SQL Tuning Sets are stored groupings of SQL statemtents that can be used as input to the SQL Access Advisor and the SQL Tuning Advisor (next blog). If you intend to use 10G EM to tune SQL, you'll be using SQL Tuning Sets. So, I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing them before we discuss the SQL Tuning Advisor.

We have reached the final blog on 10G R2 New Features. I think that after reading the last blog of this series, you'll agree that 10G R2 (like all new Oracle releases) contains a LOT of interesting and beneficial enhancements.

I'll get back on track in the next blog by discussing how to use 10G Enterprise Manager SQL Tuning Sets.

Oracle has recently announced that 10GR2 for Linux is available for download from their technical website. If you read my last blog, you will probably agree that this release has some pretty interesting and beneficial features. But there are a few more enhancements that we need to cover before we can call ourselves 10G R2 new features experts. So, let's forge ahead and continue our discussion on 10G Release 2.

OK, here comes another "Stop the Presses" blog. I intended to discuss the SQL Tuning Advisor, but Oracle 10G R2 intervened. Since Oracle is currently publicizing all of the features contained in the latest and greatest release of its flagship product, I thought it would be appropriate to spend a few blogs discussing them.

Rest assured, we will continue our discussion on the10G EM advisors once we have completed our review of 10G R2.

OK, let's continue our review of 10G Enterprise Manager's Advisors. In this blog, we turn our attention to the SQL Access Advisor (not to be confused with the SQL Tuning Advisor which is a totally different tool). We'll begin by reviewing the benefits that the SQL Access Advisor provides and finish with a quick demo of the tool.

OK, now that I’ve given you a “brief” overview of the 10G EM advisor toolsets, let’s start our in-depth discussions of them by reviewing Oracle’s Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (affectionately known as ADDM).

Once I cover all of the advisors, we’ll review what we have learned and then apply our newfound knowledge by running through a couple of performance tuning scenarios.

I’ve been writing this blog for a while now. I have received a fair number of questions about my background. So I thought I would spend a few minutes in one blog discussing my “body of work” to date. Rest assured I won’t make this a habit. Mainly because I’m not that interesting. We’ll then get back on topic and continue our discussion on the 10G EM advisors.

In my last blog, I presented a quick overview of 10G Enterprise Manager’s database performance monitoring capabilities. Oracle’s latest release also contains numerous enhancements to Enterprise Manager’s advisor utilities. This blog contains a high level overview of the various advisors available in 10G EM. In subsequent blogs, we’ll take an in-depth look at each one of them to see exactly what benefits they offer.

Before we begin our discussion on the intelligent advisors contained in Oracle10G, it is important that we review the entire architecture from a higher level. I want to make sure that we all have a firm understanding of 10G's Common Manageability Infrastructure before we begin reviewing the individual advisors.

To ensure that we have this firm foundation, we must learn more about the Automatic Workload Repository and Active Session History which capture the data that many of the advisors use as input. Although, the Automatic Workload Repository and Active Session History may not be as exciting as the advice provided by the advisors and the automatic tuning recommendations provided by ADDM, it is important for us to understand the information used as input by these new components.

Let's forge ahead with our discussion on 10G EM's performance monitoring capablities by turning our attention to database performance. Like the blogs on 10G host performance, I’ll break this information up into two blogs. This first blog will provide you with a quick tour of EM's database performance monitoring component. In my next blog, I'll provide you with a brief overview on how to use the information it generates to monitor database performance.

We’ll then take a look at 10G EM’s performance advisors that are grouped together in Advisor Central. Once we have a firm understanding of Enterprise Manager’s performance and tuning capabilities, we’ll put our newfound knowledge to use when we use EM to solve some real-world performance problems.