RE: OT Discussion- Priority of Performance Tuning...

Kellyn,

I think you're being too kind - at least for some lines of business. Some of 
the tuning is considered not needed since the app "was" intended to be small 
but then for "some" reason gets out of hand. Then it becomes "our" fault for 
not being proactive in tuning said app. Some of you would be feeling the 
ramifications of this type of intentional "oversight" right now.  

In some projects that I have worked this was the exact scenario. Mind you these 
were in telecommunications/software development environments. I find it 
differently in the financial sector. My current client is extremely cost 
conscious and they want to eke out as much as they can from their current 
environments and keeping a track of tuning throughout the whole stack is a 
priority.  

Rui Amaral
 

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Fuad Arshad
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 1:46 PM
To: kellyn.potvin@xxxxxxxxx; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: OT Discussion- Priority of Performance Tuning...

I think its timelines and poor infrastructure .  i absolutely agree that 90% of 
performance tuning is politics.
when  developers are given 1 week timeline and very little design time to build 
an app .  App UI becomes priority not backend code.
I was once told by someone that its Capex that matters not Opex.  People want 
the upfront cost of an app to be low since its capital expenditure for  large 
projects.
the bug fixes and performance tuning  gets put into more operational 
expenditure and sometimes actually hides the true cost of a project.
Most of the times developers developer in a smaller environment  and have no 
access to how their app is going to look like to scale .
This  makes a select *  from x an  easier solution then a select * from x where 
x=y  since  it is only one row.
The problem is as DBA's we have to care about performance. We are the first 
line of questioning when the business says its slow.  They dont say the app is 
slow they say the db is slow since it retrieval or an update function that is 
happening . 

Often but not DBA's are caught in the cross fire of why wasnt this caught in 
dev or test  but not many realize that  a 2 row table with no indexes and a 2 
million row with no indexes will have a different data retrieval time.
Which is why i believe it is the DBA's business to be concerned about 
performance even if no one else is.





----- Original Message ----
From: Kellyn Pot'vin <kellyn.potvin@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wed, October 26, 2011 12:16:42 PM
Subject: OT Discussion- Priority of Performance Tuning...

I am about to approve this comment out on my blog from one of my favorite DBA
God's:
"Yep, like Cary is saying " 90% of performance tuning is politics". I am 
paraphrasing. Don't hold me to the exact quote or percentage.I don't understand 
"priorities for the business may not be the same as a priority for the DBA's". 
If it is not a priority for the business why should it be a priority for the 
DBA? Politics work both ways. You are skating close to CTD. If nobody else 
cares about performance why should you?"
I respect his opinion and it did get me thinking about where performance tuning 
falls in the priority of tasks for most database environments.  I commonly am 
brought into places that have a history of bringing code/designs to production 
in a short time-span, business requirements and/or revenue demanding that 
everything works being more important than it working efficiently or performing 
well, then my job is to go in and correct this "little oversight".  

I honestly don't think it's intentional by the business to move poor performing 
or code that will only be able to sustain the business for a short period of 
time into production, it's just due to the demands of the business for many 
companies.  This does, however, make performance tuning a lesser priority in 
many environments, (and keeps me in demand and well employed... :))

As I specialize in this area, I now question the kind DBA's on the list to see 
if you also find performance tuning a lesser priority in the environments 
you've worked in.  I'm also curious what kind of environment it is, (private 
sector, retail, banking, government, etc..)  Just like disaster recovery and 
other tasks that DBA's may put a higher priority on, the business, as it does 
not always directly correspond to revenue, does not view as part of the goal...

Please feel free to email me directly if you wish to remain anonymous..
 

Kellyn Pot'Vin
Sr. Database Administrator and Developer DBAKevlar.com
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