Don't bother learning the application, focus on what the users say is hurting them. Step #1) look for the SQL statements taking tons of elapsed-time or response-time, #2) focus on the worst two or three SQL statements, #3) fix them, #4) implement the fix in production, and #5) repeat all over again starting from step #1.
Best to use SQL tracing on specific programs identified by users as performing poorly. Check out white papers on www.method-r.com on tuning methodology and consider buying the book "Optimizing Oracle Performance" by Millsap and Holt (O'Reilly, 2003).
On 3/23/2011 3:44 PM, Ram Raman wrote:
List,When DBAs are put in charge of unknown applications not developed in house or put in charge of third party COTS applications, how do we go about learning the systems and tune such systems. This is an open ended question, but when I am asked to tune things, I am not sure how I would start without knowing the processes and data structure.Thanks.
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