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Oracle9i Database Performance Tuning Guide and Reference
Release 2 (9.2)

Part Number A96533-02
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22
Instance Tuning

After the initial configuration of a database, tuning an instance is important to eliminate any performance bottlenecks.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Performance Tuning Principles

Performance tuning requires a different, although related, method to the initial configuration of a system. Configuring a system involves allocating resources in an ordered manner so that the initial system configuration is functional.

Tuning is driven by identifying the most significant bottleneck and making the appropriate changes to reduce or eliminate the effect of that bottleneck. Usually, tuning is performed reactively, either while the system is preproduction or after it is live.


Note:

Before using this performance tuning reference, make sure you have read Oracle9i Database Performance Planning. Oracle Corporation has designed a new performance methodology, based on years of Oracle designing and performance experience. This brief book explains clear and simple activities that can dramatically improve system performance. It discusses the following topics:

  • Investment Options
  • Scalability
  • System Architecture
  • Application Design Principles
  • Workload Testing, Modeling, and Implementation
  • Deploying New Applications

Baselines

The most effective way to tune is to have an established performance baseline that can be used for comparison if a performance issue arises. Most DBAs know their system well and can easily identify peak usage periods. For example, the peak periods could be between 10.00am and 12.00pm and also between 1.30pm and 3.00pm. This could include a batch window of 12.00am midnight to 6am.

It is important to identify these high-load times at the site and install a monitoring tool that gathers performance data for those times. Optimally, data gathering should be configured from when the application is in its initial trial phase during the QA cycle. Otherwise, this should be configured when the system is first in production.


Note:

Oracle recommends using the Enterprise Manager (EM) Diagnostics Pack for systems monitoring and tuning due to its extended feature list. However, if your site does not have EM, then Statspack can be used to gather Oracle instance statistics.

For illustration purposes, a combination of Statspack report output and direct queries from the V$ views are used in examples, because they are available on all installations.


See Also:

Chapter 20, "Oracle Tools to Gather Database Statistics" for detailed information on Oracle instance performance tuning tools

Ideally, baseline data gathered should include the following:

The Symptoms and the Problems

A common pitfall in performance tuning is to mistake the symptoms of a problem for the actual problem itself. It is important to recognize that many performance statistics indicate the symptoms, and that identifying the symptom is not sufficient data to implement a remedy. For example:

When to Tune

There are two distinct types of tuning: proactive monitoring and bottleneck elimination.

Proactive Monitoring

Proactive monitoring usually occurs on a regularly scheduled interval, where a number of performance statistics are examined to identify whether the system behavior and resource usage has changed. Proactive monitoring also can be called proactive tuning.

Usually, monitoring does not result in configuration changes to the system, unless the monitoring exposes a serious problem that is developing. In some situations, experienced performance engineers can identify potential problems through statistics alone, although accompanying performance degradation is usual.

'Tweaking' a system when there is no apparent performance degradation as a proactive action can be a dangerous activity, resulting in unnecessary performance drops. Tweaking a system should be considered reactive tuning, and the steps for reactive tuning should be followed.

Monitoring is usually part of a larger capacity planning exercise, where resource consumption is examined to see the changes in the way the application is being used and the way the application is using the database and host resources.

Bottleneck Elimination: Tuning

Tuning usually implies fixing a performance problem. However, tuning should be part of the lifecycle of an application, through the analysis, design, coding, production, and maintenance stages. Many times, the tuning phase is left until the system is in production. At this time, tuning becomes a reactive fire-fighting exercise, where the most important bottleneck is identified and fixed.

Usually, the purpose for tuning is to reduce resource consumption or to reduce the elapsed time for an operation to complete. Either way, the goal is to improve the effective use of a particular resource. In general, performance problems are caused by the over-use of a particular resource. That resource is the bottleneck in the system. There are a number of distinct phases in identifying the bottleneck and the potential fixes. These are discussed in the sections that follow.

Remember that the different forms of contention are symptoms that can be fixed by making changes in the following places:

Often, the most effective way of resolving a bottleneck is to change the application.

Performance Tuning Steps

These are the main steps in the Oracle Performance Method:

  1. Get candid feedback from users about the scope of the performance problem. This step is to Define the Problem.
  2. Obtain a full set of operating system, database, and application statistics. Then Examine the Host System and Examine the Oracle Statistics for any evidence.
  3. Consider the list of common performance errors to see whether the data gathered suggests that they are contributing to the problem.
  4. Build a conceptual model of what is happening on the system using the performance data gathered.
  5. Propose changes to be made and the expected result of implementing the changes. Then, Implement and Measure Change in application performance.
  6. Determine whether the performance objective defined in step 1 has been met. If not, then repeat steps 5 and 6 until the performance goals are met.

    See Also:

    Oracle9i Database Performance Planning for a list of common errors and for a theoretical description of this performance method

The remainder of this chapter covers the steps of the Oracle performance method in detail.

Define the Problem

It is vital to develop a good understanding of the purpose of the tuning exercise and the nature of the problem before attempting to implement a solution. Without this understanding, it is virtually impossible to implement effective changes. The data gathered during this stage helps determine the next step to take and what evidence to examine.

Gather the following data:

  1. Identify the performance objective.

    What is the measure of acceptable performance? How many transactions an hour, or seconds, response time will meet the required performance level?

  2. Identify the scope of the problem.

    What is affected by the slowdown? For example, is the whole instance slow? Is it a particular application, program, specific operation, or a single user?

  3. Identify the time frame when the problem occurs.

    Is the problem only evident during peak hours? Does performance deteriorate over the course of the day? Was the slowdown gradual (over the space of months or weeks) or sudden?

  4. Quantify the slowdown.

    This helps identify the extent of the problem and also acts as a measure for comparison when deciding whether changes implemented to fix the problem have actually made an improvement. Find a consistently reproducible measure of the response time or job run time. How much worse are the timings than when the program was running well?

  5. Identify any changes.

    Identify what has changed since performance was acceptable. This may narrow the potential cause quickly. For example, has the operating system software, hardware, application software, or Oracle release been upgraded? Has more data been loaded into the system, or has the data volume or user population grown?

At the end of this phase, you should have a good understanding of the symptoms. If the symptoms can be identified as local to a program or set of programs, then the problem is handled in a different manner than instance-wide performance issues.

See Also:

Chapter 6, "Optimizing SQL Statements" for information on solving performance problems specific to an application or user

Examine the Host System

Look at the load on the database server, as well as the database instance. Consider the operating system, the I/O subsystem, and network statistics, because examining these areas helps determine what might be worth further investigation. In multitier systems, also examine the application server middle-tier hosts.

Examining the host hardware often gives a strong indication of the bottleneck in the system. This determines which Oracle performance data could be useful for cross-reference and further diagnosis.

Data to examine includes the following:

CPU Usage

If there is a significant amount of idle CPU, then there could be an I/O, application, or database bottleneck. Note that wait I/O should be considered as idle CPU.

If there is high CPU usage, then determine whether the CPU is being used effectively. Is the majority of CPU usage attributable to a small number of high-CPU using programs, or is the CPU consumed by an evenly distributed workload?

