How to Make Things Faster

Foreword

It’s high time that Cary wrote this book. He has been teaching and practicing the material in How to Make Things Faster for a quarter of a century. I’ve read this book several times now. I think you’re really going to enjoy it. It’s the kind of book that can change your life. I know, because the principles that are explained within it have already changed mine. I got an 18-year head start, because the essence of How to Make Things Faster is the essence of Optimizing Oracle Performance, a book that Cary wrote with Jeff Holt in 2003. That essence is a method called “Method R.”

Method R changed my life. It’s the foundation of my professional career. Before I learned about it, I had studied and applied all the “usual” tips and tricks and tools and techniques that I was supposed to know in my role as a database administrator. I had some successes, but my results were inconsistent, and everything seemed complicated and difficult. Method R turned my idea of optimizing on its head almost instantly. Everything became clear and simple.

And not just Oracle things. With Method R, I could see clearly what information I needed to collect about anything I was supposed to improve. I could see where to find the root causes of performance issues, and how to fix them. The best thing, though, was that I was able to explain to others what I was doing and why. I found that especially fulfilling. I could do this because, with Method R, I wasn’t guessing—I knew.

It turns out that lots of people ...