Database Performance Tuning

Performance tuning is a vital part of the management and administration of successful database systems. By setting a priority on database performance management, you can:

• improve customer service
• optimize your investment in system hardware and software
• prevent performance crises

However, database performance tuning is technically challenging. It requires a detailed understanding of how all the components of a database system operate and interact. The documentation and tuning books provide basic guidelines only. This basic tuning information is adequate for many databases, but an increasing number of systems need to overcome complex performance problems, or need to meet extremely demanding response time requirements.

The Problem

Many IT departments, more geared up to OLTP and operational systems, are often at a loss when asked to deliver a data warehouse by the business. Maybe they have tried to build a warehouse in the past (because they thought it is something the organisation should have), but it is under used by the business - because it doesn’t meet their needs (or the needs changed half way through development).

Sometimes the user requirements can be overwhelming in their scope and vagueness, for instance the following dialogue paraphrases a discussion between a Risk department and IT in a well known bank:

Where do you start?