How would you like to be able to see the future, to know exactly how much time you’ll save your users if you implement that change you’re thinking about?
For that matter, how would you like to be able to see the past? It sounds like a funny question, but can you really tell me why that job that suddenly takes three hours now, only needed 15 minutes last week?
You should never have to wonder how an Oracle-based program spends its time, because your Oracle Database has a feature that can tell you. That feature is tracing.
(With the advent of Oracle Autonomous Database, not all modern Oracle Database editions have the tracing feature. If your systems do not, then this course is not for you. See details below.)
Tracing is the best tool ever for ending confusion about Oracle performance. This course is your personal guide to squeezing every last drop of value from Oracle’s tracing feature.
“Mastering Oracle Trace Data” is a pre-recorded online course, taught by the author of the course textbook, Cary Millsap. The course includes detailed instruction on how to use the Method R Workbench software application to accelerate your understanding of how Oracle is spending your users’ time, and to create useful results while you’re taking the course.
“This is the most valuable performance-related course I’ve ever had. With the Method R set of tools, the trace files make sense now. They make it possible, sometimes just within minutes, to get to the very root cause of a performance problem, pretty much eliminating all the trial-error-guess work.”
Sergey Demin · Atlanta, Georgia
Who takes this course and why?
This course is for Oracle DBAs, application developers, and performance specialists who want to understand how their applications spend their users’ time.
Whether you’ve bought your software or built it yourself, trace files help you make better informed decisions about performance. They help Oracle developers, DBAs, and decision makers in every phase of the software life cycle.
For a team, the value is a shared way to investigate performance: identify where users’ time goes, compare proposed improvements, and explain the evidence behind a recommendation. Developers and DBAs can use the same measurements to decide what to work on next, and managers can connect that work to the response times that matter to the business.
In class, you will learn how to use the Method R Workbench software package. Method R Workbench is easy-to-use, high-precision time measurement software for software development, code reviews, performance tests, concept proofs, hardware and software evaluations, upgrades, troubleshooting, and more.
What will you learn?
Oracle trace files help you answer four most important questions about performance: How long? Why? What if? What else? You’ll learn how to collect the evidence and use it to make better performance decisions.
- Performance fundamentals — Understand how computer systems spend time and why that changes how you investigate performance.
- Collecting trace data — Collect traces in different architectures and isolate the user action or program you need to understand.
- Reading trace files — Understand what Oracle traces measure, what timed events mean, and what the measurements tell you about your program.
- Method R Workbench — Use the software to organize trace files, identify where time goes, and investigate the work behind it.
- Solving problems — Use trace evidence to find wasted time and decide what to improve.
- Predicting results — Estimate how much time a proposed change will save before you implement it.
- Explaining findings — Show colleagues the evidence behind your conclusions and recommendations.
Meetups
Our most successful students are the ones who use the tools and techniques from the course to solve real problems right away. The best way we’ve found to encourage that is by scheduling weekly meetups during the course.
We invite students to bring their questions and their trace files, and we work on them together. Meetups help students stay accountable to the course schedule, and they help establish community, which brings benefits long after the course is over.
Schedule
The course is segmented into four half-day modules, with a meetup at the end of each module. We like to allocate a week to each module, so we schedule the meetups for the same day each week for four weeks.
| Module | Lessons covered | Duration at 1× | Meetup schedule (example) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | – Welcome – The Motivation for Method R – Thinking Clearly about Performance | 3:10:08 | 2:00pm Friday 1st |
| 2 | – Case Study: Row Processing – Tracing Oracle – Oracle Trace Data – Scoping | 3:14:35 | 2:00pm Friday 8th |
| 3 | – Method R Workbench – Case Study: Agile PLM – Skew Analyzer (mrskew) | 3:41:44 | 2:00pm Friday 15th |
| 4 | – Unaccounted-for Time – Logging and Monitoring – Capstone | 3:43:24 | 2:00pm Friday 22nd |
Software
You can’t solve real problems with Oracle traces without software tools to manage, mine, and manipulate them. This isn’t a theory course. It’s a course about using real tools to solve real problems. The tool we use is called Method R Workbench.
Each student needs a Method R Workbench license to apply the course instruction. Students may use an existing license or add licensing to their training proposal.
Textbooks
The Method R Guide to Mastering Oracle Trace Data by Cary Millsap and Jeff Holt is a comprehensively detailed, full-color, 293-page textbook that serves as a valuable reference long after you complete the course. The Method R Guide to Tracing Oracle, also by Cary and Jeff, is a diminutive yet definitive 77-page guide for controlling Oracle Database’s tracing features.
Electronic copies of both books are distributed as a part of the Method R Workbench software—just click the button that looks like the book cover. Printed copies are available at Amazon.
Course specifications
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Format | Pre-recorded, self-paced video with instructor-led online meetups |
| Video duration | ~ 14 hours (13:49:51) |
| Instructor | Cary Millsap |
| Required database access | Ability to generate Oracle trace data and retrieve the resulting trace files; see “trace access“ below |
| Required software license | Method R Workbench: students may use an existing license or add licenses to the training proposal |
| Textbooks | Electronic copies of The Method R Guide to Mastering Oracle Trace Data and The Method R Guide to Tracing Oracle are both included with Method R Workbench |
| Q&A meetups | Four 1-hour live online instructor-led meetups, scheduled in your training proposal |
| Course access | Delivery arrangements and access period specified in your training proposal |
Trace access
This is a course about Oracle trace data. If you cannot generate and retrieve Oracle traces from your Oracle Database server, then you should not enroll in this course.
If your system can do the following, then it has the features you need:
connect system
exec dbms_monitor.session_trace_enable
select 'hello, world' from dual;
exec dbms_monitor.session_trace_disable
select value from v$diag_info where name='Default Trace File';
-- Copy the file from the database server to your computer.Some of Oracle’s Autonomous Database editions prohibit even DBAs from tracing. You can find the details in The Method R Guide to Tracing Oracle, which we’ll be happy to share with you during our planning discussions.
If the systems you want to diagnose prohibit you from generating or accessing Oracle traces, then this is not the course for you.
About the instructor
Cary Millsap has been an Oracle performance specialist since 1990. His books include Optimizing Oracle Performance, The Method R Guide to Mastering Oracle Trace Data, The Method R Guide to Tracing Oracle, and How to Make Things Faster. He and instructional guest Jeff Holt designed and developed the software that you’ll see in class.
Bring this course to your team
Before we schedule training for you, let’s make sure that every one of your students will be able to create and retrieve Oracle trace files. We’ll be happy to help with that up front.
Tell us who you want to train, what they need to accomplish, and when you would like to begin. We’ll work with you to develop your training proposal, including course access, software licensing, meetup scheduling, and pricing.