In this Document

APPLIES TO:

Oracle Database - Enterprise Edition - Version 9.2.0.8 and later  
Information in this document applies to any platform.  
RDBMS  

PURPOSE

The purpose of this note is to inform reader about Top ten Performance mistakes  commonly found in Oracle Systems. This list is not in any particular order or priority.  

TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS

Bad Connection Management 

The application connects and disconnects for each database interaction. This problem is common with stateless middleware in application servers. It has over two orders of magnitude impact on performance, and is totally unscalable. 

Bad Use of Cursors and the Shared Pool 

Not using cursors results in repeated parses. If bind variables are not used, then there is hard parsing of all SQL statements. This has an order of magnitude impact in performance, and it is totally unscalable. Use cursors with bind variables that open the cursor and execute it many times. Be suspicious of applications generating dynamic SQL. 

Bad SQL 

Bad SQL is SQL that uses more resources than appropriate for the application requirement. SQL that consumes significant system resources should be investigated for potential improvement. 

Use of Nonstandard Initialization Parameters 

These might have been implemented based on poor advice or incorrect assumptions. Most systems will give acceptable performance using only the set of basic parameters. In particular, parameters associated with _SPIN_COUNT on latches and undocumented optimizer features can cause a great deal of problems that can require considerable investigation. 

Likewise, optimizer parameters set in the initialization parameter file can override proven optimal execution plans. For these reasons, schemas, schema statistics, and optimizer settings should be managed together as a group to ensure consistency of performance. 


Getting Database I/O Wrong 

Many sites lay out their databases poorly over the available disks. Other sites specify the number of disks incorrectly, because they configure disks by disk space and not I/O bandwidth. 

Redo Log Setup Problems 

Many sites run with too few redo logs that are too small. Small redo logs cause system checkpoints to continuously put a high load on the buffer cache and I/O system. If there are too few redo logs, then the archive cannot keep up, and the database will wait for the archive process to catch up. 

Serialization of data blocks

Serialization of data blocks in the buffer cache due to lack of free lists, free list groups, transaction slots (INITRANS), or shortage of rollback segments. 

This is particularly common on INSERT-heavy applications, in applications that have raised the block size above 8K, or in applications with large numbers of active users and few rollback segments. Use automatic segment-space management (ASSM) to and automatic undo management solve this problem. 

Long Full Table Scans 

Long full table scans for high-volume or interactive online operations could indicate poor transaction design, missing indexes, or poor SQL optimization. Long table scans, by nature, are I/O intensive and unscalable. 

High Amounts of Recursive (SYS) SQL 

Large amounts of recursive SQL executed by SYS could indicate space management activities, such as extent allocations, taking place. This is unscalable and impacts user response time. Use locally managed tablespaces to reduce recursive SQL due to extent allocation. Recursive SQL executed under another user Id is probably SQL and PL/SQL, and this is not a problem. 

Deployment and Migration Errors 

In many cases, an application uses too many resources because the schema owning the tables has not been successfully migrated from the development environment or from an older implementation. Examples of this are missing indexes or incorrect statistics. These errors can lead to sub-optimal execution plans and poor interactive user performance. When migrating applications of known performance, export the schema statistics to maintain plan stability using the DBMS_STATS package. 

This note is from Oracle documentation:

Oracle? Database Performance Tuning Guide
10g Release 2 (10.2)
B14211-03

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14211/technique.htm#i11221

REFERENCES

NOTE:601807.1   - Oracle 11gR1 Upgrade Companion  
NOTE:466181.1   - Oracle 10g Upgrade Companion  
NOTE:215187.1   - All About the SQLT Diagnostic Tool  
NOTE:223117.1   - Troubleshooting I/O Related Waits  
NOTE:228913.1   - Systemwide Tuning using STATSPACK Reports  
NOTE:402983.1   - * Master Note: Database Performance Overview  
NOTE:94036.1   - Init.ora Parameter "CURSOR_SHARING" Reference Note  
NOTE:396940.1   - Troubleshooting and Diagnosing ORA-4031 Error [Video]