If the CPU is used by a small number of high-usage programs, then look at the programs to determine the cause.

Non-Oracle Processes

If the programs are not Oracle programs, then identify whether they are legitimately requiring that amount of CPU. If so, then can their execution can be delayed to off-peak hours?

Oracle Processes

If a small number of Oracle processes consumes most of the CPU resources, then use SQL_TRACE and TKPROF to identify the SQL or PL/SQL statements to see if a particular query or PL/SQL program unit can be tuned. For example, a SELECT statement could be CPU-intensive if its execution involves many reads of data in cache (logical reads) that could be avoided with better SQL optimization.

Oracle CPU Statistics

Oracle CPU statistics are available in three V$ views:

Interpreting CPU Statistics

It is important to recognize that CPU time and real time are distinct. With eight CPUs, for any given minute in real time, there are eight minutes of CPU time available. On NT and UNIX, this can be either user time or system time (privileged mode on NT). Thus, average CPU time utilized by all processes (threads) on the system could be greater than one minute for every one minute real time interval.

At any given moment, you know how much time Oracle has used on the system. So, if eight minutes are available and Oracle uses four minutes of that time, then you know that 50% of all CPU time is used by Oracle. If your process is not consuming that time, then some other process is. Identify the processes that are using CPU time, figure out why, and then attempt to tune them.

See Also:

Chapter 10, "Using SQL Trace and TKPROF"

If the CPU usage is evenly distributed over many Oracle server processes, then examine the Statspack report for other evidence.

Detecting I/O Problems

An overly active I/O system can be evidenced by disk queue lengths greater than two, or disk service times that are over 20-30ms. If the I/O system is overly active, then check for potential hot spots that could benefit from distributing the I/O across more disks. Also identify whether the load can be reduced by lowering the resource requirements of the programs using those resources.

Use operating system monitoring tools to determine what processes are running on the system as a whole and to monitor disk access to all files. Remember that disks holding datafiles and redo log files can also hold files that are not related to Oracle. Reduce any heavy access to disks that contain database files. Access to non-Oracle files can be monitored only through operating system facilities, rather than through the V$ views.

Tools, such as sar -d (or iostat) on many UNIX systems and Performance Monitor on Windows 2000 systems, examine I/O statistics for the entire system.

See Also:

Your operating system documentation for the tools available on your platform

Check the Oracle wait event data in V$SYSTEM_EVENT to see whether the top wait events are I/O related. I/O related events include db file sequential read, db file scattered read, db file single write, and db file parallel write. These are all events corresponding to I/Os performed against the data file headers, control files, or data files. If any of these wait events correspond to high average time, then investigate the I/O contention.

Cross reference the host I/O system data with the I/O sections in the Statspack report to identify hot datafiles and tablespaces. Also compare the I/O times reported by the operating system with the times reported by Oracle to see if they are consistent.

Before investigating whether the I/O system should be reconfigured, determine if the load on the I/O system can be reduced. To reduce Oracle I/O load, look at SQL statements that perform many physical reads by querying the V$SQLAREA view or by reviewing the 'SQL ordered by physical reads' section of the Statspack report. Examine these statements to see how they can be tuned to reduce the number of I/Os.

If there are Oracle-related I/O problems caused by SQL statements, then tune them. If the Oracle server is not consuming the available I/O resources, then identify the process that is using up the I/O. Determine why the process is using up the I/O, and then tune this process.

See Also:

Network

Using operating system utilities, look at the network round-trip ping time and the number of collisions. If the network is causing large delays in response time, then investigate possible causes.

Network load can be reduced by scheduling large data transfers to off-peak times, or by coding applications to batch requests to remote hosts, rather than accessing remote hosts once (or more) for one request.

See Also:

Oracle9i Database Performance Planning for a description of important operating system statistics

Examine the Oracle Statistics

Oracle statistics should be examined and cross-referenced with-operating system statistics to ensure a consistent diagnosis of the problem. operating-system statistics can indicate a good place to begin tuning. However, if the goal is to tune the Oracle instance, then look at the Oracle statistics to identify the resource bottleneck from Oracle's perspective before implementing corrective action.

See Also:

"Interpreting Oracle Statistics"

Setting the Level of Statistics Collection

Oracle9i Release 2 (9.2) provides the initialization parameter STATISTICS_LEVEL, which controls all major statistics collections or advisories in the database. This parameter sets the statistics collection level for the database.

Depending on the setting of STATISTICS_LEVEL, certain advisories and statistics are collected, as follows:

BASIC: No advisories or statistics are collected.

TYPICAL: The following advisories or statistics are collected:

ALL: All of the preceding advisories or statistics are collected, plus the following:

The default level is TYPICAL. STATISTICS_LEVEL is a dynamic parameter and can be altered at the system or the session level.

When modified by ALTER SYSTEM, all advisories or statistics in the preceding list are dynamically turned on or off, depending on the new value of STATISTICS_LEVEL.

When modified by ALTER SESSION, only the following advisories or statistics are turned on or off in the local session only. Their system-wide state is not changed.

V$STATISTICS_LEVEL

This view lists the status of the statistics or advisories controlled by STATISTICS_LEVEL.


Note:

Timed statistics are automatically collected for the database if the initialization parameter STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to TYPICAL or ALL. If STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to BASIC, then you must set TIMED_STATISTICS to TRUE to enable collection of timed statistics.

If you explicitly set DB_CACHE_ADVICE, TIMED_STATISTICS, or TIMED_OS_STATISTICS, either in the initialization parameter file or by using ALTER_SYSTEM or ALTER SESSION, the explicitly set value overrides the value derived from STATISTICS_LEVEL.


See Also:

"V$STATISTICS_LEVEL" for column details of this view

The following sections discuss the common Oracle data sources used while tuning. The sources can be divided into two types of statistics: wait events and system statistics.

Wait Events

Wait events are statistics that are incremented by a server process/thread to indicate that it had to wait for an event to complete before being able to continue processing. Wait event data reveals various symptoms of problems that might be impacting performance, such as latch contention, buffer contention, and I/O contention. Remember that these are only symptoms of problems--not the actual causes.

A server process can wait for the following:

Wait event statistics include the number of times an event was waited for and the time waited for the event to complete. The views V$SESSION_WAIT, V$SESSION_EVENT, and V$SYSTEM_EVENT can be queried for wait event statistics. If the configuration parameter TIMED_STATISTICS is set to true, then you can also see how long each resource was waited for. To minimize user response time, reduce the time spent by server processes waiting for event completion. Not all wait events have the same wait time. Therefore, it is more important to examine events with the most total time waited rather than wait events with a high number of occurrences. Usually, it is best to set the dynamic parameter TIMED_STATISTICS to true at least while monitoring performance.


Note:

Timed statistics are automatically collected for the database if the initialization parameter STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to TYPICAL or ALL. If STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to BASIC, then you must set TIMED_STATISTICS to TRUE to enable collection of timed statistics.

If you explicitly set DB_CACHE_ADVICE, TIMED_STATISTICS, or TIMED_OS_STATISTICS, either in the initialization parameter file or by using ALTER_SYSTEM or ALTER SESSION, the explicitly set value overrides the value derived from STATISTICS_LEVEL.


See Also:

"Setting the Level of Statistics Collection" for information about STATISTICS_LEVEL settings

Investigate wait events and related timing data when performing reactive performance tuning. The events with the most time listed against them are often strong indications of the performance bottleneck. For example, by looking at V$SYSTEM_EVENT, you might notice lots of buffer busy waits. It might be that many processes are inserting into the same block and must wait for each other before they can insert. The solution could be to introduce freelists for the object in question.

See Also:

See Wait Events for a description of the differences between the views V$SESSION_WAIT, V$SESSION_EVENT, and V$SYSTEM_EVENT

System Statistics

System statistics are typically used in conjunction with wait event data to find further evidence of the cause of a performance problem.

For example, if V$SYSTEM_EVENT indicates that the largest wait event (in terms of wait time) is the event buffer busy waits, then look at the specific buffer wait statistics available in the view V$WAITSTAT to see which block type has the highest wait count and the highest wait time. After the block type has been identified, also look at V$SESSION_WAIT real-time while the problem is occurring to identify the contended-for object(s) using the file number and block number indicated. The combination of this data indicates the appropriate corrective action.

Statistics are available in many V$ views. Some common views include the following:

V$SYSSTAT

This contains overall statistics for many different parts of Oracle, including rollback, logical and physical I/O, and parse data. Data from V$SYSSTAT is used to compute ratios, such as the buffer cache hit ratio.

V$FILESTAT

This contains detailed file I/O statistics for each file, including the number of I/Os for each file and the average read time.

V$ROLLSTAT

This contains detailed rollback and undo segment statistics for each segment.

V$ENQUEUE_STAT

This contains detailed enqueue statistics for each enqueue, including the number of times an enqueue was requested and the number of times an enqueue was waited for, and the wait time.

V$LATCH

This contains detailed latch usage statistics for each latch, including the number of times each latch was requested and the number of times the latch was waited for.

See Also:

Chapter 24, "Dynamic Performance Views for Tuning" for detailed descriptions of the V$ views used in tuning

Segment-Level Statistics

With Oracle9i Release 2 (9.2) and higher, you can gather segment-level statistics to help you spot performance problems associated with individual segments. Collecting and viewing segment-level statistics is a good way to effectively identify the hot table or index in an instance.

After viewing wait events or system statistics to identify the performance problem, you can use segment-level statistics to find specific tables or indexes that are causing the problem. Consider, for example, that V$SYSTEM_EVENT indicates that buffer busy waits cause a fair amount of wait time. You can select from V$SEGMENT_STATISTICS the top segments that cause the buffer busy waits. Then you can focus your effort on eliminating the problem in those segments.

You can query segment-level statistics through the following dynamic performance views:

Implement and Measure Change

Often at the end of a tuning exercise, it is possible to identify two or three changes that could potentially alleviate the problem. To identify which change provides the most benefit, it is recommended that only one change be implemented at a time. The effect of the change should measured against the baseline data measurements found in the problem definition phase.

Typically, most sites with dire performance problems implement a number of overlapping changes at once, and thus cannot identify which changes provided any benefit. Although this is not immediately an issue, this becomes a significant hindrance if similar problems subsequently appear, because it is not possible to know which of the changes provided the most benefit and which efforts to prioritize.

If it is not possible to implement changes separately, then try to measure the effects of dissimilar changes. For example, measure the effect of making an initialization change to optimize redo generation separately from the effect of creating a new index to improve the performance of a modified query. It is impossible to measure the benefit of performing an operating system upgrade if SQL is tuned, the operating system disk layout is changed, and the initialization parameters are also changed at the same time.

Performance tuning is an iterative process. It is unlikely to find a 'silver bullet' that solves an instance-wide performance problem. In most cases, excellent performance requires iteration through the performance tuning phases, because solving one bottleneck often uncovers another (sometimes worse) problem.

Knowing when to stop tuning is also important. The best measure of performance is user perception, rather than how close the statistic is to an ideal value.

Interpreting Oracle Statistics

Gather statistics that cover the time when the instance had the performance problem. If you previously captured baseline data for comparison, then you can compare the current data to the data from the baseline that most represents the problem workload.

When comparing two reports, ensure that the two reports are from times where the system was running comparable workloads.

See Also:

"Principles of Data Gathering"

Examine Load

Usually, wait events are the first data examined. However, if you have a baseline report, then check to see if the load has changed. Regardless of whether you have a baseline, it is useful to see whether the resource usage rates are high.

Load-related statistics to examine include redo size, session logical reads, db block changes, physical reads, physical writes, parse count (total), parse count (hard), and user calls. This data is queried from V$SYSSTAT. It is best to normalize this data over seconds and over transactions.

In the Statspack report, look at the Load Profile section. The data has been normalized over transactions and over seconds.

Changing Load

The load profile statistics over seconds show the changes in throughput (that is, whether the instance is performing more work each second). The statistics over transactions identify changes in the application characteristics by comparing these to the corresponding statistics from the baseline report.

High Rates of Activity

Examine the statistics normalized over seconds to identify whether the rates of activity are very high. It is difficult to make blanket recommendations on high values, because the thresholds are different on each site and are contingent on the application characteristics, the number and speed of CPUs, the operating system, the I/O system, and the Oracle release.

The following are some generalized examples (acceptable values vary at each site):

Using Wait Event Statistics to Drill Down to Bottlenecks

Whenever an Oracle process waits for something, it records the wait using one of a set of predefined wait events. (See V$EVENT_NAME for a list of all wait events.) Some of these events are termed idle events, because the process is idle, waiting for work to perform. Non-idle events indicate nonproductive time spent waiting for a resource or action to complete.


Note:

Not all symptoms can be evidenced by wait events. See "Additional Statistics" for the statistics that can be checked.


The most effective way to use wait event data is to order the events by the wait time. This is only possible if TIMED_STATISTICS is set to true. Otherwise, the wait events can only be ranked by the number of times waited, which is often not the ordering that best represents the problem.


Note:

Timed statistics are automatically collected for the database if the initialization parameter STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to TYPICAL or ALL. If STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to BASIC, then you must set TIMED_STATISTICS to TRUE to enable collection of timed statistics.

If you explicitly set DB_CACHE_ADVICE, TIMED_STATISTICS, or TIMED_OS_STATISTICS, either in the initialization parameter file or by using ALTER_SYSTEM or ALTER SESSION, the explicitly set value overrides the value derived from STATISTICS_LEVEL.


See Also:

"Setting the Level of Statistics Collection" for information about STATISTICS_LEVEL settings

To get an indication of where time is spent, follow these steps:

  1. Examine the data collection for V$SYSTEM_EVENT. The events of interest should be ranked by wait time.

    Identify the wait events that have the most significant percentage of wait time. To determine the percentage of wait time, add the total wait time for all wait events, excluding idle events (such as Null event, SQL*Net message from client, SQL*Net message to client, SQL*Net more data). Calculate the relative percentage of the five most prominent events by dividing each event's wait time by the total time waited for all events.

