7 Tuning the Oracle Database

Careful tuning can dramatically increase the speed of an Oracle database. This chapter describes how you can monitor and tune the system for optimal performance of the Oracle database. For a general discussion of performance and tuning issues, refer to the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide and Oracle Database Performance Tuning Guide.

This chapter covers BS2000 specific tuning parameters.

You should always tune the Oracle database. In addition, you may need to fine tune or reconfigure the BS2000/OSD operating system to achieve optimal performance, or to support more users than the basic configuration enables.

BS2000/OSD-Specific Parameters

This section describes ORAENV environment variables for BS2000/OSD-specific Oracle Database performance tuning.

Task Priority

Apart from generic or BS2000/OSD-specific Oracle Database tuning options, the BS2000/OSD priority of Oracle Database tasks at run-time, and their run-time priority balance, can have a lot of influence on the overall throughput and the time delays experienced.

Initially, all foreground (network server) and background tasks have the same run-time priority, as specified by the ORAENV environment variable, BGJPAR. Server tasks automatically become TP tasks, and the background tasks will also switch to TP mode, if the JOIN entry permits this.

Both before and while changing run-time priorities, you should use SM2 to investigate task behavior and possible bottlenecks. There is no simple rule that says that certain tasks always have a high priority.