Preface

This document is intended for database administrators and application developers who perform the following tasks:

• Generating and interpreting SQL execution plans

• Managing optimizer statistics

• Influencing the optimizer through initialization parameters or SQL hints

• Controlling cursor sharing for SQL statements

• Monitoring SQL execution

• Performing application tracing

• Managing SQL tuning sets

• Using SQL Tuning Advisor or SQL Access Advisor

• Managing SQL profiles

• Managing SQL baselines

This manual assumes that you are familiar with the following documents:

• Oracle Database Concepts

• Oracle Database SQL Language Reference

• Oracle Database Performance Tuning Guide

• Oracle Database Development Guide

To learn how to tune data warehouse environments, see Oracle Database Data Warehousing Guide.

Many examples in this book use the sample schemas, which are installed by default when you select the Basic Installation option with an Oracle Database. See Oracle Database Sample Schemas for information on how these schemas were created and how you can use them.

To learn about Oracle Database error messages, see Oracle Database Error Messages Reference. Oracle Database error message documentation is only available in HTML. If you are accessing the error message documentation on the Oracle Documentation CD, then you can browse the error messages by range. After you find the specific range, use your browser's find feature to locate the specific message. When connected to the Internet, you can search for a specific error message using the error message search feature of the Oracle online documentation.

The following text conventions are used in this document: