Page History

...

• About Precise for Oracle
• Components of Precise for Oracle
• How Precise for Oracle works
• What you can do with Precise for Oracle
• Where to get more information

About Precise for Oracle

Precise for Oracle lets you manage the performance of your applications. It provides you with the tools necessary for proactive monitoring, diagnosing, detecting, and correcting of performance problems before they become visible in your Oracle databases and related applications.

...

Additionally if the DBA sees that a business transaction is performing badly, he can focus the tuning efforts on it. Precise for Oracle will give specific findings and recommendations to help him improve the transaction statement performance and the business as a whole. To that end, Precise for Oracle now has a possibility to show application and transaction context as part of the tuning efforts.

Improved performance management

IT staff frequently search for answers to questions like “Why did the application run so slowly last night?” or “Where is the application spending its time?”

...

In a multi-Tiered application, you can extend the reach of Precise for Oracle by installing Precise for Database & Storage, which drills down into the storage layer behind the database Tier and the optional Interpoint extensions to see into the Tier in front of the database.

Integration with other Precise products

Precise for Oracle is fully integrated with other Precise products. You can receive alerts using Alerts, examine Oracle reports within Report Manager, and view Oracle data in Insight and the Precise Custom Portal. You can launch Precise for Oracle from Insight, Alerts, Report Manager, Precise for SAP, and Precise for J2EE. For more information on the individual components, see the user's guide of the relevant product.

...

Insight gives you an end-to-end view of your applications performance, across all your Tiers. It helps you find the source of performance problems in multi-Tier applications by allowing you to compare the resource consumption of each Tier. In this way, you can answer the question “Where is my performance problem?” If Insight shows that the problem lies within Oracle, you can use Precise for Oracle to drill down further.

Components of Precise for Oracle

To understand the Precise for Oracle architecture, it is important to know the overall architecture of the Precise product suite. For more information, see the Precise Installation Guide.

...

On the monitored server, Precise for Oracle consists of the following components:

• Precise Listener
• Precise for Oracle Collector
• Optional Collector extensions for Storage and ERP applications (not shown)

...

See the Precise Installation Guide and the Precise Administration Guide.

Precise Listener

There is one Precise Listener per physical server or domain for each installation of Precise. Its purpose is to handle communication with other Precise components, using TCP/IP. It listens on port 20702 by default. The Precise Listener handles all requests from the user interface and Precise for Oracle FocalPoint; no requests go directly to the Precise for Oracle Collector. If necessary, the Precise Listener runs a Data Retriever process to carry out the work.

...

Precise provides a Web-based graphical user interface (GUI). Client requests are sent to Precise FocalPoint using HTTP. The Precise GUI is accessed through a browser. After you log in as an authorized user, the Precise StartPoint page opens. From the StartPoint, you can access the Precise for Oracle user interface and all other Precise products.

How Precise for Oracle works

Precise for Oracle stores a complete history of your database activity in the PMDB. This provides you -with a performance tracking tool that gives you the ability to assess database performance trends and analysis changes in database activities over long periods of time. This data is vital for identifying patterns in resource consumption and predicting future resource consumption in your Oracle database.

...

• The Dashboard tab, with its at-a-glance view of all Oracle instances side-by-side, lets you detect which is the most problematic instance. You can drill down, in context, to find and focus on the problem in the Current, Activity, or Statistics tabs. Automatic findings will guide you to the problems which, in turn, will take you to the next step of the problem solving action.
  The Dashboard tab also lets you compare performance and statistics among your Oracle instances.
• The Current tab gives a near real-time picture of activity in your instance and lets you easily find problematic conditions that are occurring now.
• The Activity tab lets you find and focus on the top resource consumers within your application over time. It also lets you identify patterns in resource consumption and predict future resource consumption in your Oracle database, such as:
  • When comparing business cycles
  • When comparing software releases
  • In capacity planning or trend analysis
• The Statistics tab lets you focus on instance-wide statistics that affect all applications.
• Having identified a performance problem, you can either improve the performance of your application, or use one of the automated tuning tools in Precise for Oracle, such as:
  • The SQL tab, where ‘Alternative SQL’ suggests more efficient SQL, and Advice recommends index changes.
  • The What-If tab, where you can simulate the effect of any proposed index change without physically creating the index.
• After implementing a performance improvement, return to the Activity tab and check if the change created the desired effect on your application or database. For example, return to the Activity tab to see if resource consumption was reduced.

What you can do with Precise for Oracle

Use Precise for Oracle to detect, diagnose, and resolve performance problems in your Oracle database. Precise for Oracle lets you identify real-time performance problems (for example locking problems) and monitor a complete history of your Oracle database.

Where to get more information

More information on Precise, its products, technical notes, and so on, can be found in the Release Notes document for this version.

...