One of the most important challenges faced by Oracle database administrators and Oracle developers is the need to tune SQL statements so that they execute efficiently. In this book, Mark Gurry shares his in-depth knowledge of Oracle's SQL statement optimizers. Mark provides solutions to many common problems that occur with both the rule-based and cost-based optimizers. Mark provides a number of handy SQL tuning tips, discusses the use of the DBMS_STATS package to manage database statistics, and shows you how to use outlines to specify execution plans for SQL statements in third-party applications that you can't otherwise modify.

The first edition of this book became a classic for developers and DBAs. This edition offers 400 pages of updated material on Oracle features, including parallel server, parallel query, Oracle Performance Pack, disk striping and mirroring, RAID, MPPs, SMPs, distributed databases, backup and recovery, and much more.