Oracle Exadata Survival Guide

Oracle Exadata Survival Guide is a hands-on guide for busy Oracle database administrators who are migrating their skill sets to Oracle's Exadata database appliance. The book covers the concepts behind Exadata, and the available configurations for features such as smart scans, storage indexes, Smart Flash Cache, hybrid columnar compression, and more. You'll learn about performance metrics and execution plans, and how to optimize SQL running in Oracle's powerful, new environment. The authors also cover migration from other servers.

Oracle Exadata is fast becoming the standard for large installations such as those running data warehouse, business intelligence, and large-scale OLTP systems. Exadata is like no other platform, and is new ground even for experienced Oracle database administrators. The Oracle Exadata Survival Guide helps you navigate the ins and outs of this new platform, de-mystifying this amazing appliance and its exceptional performance. The book takes a highly practical approach, not diving too deeply into the details, but giving you just the right depth of information to quickly transfer your skills to Oracle's important new platform.

• Helps transfer your skills to the platform of the future
• Covers the important ground without going too deep
• Takes a practical and hands-on approach to everyday tasks

What you’ll learn

• Learn the components and basic architecture of an Exadata machine
• Reduce data transfer overhead by processing queries in the storage layer
• Examine and take action on Exadata-specific performance metrics
• Deploy Hybrid Columnar Compression to reduce storage and I/O needs
• Create worry-free migrations from existing databases into Exadata
• Understand and address issues specific to ERP migrations

About the Authors

David Fitzjarrell is a Senior Oracle Database Administrator living in the Denver/Boulder area of Colorado. He has over 24 years of experience in various industries and is currently working with Exadata in a large-scale OLTP and ERP retail environment. He started with Oracle Version 6.0 and has worked with almost every release since, concentrating on the areas of physical administration and performance tuning. He has been the Social Media Director for the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group, contributes monthly articles for databasejournal.com, participates in various Oracle forums and newsgroups, and writes an Oracle-centric blog at dfitzjarrell.wordpress.com.

Mary Mikell Spence, a Senior Oracle Database Administrator living in Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, has worked in the IT field since graduating from Georgia Tech in 1983. Beginning her career as an application developer, she has worked with Oracle since 1991. Her Oracle experience has involved everything from database design and architecture through backup and recovery. She began working with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i as an ERP DBA in 2000 while on a large migration and upgrade project; the past couple of years have found her working on a similar project—this time, on Exadata with a multi-terabyte ERP database. Mary may be found on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/mmspence.