    .
    See Also:

    "Idle Wait Events" for the complete list of idle events

    Alternatively, look at the Top 5 Wait Events section on the front page of the Statspack report; this section automatically orders the wait events (omitting idle events), and calculates the relative percentage:

    Top 5 Wait Events                                                           
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                                           Wait     % Total
    Event                                             Waits   Time (cs)  Wt Time
    ------------------------------------------ ------------ ------------ -------
    latch free                                      217,224       65,056   63.55
    db file sequential read                          39,836       31,844   31.11
    db file scattered read                            3,679        2,846    2.78
    SQL*Net message from dblink                       1,186          870     .85
    log file sync                                       830          775     .76
    
    

    In the previous example, the highest ranking wait event is the latch free event. In some situations, there might be a few events with similar percentages. This can provide extra evidence if all the events are related to the same type of resource request (for example, all I/O related events).

  2. Look at the number of waits for these events, and the average wait time. For example, for I/O related events, the average time might help identify whether the I/O system is slow. The following example of this data is taken from the Wait Event section of the Statspack report:
                                                                     Avg        
                                                       Total Wait   wait  Waits 
    Event                             Waits   Timeouts  Time (s)    (ms)   /txn 
    -------------------------- ------------ ---------- ----------- ----- ------ 
    latch free                    5,560,989  2,705,969      26,117     5  827.7 
    db file sequential read         137,027          0       2,129    16   20.4 
    SQL*Net break/reset to cli        1,566          0       1,707  1091    0.2 
    
    
  3. The top wait events identify the next places to investigate. A table of common wait events is listed in Table 22-1. For the previous example, the appropriate data to check would be latch-related. (It is usually a good idea to also have quick look at high-load SQL).
  4. Examine the related data indicated by the wait events to see what other information this data provides. Determine whether this information is consistent with the wait event data. In most situations, there is enough data to begin developing a theory about the potential causes of the performance bottleneck.
  5. To determine whether this theory is valid, cross-check data you have already examined with other statistics available for consistency. (The appropriate statistics vary depending on the problem, but usually include load profile-related data in V$SYSSTAT, operating system statistics, and so on). Perform cross-checks with other data to confirm or refute the developing theory.

Table of Wait Events and Potential Causes

Table 22-1 links wait events to possible causes and gives an overview of the Oracle data that could be most useful to review next.

Table 22-1  Wait Events and Potential Causes
Wait Event General Area Possible Causes Look for / Examine

buffer busy waits

Buffer cache, DBWR

Depends on buffer type. For example, waits for an index block may be caused by a primary key that is based on an ascending sequence.

Examine V$SESSION_WAIT while the problem is occurring to determine the type of block in contention.

free buffer waits

Buffer cache, DBWR, I/O

Slow DBWR (possibly due to I/O?)

Cache too small

Examine write time using operating system statistics. Check buffer cache statistics for evidence of too small cache.

db file scattered read

I/O, SQL statement tuning

Poorly tuned SQL

Slow I/O system

Investigate V$SQLAREA to see whether there are SQL statements performing many disk reads. Cross-check I/O system and V$FILESTAT for poor read time.

db file sequential read

I/O, SQL statement tuning

Poorly tuned SQL

Slow I/O system

Investigate V$SQLAREA to see whether there are SQL statements performing many disk reads. Cross-check I/O system and V$FILESTAT for poor read time.

enqueue

Locks

Depends on type of enqueue

Look at V$ENQUEUE_STAT.

latch free

Latch contention

Depends on latch

Check V$LATCH.

log buffer space

Log buffer, I/O

Log buffer small

Slow I/O system

Check the statistic redo buffer allocation retries in V$SYSSTAT. Check configuring log buffer section in configuring memory chapter. Check the disks that house the online redo logs for resource contention.

log file sync

I/O, over- committing

Slow disks that store the online logs

Un-batched commits

Check the disks that house the online redo logs for resource contention. Check the number of transactions (commits + rollbacks) each second, from V$SYSSTAT.

See Also:

Additional Statistics

There are a number of statistics that can indicate performance problems that do not have corresponding wait events.

Redo Log Space Requests Statistic

The V$SYSSTAT statistic redo log space requests indicates how many times a server process had to wait for space in the online redo log, not for space in the redo log buffer. A significant value for this statistic and the wait events should be used as an indication that checkpoints, DBWR, or archiver activity should be tuned, not LGWR. Increasing the size of log buffer does not help.

Read Consistency

Your system might spend excessive time rolling back changes to blocks in order to maintain a consistent view. Consider the following scenarios:

Table Fetch by Continued Row

You can detect migrated or chained rows by checking the number of table fetch continued row statistic in V$SYSSTAT. A small number of chained rows (less than 1%) is unlikely to impact system performance. However, a large percentage of chained rows can affect performance.

Chaining on rows larger than the block size is inevitable. You might want to consider using tablespace with larger block size for such data.

However, for smaller rows, you can avoid chaining by using sensible space parameters and good application design. For example, do not insert a row with key values filled in and nulls in most other columns, then update that row with the real data, causing the row to grow in size. Rather, insert rows filled with data from the start.

If an UPDATE statement increases the amount of data in a row so that the row no longer fits in its data block, then Oracle tries to find another block with enough free space to hold the entire row. If such a block is available, then Oracle moves the entire row to the new block. This is called migrating a row. If the row is too large to fit into any available block, then Oracle splits the row into multiple pieces and stores each piece in a separate block. This is called chaining a row. Rows can also be chained when they are inserted.

Migration and chaining are especially detrimental to performance with the following:

Identify migrated and chained rows in a table or cluster using the ANALYZE statement with the LIST CHAINED ROWS clause. This statement collects information about each migrated or chained row and places this information in a specified output table.


Note:

Oracle Corporation strongly recommends that you use the DBMS_STATS package rather than ANALYZE to collect optimizer statistics. That package lets you collect statistics in parallel, collect global statistics for partitioned objects, and fine tune your statistics collection in other ways. Further, the cost-based optimizer will eventually use only statistics that have been collected by DBMS_STATS. See Oracle9i Supplied PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference for more information on this package.

However, you must use the ANALYZE statement rather than DBMS_STATS for statistics collection not related to the cost-based optimizer, such as:

  • To use the VALIDATE or LIST CHAINED ROWS clauses
  • To collect information on freelist blocks

The definition of a sample output table named CHAINED_ROWS appears in a SQL script available on your distribution medium. The common name of this script is UTLCHN1.SQL, although its exact name and location varies depending on your platform. Your output table must have the same column names, datatypes, and sizes as the CHAINED_ROWS table.

Increasing PCTFREE can help to avoid migrated rows. If you leave more free space available in the block, then the row has room to grow. You can also reorganize or re-create tables and indexes that have high deletion rates. If tables frequently have rows deleted, then data blocks can have partially free space in them. If rows are inserted and later expanded, then the inserted rows might land in blocks with deleted rows but still not have enough room to expand. Reorganizing the table ensures that the main free space is totally empty blocks.


Note:

PCTUSED is not the opposite of PCTFREE.


