Performance by Design

This presentation outlines the key considerations that database designers, application architects and developers should take into account when constructing an efficient Oracle application.
The presentation covers the major principles of database modelling with particular consideration on when and how to use Oracle specific features (secure files, object types, Materialized views, etc) to optimize a physical data model. An overview of the various Oracle indexing and clustering mechanism will be presented and guidelines introduced for choosing between options such as the default B-Tree index, bitmap indexes, hash clustering and so on. Finally the presentation will consider the Oracle client APIs such as JDBC and OCI, and how to use these in an application to exploit array processing, client side caching, reduce parse management and generally optimize the interaction between the application and the Oracle database.
Summary:
It’s a sad fact that we spend more time dealing with performance after development than during design. Yet it’s usually the architecture and design of an application that limits its ultimate performance potential. This presentation looks at the principles of designing a high-performance Oracle application. It starts by considering the general principles of logical and physical database design, indexing, and transaction structure. It then looks at Oracle- specific considerations such as partitioning and clustering, SQL statement parsing, data fetching and caching, and the use of PL/SQL.
Benefits:
• Appreciate the relationship between early design decisions and the ultimate performance of an application.
• Understand the principles of designing a high performance Oracle data model, including entity to table mappings, selection of data types, indexing and clustering options.
• Understand how Oracle’s various client APIs allow the application to interact with Oracle, and how to optimize those interactions to minimize overhead and contention.