This book is a systematic guide to diagnosing and resolving performance problems in enterprise applications that use Oracle Database. Written by performance engineer Christian Antognini for database administrators and application developers, it presents his proven approach to solving database application performance problems and shows how to plan for performance as you would for any other application requirement. You will see how SQL is parsed and executed, how to obtain and interpret execution plans, and how to move efficiently from symptoms to root causes across reproducible issues (SQL trace, PL/SQL profilers), live incidents (dynamic performance views), and post-mortem analysis (AWR and Statspack). Coverage spans modern releases from Oracle Database 12g through Oracle AI Database 26ai.

This edition builds on previous bestselling editions with a deeper focus on the query optimizer and plan stability. You will learn how to configure the optimizer for each workload, evaluate execution plan efficiency, and apply execution plan management techniques including hints, SQL plan baselines, SQL profiles, and SQL patches. The restructured core adds focused chapters on parallel execution, precomputing and caching data, and optimizing network round trips, helping you tune joins and data access, increase throughput with parallelism, leverage materialized views and result caching, and reduce latency via the array interface and row prefetching. The result is an up-to-date, practical guide that helps you diagnose faster, fix them with confidence, and keep Oracle Database performance on track across releases from 12g to 26ai.

What You Will Learn:

• Diagnose performance with SQL trace, PL/SQL profilers, dynamic views, AWR, and Statspack
• Configure the query optimizer and read execution plans for efficiency and stability
• Apply hints, SQL plan baselines, SQL profiles, and SQL patches to manage execution plans
• Reduce parsing overhead while maintaining throughput
• Optimize data access and join strategies for predictable performance
• Improve throughput with parallel execution and precomputation via materialized views and result caching
• Reduce latency by optimizing network round trips (array interface, row prefetching)
• Strengthen physical design choices to sustain application performance

Who This Book is For:

Performance analysts, database administrators, and application developers involved in troubleshooting performance problems in applications that use Oracle Database.

Christian Antognini firmly believes that, at its core, it’s all about data and how effectively companies process and leverage it. For this reason, he has focused on the efficient use of database engines since 1995. His main interests include logical and physical database design, query optimizers, and basically everything else related to data processing and application performance management.

Christian lives in Ticino, Switzerland, with his wife, Michelle. He spends much of his time with his wonderful family and enjoys reading books, playing games, viewing a good movie, riding one of his bicycles, or gliding down the Swiss Alps on a snowboard.