See Also:

Parse-Related Statistics

The more your application parses, the more potential for contention exists, and the more time your system spends waiting. If parse time CPU represents a large percentage of the CPU time, then time is being spent parsing instead of executing statements. If this is the case, then it is likely that the application is using literal SQL and so SQL cannot be shared, or the shared pool is poorly configured.

See Also:

Chapter 14, "Memory Configuration and Use"

There are a number of statistics available to identify the extent of time spent parsing by Oracle. Query the parse related statistics from V$SYSSTAT. For example:

SELECT NAME, VALUE
  FROM V$SYSSTAT
 WHERE NAME IN (  'parse time cpu', 'parse time elapsed'
                , 'parse count (hard)', 'CPU used by this session' );

There are various ratios that can be computed to assist in determining whether parsing may be a problem:

Wait Events

The views V$SESSION_WAIT, V$SESSION_EVENT and V$SYSTEM_EVENT provide information on what resources were waited for, and, if the configuration parameter TIMED_STATISTICS is set to true, how long each resource was waited for.


Note:

Timed statistics are automatically collected for the database if the initialization parameter STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to TYPICAL or ALL. If STATISTICS_LEVEL is set to BASIC, then you must set TIMED_STATISTICS to TRUE to enable collection of timed statistics.

If you explicitly set DB_CACHE_ADVICE, TIMED_STATISTICS, or TIMED_OS_STATISTICS, either in the initialization parameter file or by using ALTER_SYSTEM or ALTER SESSION, the explicitly set value overrides the value derived from STATISTICS_LEVEL.


See Also:

"Setting the Level of Statistics Collection" for information about STATISTICS_LEVEL settings

Investigate wait events and related timing data when performing reactive performance tuning. The events with the most time listed against them are often strong indications of the performance bottleneck.

The three views contain related, but different, views of the same data:

Because V$SESSION_WAIT is a current state view, it also contains a finer-granularity of information than V$SESSION_EVENT or V$SYSTEM_EVENT. It includes additional identifying data for the current event in three parameter columns: P1, P2, and P3.

For example, V$SESSION_EVENT can show that session 124 (SID=124) had many waits on the db file scattered read event, but it does not show which file and block number. However, V$SESSION_WAIT shows the file number in P1, the block number read in P2, and the number of blocks read in P3 (P1 and P2 let you determine for which segments the wait event is occurring).

This chapter concentrates on examples using V$SESSION_WAIT. However, Oracle recommends capturing performance data over an interval and keeping this data for performance and capacity analysis. This form of rollup data is queried from the V$SYSTEM_EVENT view by tools such as Enterprise Manager Diagnostics Pack and Statspack.

Most commonly encountered events are described in this chapter, listed in case-sensitive alphabetical order. Other event-related data to examine is also included. The case used for each event name is that which appears in the V$SYSTEM_EVENT view.

See Also:

Oracle9i Database Reference for a complete list of wait events

SQL*Net

The following events signify that the database process is waiting for acknowledgment from a database link or a client process:

If these waits constitute a significant portion of the wait time on the system or for a user experiencing response time issues, then the network or the middle-tier could be a bottleneck.

Events that are client-related should be diagnosed as described for the event SQL*Net message from client. Events that are dblink-related should be diagnosed as described for the event SQL*Net message from dblink.

SQL*Net message from client

Although this is an idle event, it is important to explain when this event can be used to diagnose what is not the problem. This event indicates that a server process is waiting for work from the client process. However, there are several situations where this event could accrue most of the wait time for a user experiencing poor response time. The cause could be either a network bottleneck or a resource bottleneck on the client process.

Network Bottleneck

A network bottleneck can occur if the application causes a lot of traffic between server and client and the network latency (time for a round-trip) is high. Symptoms include the following:

To alleviate network bottlenecks, try the following:

Resource Bottleneck on the Client Process

If the client process is using most of the resources, then there is nothing that can be done in the database. Symptoms include the following:

In some cases, you can see the wait time for a waiting user tracking closely with the amount of CPU used by the client process. The term client here refers to any process other than the database process (middle-tier, desktop client) in the n-tier architecture.

SQL*Net message from dblink

This event signifies that the session has sent a query to the remote node and is waiting for a response from the database link. This time could go up because of the following:

buffer busy waits

This wait indicates that there are some buffers in the buffer cache that multiple processes are attempting to access concurrently. Query V$WAITSTAT for the wait statistics for each class of buffer. Common buffer classes that have buffer busy waits include data block, segment header, undo header, and undo block.

Check the following V$SESSION_WAIT parameter columns:

Causes

To determine the possible causes, identify the type of class contended for by querying V$WAITSTAT:

SELECT class, count
  FROM V$WAITSTAT
 WHERE count > 0
  ORDER BY count DESC;

Example output:

CLASS                   COUNT
------------------ ----------
data block              43383
undo header             10680
undo block               5237
segment header            785

To identify the segment and segment type contended for, query DBA_EXTENTS using the values for File Id and Block Id returned from V$SESSION_WAIT (p1 and p2 columns):

SELECT segment_owner, segment_name
  FROM DBA_EXTENTS
 WHERE file_id = <&p1>
   AND <&p2> BETWEEN block_id AND block_id + blocks - 1;

Actions

The action required depends on the class of block contended for and the actual segment.

segment header

If the contention is on the segment header, then this is most likely freelist contention.

Automatic segment-space management in locally managed tablespaces eliminates the need to specify the PCTUSED, FREELISTS, and FREELIST GROUPS parameters. If possible, switch from manual space management to automatic segment-space management.

The following information is relevant if you are unable to use automatic segment-space management (for example, because the tablespace uses dictionary space management).

A freelist is a list of free data blocks that usually includes blocks existing in a number of different extents within the segment. Blocks in freelists contain free space greater than PCTFREE. This is the percentage of a block to be reserved for updates to existing rows. In general, blocks included in process freelists for a database object must satisfy the PCTFREE and PCTUSED constraints. Specify the number of process freelists with the FREELISTS parameter. The default value of FREELISTS is one. The maximum value depends on the data block size.

To find the current setting for freelists for that segment, run the following:

SELECT SEGMENT_NAME, FREELISTS
  FROM DBA_SEGMENTS
 WHERE SEGMENT_NAME = segment name
   AND SEGMENT_TYPE = segment type;

Set freelists, or increase of number of freelists. If adding more freelists does not alleviate the problem, then use freelist groups (even in single instance this can make a difference). If using Oracle Real Application Clusters, then ensure that each instance has its own freelist group(s).

See Also:
data block

If the contention is on tables or indexes (not the segment header):

undo header

For contention on rollback segment header:

undo block

For contention on rollback segment block:

db file scattered read

This event signifies that the user process is reading buffers into the SGA buffer cache and is waiting for a physical I/O call to return. A db file scattered read issues a scatter-read to read the data into multiple discontinuous memory locations. A scattered read is usually a multiblock read. It can occur for a fast full scan (of an index) in addition to a full table scan.

The db file scattered read wait event identifies that a full table scan is occurring. When performing a full table scan into the buffer cache, the blocks read are read into memory locations that are not physically adjacent to each other. Such reads are called scattered read calls, because the blocks are scattered throughout memory. This is why the corresponding wait event is called 'db file scattered read'. Multiblock (up to DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT blocks) reads due to full table scans into the buffer cache show up as waits for 'db file scattered read'.

