James Koopmann

DBAs are often faced with the encompassing task of trying to reduce the use of system resources. In doing so, DBAs have the ominous task of having to relate the consumption of system resources by a database to the available resources on the database server it runs on. Sometimes this is a very difficult task. […]

We live in real time and often must deal with performance issues in real time too. For many, Oracle Enterprise Manger (OEM) is often a nice place to begin. As a DBA, you typically want to use Oracle’s automatic diagnostic feature of Automatic Database Diagnostic (ADDM) to zero in on performance problems that occur. Unfortunately, […]

The homegrown automatic monitoring of an Oracle database often results in time consuming, resource intensive tactics, in terms of DBA hours and development costs. A more elegant way to monitor database performance automatically is Oracle’s Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM). James Koopmann gets you started by showing you how to configure ADDM. The homegrown automatic […]

Automatic monitoring of an Oracle database often results in time consuming, resource intensive tactic, in terms of DBA hours. A more elegant way to monitor database performance automatically is Oracle’s Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM). ADDM captures and analyzes statistical data in the Automatic Workload Repository to determine if potential performance related database issues exist. […]

Statistics are at the core of determining whether your performance tuning efforts are working or not. James Koopmann dives into performance methodologies, specifically Oracle’s performance method, to give us a better understanding of how to tune a database with statistics. In my last article, I started to look at methods of performance tuning but it […]

Some good to great database products exist to help you tune your database, while others are not so good; but regardless of the tool, it is imperative that you understand some form of tuning methodology first. There are many database products out there to help you tune your database. Some are good to great and […]

A DBA’s role often revolves around tuning the database. This in itself can be a very daunting task. A checklist of DBA tasks can be quite handy. James Koopmann shares some performance tuning activities that a DBA needs to know and that will often be part of a solution to remedy a database performance problem. […]

James Koopmann shares five common issues that could get you into trouble when writing PL/SQL (and SQL), and how you might answer those questions within the confines of a PL/SQL job interview. An interviewer should see your attention to detail and desire to improve the environment, even if they, themselves, have tendencies to crank out […]

Security is big business these days, putting additional stress on DBAs and developers to develop methods of securing corporate information resources. James Koopmann shares his top 7 user defined encryption questions for the PL/SQL Developer. Security, is big business these days, putting additional stress on DBAs and developers to develop methods of securing corporate information […]

Security, in general, is big business these days and to ace that interview you need to at least know the basics. This article discusses encryption and how Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) & Transparent Tablespace Encryption (TTE) work. Security, in general, is big business these days. You need only look at the big database players to […]

All too often, database developers are under such extreme pressure to write code that they forget about the performance aspects. This set of interview questions addresses the concerns that a hiring manager might have concerning the performance of the code you write. Next to functionality, everyone wants their applications to perform well. However, all too […]

Understanding data structures, data types, and code fragments all play a very important piece in understanding PL/SQL code. James Koopman helps you put these code pieces together to better demonstrate your skill and foresight on that job interview. Understanding data structures, data types, and code fragments (cursors, loops, exception blocks, etc.), as well as others, […]