“Tuning By Layers”
October 19th, 2004 by Mark Rittman
I was looking through Steve Adams’ Ixora
site the other day and I came across
this presentation that
talks about another approach to Oracle tuning.
Entitled "Tuning By Layers",
it’s a couple of years old now but puts forward the idea that a system consists
of a number of layers, with each layer putting a load on the layer beneath it.
According to the presentation notes,
"The top layer is the application, followed by the database, then the
operating system and finally the hardware. To tune by layers, you work out how
to measure the load of layer 1 on layer 2, and so on. You then tune to
minimize the load of layer 1 on layer 2, and so on, until you have worked down
all the layers.At the highest level, you first concentrate on the application, and try
to reduce its load on the database.You then tune the database to reduce its load on the operating system.
And you finally, you tune the operating system to reduce its load on the
hardware."
The presentation comes with notes that go into a bit of detail about what
each tuning step would comprise of, although of course the specifics of exactly
how you’d tune each bit is where someone like Ixora would come in. Nonetheless,
it’s an interesting presentation and worth taking a few minutes to read through.
