Hi Janine, I suggest you also read Kyle's stuff on Statspack... http://www.perfvision.com/ftp/emea/00_statspack.ppt And if you have more time, better read the first 8 slides to get a better overview of what's the use of Statspack as compared to ASH samples plus the pros and cons. 00_intro.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:25 661K 00_statspack.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:25 3.0M 01_AAS.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:25 3.6M 02_ASH.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:26 3.0M 02a_OEM_demo.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:26 1.7M 02b_SASH.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:26 963K 03a_OEM_perf.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:27 7.5M 04_NEW_features.ppt 29-Sep-2008 17:27 3.2M For me, I use Statspack/AWR to characterize the workload and capacity planning (CPU,IO,etc)... then for session level details (drilldowns) I rely on ASH or any tool that does the sampling technique - if you don't have the diagnostic license (SASH,trial version of DB Optimizer,trial version of LAB128) As for the good source of deciphering the Statspack/AWR reports.. I would suggest reading the Chapter 9 of Craig Shallahamer’s book Oracle Performance Firefighting.. you would have an idea of how to do Oracle Response Time Analysis (ORTA) plus getting your database server's Capacity & Requirements (the essential performance math) plus correlating it with the Operating System,Oracle, and Application activity (3 Circle Analysis).. very useful stuff.. - Karl Arao karlarao.wordpress.com karlarao.tiddlyspot.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l