Check the following V$SESSION_WAIT parameter columns:

Actions

On a healthy system, physical read waits should be the biggest waits after the idle waits. However, also consider whether there are direct read waits (signifying full table scans with parallel query) or db file scattered read waits on an operational (OLTP) system that should be doing small indexed accesses.

Other things that could indicate excessive I/O load on the system include the following:

Managing Excessive I/O

There are several ways to handle excessive I/O waits. In the order of effectiveness, these are as follows:

  1. Reduce the I/O activity by SQL tuning.
  2. Reduce the need to do I/O by managing the workload.
  3. Add more disks to reduce the number of I/Os for each disk.
  4. Alleviate I/O hot spots by redistributing I/O across existing disks.

    See Also:

    Chapter 15, "I/O Configuration and Design"

The first course of action should be to find opportunities to reduce I/O. Examine the SQL statements being run by sessions waiting for these events, as well as statements causing high physical I/Os from V$SQLAREA. Factors that can adversely affect the execution plans causing excessive I/O include the following:

Inadequate I/O Distribution

Besides reducing I/O, also examine the I/O distribution of files across the disks. Is I/O distributed uniformly across the disks, or are there hot spots on some disks? Are the number of disks sufficient to meet the I/O needs of the database?

See the total I/O operations (reads and writes) by the database, and compare those with the number of disks used. Remember to include the I/O activity of LGWR and ARCH processes.

Finding the SQL Statement executed by Sessions Waiting for I/O

Use the following query to see, at a point in time, which sessions are waiting for I/O:

SELECT s.sql_address, s.sql_hash_value
  FROM V$SESSION s, V$SESSION_WAIT w
 WHERE w.event LIKE 'db file%read'
   AND w.sid = s.sid ;

Finding the Object Requiring I/O

Use the following query to find the object being accessed:

SELECT segment_owner, segment_name
  FROM DBA_EXTENTS
 WHERE file_id = &p1
   AND &p2 between block_id AND block_id + blocks - 1 ;

db file sequential read

This event signifies that the user process is reading buffers into the SGA buffer cache and is waiting for a physical I/O call to return. This call differs from a scattered read, because a sequential read is reading data into contiguous memory space. A sequential read is usually a single-block read.

Single block I/Os are usually the result of using indexes. Rarely, full table scan calls could get truncated to a single block call due to extent boundaries, or buffers already present in the buffer cache. These waits would also show up as 'db file sequential read'.

Check the following V$SESSION_WAIT parameter columns:

Actions

On a healthy system, physical read waits should be the biggest waits after the idle waits. However, also consider whether there are db file sequential reads on a large data warehouse that should be seeing mostly full table scans with parallel query.

Figure 22-1 depicts the differences between the following wait events:

Figure 22-1 Scattered Read, Sequential Read, and Direct Path Read

Text description of pfgrf210.gif follows
Text description of the illustration pfgrf210.gif


direct path read and direct path read (lob)

When a session is reading buffers from disk directly into the PGA (opposed to the buffer cache in SGA), it waits on this event. If the I/O subsystem does not support asynchronous I/Os, then each wait corresponds to a physical read request.

If the I/O subsystem supports asynchronous I/O, then the process is able to overlap issuing read requests with processing the blocks already existing in the PGA. When the process attempts to access a block in the PGA that has not yet been read from disk, it then issues a wait call and updates the statistics for this event. Hence, the number of waits is not necessarily the same as the number of read requests (unlike 'db file scattered read' and 'db files sequential read').

Check the following V$SESSION_WAIT parameter columns:

Causes

This happens in the following situations:

Actions

The file_id shows if the reads are for an object in TEMP tablespace (sorts to disk) or full table scans by parallel slaves. This is the biggest wait for large data warehouse sites. However, if the workload is not a DSS workload, then examine why this is happening.

Sorts to Disk

Examine the SQL statement currently being run by the session experiencing waits to see what is causing the sorts. Query V$TEMPSEG_USAGE to find the SQL statement that is generating the sort. Also query the statistics from V$SESSTAT for the session to determine the size of the sort. See if it is possible to reduce the sorting by tuning the SQL statement. If WORKAREA_SIZE_POLICY is MANUAL, then consider increasing the SORT_AREA_SIZE for the system (if the sorts are not too big) or for individual processes. If WORKAREA_SIZE_POLICY is AUTO, then investigate whether to increase PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET.

See Also:

"Configuring the PGA Working Memory"

Full Table Scans

If tables are defined with a high degree of parallelism, then this could skew the optimizer to use full table scans with parallel slaves. Check the object being read into using the direct path reads, as well as the SQL statement being run by the query-coordinator. If the full table scans are a valid part of the workload, then ensure that the I/O subsystem is sized adequately for the degree of parallelism.

Hash Area Size

For query plans that call for a hash join, excessive I/O could result from having HASH_AREA_SIZE too small. If WORKAREA_SIZE_POLICY is MANUAL, then consider increasing the HASH_AREA_SIZE for the system or for individual processes. If WORKAREA_SIZE_POLICY is AUTO, then investigate whether to increase PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET.

See Also:

direct path write

When a process is writing buffers directly from PGA (as opposed to the DBWR writing them from the buffer cache), the process waits on this event for the write call to complete. Operations that could perform direct path writes include when a sort goes to disk, during parallel DML operations, direct-path INSERTs, parallel create table as select, and some LOB operations.

Like direct path reads, the number of waits is not the same as number of write calls issued if the I/O subsystem supports asynchronous writes. The session waits if it has processed all buffers in the PGA and is unable to continue work until an I/O request completes.

Check the following V$SESSION_WAIT parameter columns:

Causes

This happen in the following situations:

Actions

For large sorts see "Sorts to Disk".

For parallel DML, check the I/O distribution across disks and make sure that the I/O subsystem is adequately sized for the degree of parallelism.

enqueue

Enqueues are locks that serialize access to database resources. This event indicates that the session is waiting for a lock that is held by another session.

Check the following V$SESSION_WAIT parameter columns:

Check the comparison with V$LOCK columns:

Performing the following SQL transformation of the P1 column results in the same value displayed in V$LOCK.TYPE:

V$LOCK.TYPE = chr(bitand(P1,-16777216)/16777215)|| 
chr(bitand(P1,16711680)/65535)

To obtain the mode in which the enqueue is being requested, issue the following statement:

request = mod(P1, 65536);

Finding Locks and Lock Holders

Query V$LOCK to find the sessions holding the lock. For every session waiting for the event enqueue, there is a row in V$LOCK with REQUEST <> 0. Therefore, use either of the following two queries to find the sessions holding the locks and waiting for the locks.

If there are enqueue waits, you can see these using the following statement:

SELECT * FROM V$LOCK WHERE request > 0:

To show only holders and waiters for locks being waited on, use the following:

SELECT DECODE(request,0,'Holder: ','Waiter: ')|| sid sess, id1, id2, lmode, 
request, type
   FROM V$LOCK
 WHERE (id1, id2, type) IN (SELECT id1, id2, type FROM V$LOCK WHERE request>0)
   ORDER BY id1, request;
See Also:

Actions

The appropriate action depends on the type of enqueue.

