Before I begin Chapter 2, let me introduce Part II of this book, which is made up of Chapters 2–7.
When I began tuning Oracle databases and applications back in the mid-1980s, I was using the methods that were state of the practice at that time and then moved to the traditional methods and tools mentioned in Chapter 1 as they became available. For metrics-based analysis, I looked at data in individual tables/views—first in the v$ views, later the StatsPack views when they were introduced, and finally, beginning with version 10g, I considered metrics persisted in the AWR ...