DOUBLE Type Syntax and Usage
Restrictions on LONG and LONG RAW Types
DATE, TIMESTAMP, and INTERVAL Types
Enhanced Statement Performance
Table Partitioning Schemes Wrap-Up
Local Indexes vs. Global Indexes
Partitioning and Performance, Revisited
Auditing and Segment Space Compression
When to Use Parallel Execution
Parallel DDL and Data Loading Using External Tables
Parallel DDL and Extent Trimming
CHAPTER 15 Data Loading and Unloading