ST enqueue

If the contended-for enqueue is the ST enqueue, then the problem is most likely to be dynamic space allocation. Oracle dynamically allocates an extent to a segment when there is no more free space available in the segment. This enqueue is only used for dictionary managed tablespaces.

To solve contention on this resource:

HW enqueue

The HW enqueue is used to serialize the allocation of space beyond the high-water mark of a segment.

If this is a point of contention for an object, then manual allocation of extents solves the problem.

TM enqueue

The most common reason for waits on TM locks tend to involve foreign key constraints where the constrained columns are not indexed. Index the foreign key columns to avoid this problem.

TX enqueue

These are acquired exclusive when a transaction initiates its first change and held until the transaction does a COMMIT or ROLLBACK.

free buffer waits

This wait event indicates that a server process was unable to find a free buffer and has posted the database writer to make free buffers by writing out dirty buffers. A dirty buffer is a buffer whose contents have been modified. Dirty buffers are freed for reuse when DBWR has written the blocks to disk.

Causes

DBWR may not be keeping up with writing dirty buffers in the following situations:

Actions

If this event occurs frequently, then examine the session waits for DBWR to see whether there is anything delaying DBWR.

Writes

If it is waiting for writes, then determine what is delaying the writes and fix it. Check the following:

If I/O is slow:

Cache is Too Small

It is possible DBWR is very active because of the cache is too small. Investigate whether this is a probable cause by looking to see if the buffer cache hit ratio is low. Also use the V$DB_CACHE_ADVICE view to determine whether a larger cache size would be advantageous.

See Also:

"Sizing the Buffer Cache"

Cache Is Too Big for One DBWR

If the cache size is adequate and the I/O is already evenly spread, then you can potentially modify the behavior of DBWR by using asynchronous I/O or by using multiple database writers.

Consider Multiple Database Writer (DBWR) Processes or I/O Slaves

Configuring multiple database writer processes, or using I/O slaves, is useful when the transaction rates are high or when the buffer cache size is so large that a single DBWn process cannot keep up with the load.

DB_WRITER_PROCESSES

The DB_WRITER_PROCESSES initialization parameter lets you configure multiple database writer processes (from DBW0 to DBW9 and from DBWa to DBWj). Configuring multiple DBWR processes distributes the work required to identify buffers to be written, and it also distributes the I/O load over these processes. Multiple db writer processes are highly recommended for systems with multiple CPUs (at least one db writer for every 8 CPUs) or multiple processor groups (at least as many db writers as processor groups).

Based upon the number of CPUs and the number of processor groups, Oracle either selects an appropriate default setting for DB_WRITER_PROCESSES or adjusts a user-specified setting.

DBWR_IO_SLAVES

If it is not practical to use multiple DBWR processes, then Oracle provides a facility whereby the I/O load can be distributed over multiple slave processes. The DBWR process is the only process that scans the buffer cache LRU list for blocks to be written out. However, the I/O for those blocks is performed by the I/O slaves. The number of I/O slaves is determined by the parameter DBWR_IO_SLAVES.

DBWR_IO_SLAVES is intended for scenarios where you cannot use multiple DB_WRITER_PROCESSES (for example, where you have a single CPU). I/O slaves are also useful when asynchronous I/O is not available, because the multiple I/O slaves simulate nonblocking, asynchronous requests by freeing DBWR to continue identifying blocks in the cache to be written. Asynchronous I/O at the operating system level, if you have it, is generally preferred.

DBWR I/O slaves are allocated immediately following database open when the first I/O request is made. The DBWR continues to perform all of the DBWR-related work, apart from performing I/O. I/O slaves simply perform the I/O on behalf of DBWR. The writing of the batch is parallelized between the I/O slaves.


Note:

Implementing DBWR_IO_SLAVES requires that extra shared memory be allocated for I/O buffers and request queues. Multiple DBWR processes cannot be used with I/O slaves. Configuring I/O slaves forces only one DBWR process to start.


Choosing Between Multiple DBWR Processes and I/O Slaves

Configuring multiple DBWR processes benefits performance when a single DBWR process is unable to keep up with the required workload. However, before configuring multiple DBWR processes, check whether asynchronous I/O is available and configured on the system. If the system supports asynchronous I/O but it is not currently used, then enable asynchronous I/O to see if this alleviates the problem. If the system does not support asynchronous I/O, or if asynchronous I/O is already configured and there is still a DBWR bottleneck, then configure multiple DBWR processes.


Note:

If asynchronous I/O is not available on your platform, then asynchronous I/O can be disabled by setting the DISK_ASYNCH_IO initialization parameter to FALSE.


Using multiple DBWRs parallelizes the gathering and writing of buffers. Therefore, multiple DBWn processes should deliver more throughput than one DBWR process with the same number of I/O slaves. For this reason, the use of I/O slaves has been deprecated in favor of multiple DBWR processes. I/O slaves should only be used if multiple DBWR processes cannot be configured.

See Also:

Chapter 17, "Configuring Instance Recovery Performance" for details on tuning checkpoints

latch free

A latch is a low-level internal lock used by Oracle to protect memory structures. The latch free event is updated when a server process attempts to get a latch, and the latch is unavailable on the first attempt.

See Also:

Oracle9i Database Concepts for more information on latches and internal locks

Actions

This event should only be a concern if latch waits are a significant portion of the wait time on the system as a whole, or for individual users experiencing problems.

Check the following V$SESSION_WAIT parameter columns:

Example: Find Latches Currently Waiting For

SELECT n.name, SUM(w.p3) Sleeps
  FROM V$SESSION_WAIT w, V$LATCHNAME n
 WHERE w.event = `latch free'
   AND w.p2 = n.latch#
 GROUP BY n.name;

Table 22-2  Latch Free Wait Event
Latch SGA Area Possible Causes Look For:

Shared pool, library cache

Shared pool

Lack of statement reuse

Statements not using bind variables

Insufficient size of application cursor cache

Cursors closed explicitly after each execution

Frequent logon/logoffs

Underlying object structure being modified (for example truncate)

Shared pool too small

Sessions (in V$SESSTAT) with high:

parse time CPU

parse time elapsed

Ratio of parse count (hard) / execute count

Ratio of parse count (total) / execute count

Cursors (in V$SQLAREA/V$SQL) with:

High ratio of PARSE_CALLS / EXECUTIONS

EXECUTIONS = 1 differing only in literals in the WHERE clause (that is, no bind variables used)

High RELOADS

High INVALIDATIONS

Large (> 1mb) SHARABLE_MEM

cache buffers lru chain

Buffer cache LRU lists

Excessive buffer cache throughput. For example, inefficient SQL that accesses incorrect indexes iteratively (large index range scans) or many full table scans

DBWR not keeping up with the dirty workload; hence, foreground process spends longer holding the latch looking for a free buffer

Cache may be too small

Statements with very high logical I/O or physical I/O, using unselective indexes

cache buffers chains

Buffer cache buffers

Repeated access to a block (or small number of blocks), known as a hot block

Sequence number generation code that updates a row in a table to generate the number, rather than using a sequence number generator

Index leaf chasing from very many processes scanning the same unselective index with very similar predicate

Identify the segment the hot block belongs to

Shared Pool and Library Cache Latch Contention

A main cause of shared pool or library cache latch contention is parsing. There are a number of techniques that can be used to identify unnecessary parsing and a number of types of unnecessary parsing:

Unshared SQL

This method identifies similar SQL statements that could be shared if literals were replaced with bind variables. The idea is to either:

Reparsed Sharable SQL

check the V$SQLAREA view. Enter the following query:

SELECT SQL_TEXT, PARSE_CALLS, EXECUTIONS 
FROM V$SQLAREA 
ORDER BY PARSE_CALLS;

When the PARSE_CALLS value is close to the EXECUTIONS value for a given statement, you might be continually reparsing that statement. Tune the statements with the higher numbers of parse calls.

