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What's in a trace file? Incredible things: the reason your report is slow, proof that your SAN is falling down on the job, and a thousand other things you need to know. Oracle's tkprof tells you only a fraction of the story. The MR Tools suite of software tools helps you get everything your trace files have to offer. They're great companions for users of tkprof or Method R Profiler.

MR Tools is a collection of software tools executed from the command line, in the spirit of Unix filters. That means each tool has a singular focus; it does one thing and does it well. It means each tool's behavior is customizable, with lots of powerful options. And it means that each tool works in harmony with other filters—think sort, grep, head, more, etc.—to exploit the full value of the powerful operating system scripting environment you already know and love.

The MR Tools suite consists today of the following software tools. They run on Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Microsoft Windows. Click on a name to learn more:

mrls — your trace file lister

Have you ever sat staring at a directory full of a thousand trace files, unable to figure out which one you needed to open next? Do you want to know which trace file accounts for the most response time? Which file accounts for the largest LIO count? Which file accounts for the most rows returned? With mrls, you're only one quick command away from knowing.

mrnl — your trace file tour guide

We open raw Oracle trace files all the time, even though we have our own industrial-strength profiling software, because sometimes we need to see a program's flow of control through the Oracle kernel. When you look at raw trace data, though, be prepared: the next thing you're going to need is a tool that can subtract 13-digit numbers. (That's what it takes to follow the clock through an Oracle trace file.) With mrnl, you can see what you need a hundred times faster, because it does all that heavy-lifting for you.

mrskew — your trace file data miner

You won't believe how much data is tucked away into a whole directory full of trace files. Which trace files account for the most time spent waiting for latch acquisitions? On what line of which trace file is your longest disk I/O call recorded? Which SQL statement accounts for the most time spent parsing? Which array fetch size accounts for your biggest consumption of response time? The answers to these questions and thousands more are one mrskew command away.

MR Tools: see your Oracle trace files in stunning high-definition.

Pricing

Prices start at $99 USD per tool and $397 USD per bundle per single userid license; $997 USD per person for a multi-platform bundle license.

Licensing

There are two types of MR Tools licenses. A per-userid license permits one specific person to run a tool using a single login user id on a single machine (either real or virtual). A per-person (multi-platform) license permits one specific person to run a tool with any login id, on any system, anywhere. If you'll run MR Tools on more than two login ids (for example, on more than two systems), then the per-person license is the better license for you.