By Session

Identify unnecessary parse calls by identifying the session in which they occur. It might be that particular batch programs or certain types of applications do most of the reparsing. To do this, run the following query:

SELECT pa.sid, pa.value "Hard Parses", ex.value "Execute Count" 
  FROM v$sesstat pa, v$sesstat ex 
 WHERE pa.sid=ex.sid 
   AND pa.statistic#=(select statistic# 
       FROM v$statname where name='parse count (hard)') 
   AND ex.statistic#=(select statistic# 
       FROM v$statname where name='execute count') 
   AND pa.value>0; 

The result is a list of all sessions and the amount of reparsing they do. For each system identifier (SID), go to V$SESSION to find the name of the program that causes the reparsing.


Note:

Because this query counts all parse calls since instance startup, it is best to look for sessions with high rates of parse. For example, a connection which has been up for 50 days might show a high parse figure, but a second connection might have been up for 10 minutes and be parsing at a much faster rate.


The output is similar to the following:

   SID  Hard Parses  Execute Count
------  -----------  -------------
     7            1             20
     8            3          12690
     6           26            325
    11           84           1619

cache buffer lru chain

The cache buffer lru chain latches protect the lists of buffers in the cache. When adding, moving, or removing a buffer from a list, a latch must be obtained.

For symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) systems, Oracle automatically sets the number of LRU latches to a value equal to one half the number of CPUs on the system. For non-SMP systems, one LRU latch is sufficient.

Contention for the LRU latch can impede performance on SMP machines with a large number of CPUs. LRU latch contention is detected by querying V$LATCH, V$SESSION_EVENT, and V$SYSTEM_EVENT. To avoid contention, consider tuning the application, bypassing the buffer cache for DSS jobs, or redesigning the application.

cache buffers chains

The cache buffers chains latches are used to protect a buffer list in the buffer cache. These latches are used when searching for, adding, or removing a buffer from the buffer cache. Contention on this latch usually means that there is a block that is greatly contended for (known as a hot block).

To identify the heavily accessed buffer chain, and hence the contended for block, look at latch statistics for the cache buffers chains latches using the view V$LATCH_CHILDREN. If there is a specific cache buffers chains child latch that has many more GETS, MISSES, and SLEEPS when compared with the other child latches, then this is the contended for child latch.

This latch has a memory address, identified by the ADDR column. Use the value in the ADDR column joined with the V$BH view to identify the blocks protected by this latch. For example, given the address (V$LATCH_CHILDREN.ADDR) of a heavily contended latch, this queries the file and block numbers:

SELECT file#, dbablk, class, state, TCH
  FROM X$BH
 WHERE HLADDR='address of latch';

X$BH.TCH is a touch count for the buffer. A high value for X$BH.TCH indicates a hot block.

Many blocks are protected by each latch. One of these buffers will probably be the hot block. Any block with a high TCH value is a potential hot block. Perform this query a number of times, and identify the block that consistently appears in the output. After you have identified the hot block, query DBA_EXTENTS using the file number and block number, to identify the segment.

See Also:

"Finding the Object Requiring I/O" for instructions on how to do this

log buffer space

This event occurs when server processes are waiting for free space in the log buffer, because you are writing redo to the log buffer faster than LGWR can write it out.

Actions

Modify the redo log buffer size. If the size of the log buffer is already reasonable, then ensure that the disks on which the online redo logs reside do not suffer from I/O contention. The log buffer space wait event could be indicative of either disk I/O contention on the disks where the redo logs reside, or of a too-small log buffer. Check the I/O profile of the disks containing the redo logs to investigate whether the I/O system is the bottleneck. If the I/O system is not a problem, then the redo log buffer could be too small. Increase the size of the redo log buffer until this event is no longer significant.

log file switch

There are two wait events commonly encountered:

In both of the events, the LGWR is unable to switch into the next online redo log, and all the commit requests wait for this event.

Actions

For the log file switch (archiving needed) event, examine why the archiver is unable to archive the logs in a timely fashion. It could be due to the following:

Depending on the nature of bottleneck, you might need to redistribute I/O or add more space to the archive destination to alleviate the problem. For the log file switch (checkpoint incomplete) event:

log file sync

When a user session commits (or rolls back), the session's redo information must be flushed to the redo logfile by LGWR. The server process performing the COMMIT or ROLLBACK waits under this event for the write to the redo log to complete.

Actions

If this event's waits constitute a significant wait on the system or a significant amount of time waited by a user experiencing response time issues or on a system, then examine the average time waited.

If the average time waited is low, but the number of waits are high, then the application might be committing after every INSERT, rather than batching COMMITs. Applications can reduce the wait by committing after 50 rows, rather than every row.

If the average time waited is high, then examine the session waits for the log writer and see what it is spending most of its time doing and waiting for. If the waits are because of slow I/O, then try the following:

rdbms ipc reply

This event is used to wait for a reply from one of the background processes.

Idle Wait Events

These events indicate that the server process is waiting because it has no work. This usually implies that if there is a bottleneck, then the bottleneck is not for database resources.

The majority of the idle events should be ignored when tuning, because they do not indicate the nature of the performance bottleneck. Some idle events can be useful in indicating what the bottleneck is not. An example of this type of event is the most commonly encountered idle wait-event SQL Net message from client. This and other idle events (and their categories) are listed in Table 22-3.

Table 22-3  Idle Wait Events
Wait Name Background Process Idle Event User Process Idle Event Parallel Query Idle Event Shared Server Idle Event Oracle Real Application Clusters Idle Event

dispatcher timer

.

.

.

X

.

lock manager wait for remote message

.

.

.

.

X

pipe get

.

X

.

.

.

pmon timer

X

.

.

.

.

PX Idle Wait

.

.

X

.

.

PX Deq Credit: need buffer

.

.

X

.

.

PX Deq Credit: send blkd

.

.

X

.

.

rdbms ipc message

X

.

.

.

.

smon timer

X

.

.

.

.

SQL*Net message from client

.

X

.

.

.

virtual circuit status

.

.

.

X

.


Note:

If Statspack is installed, then it is also possible to query the STATS$IDLE_EVENT table, which contains a list of idle events.


See Also:

Oracle9i Database Reference for explanations of each idle wait event