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STATSPACK was created in response to a need for more relevant and more extensive statistical reporting beyond what was available via UTLBSTAT/UTLESTAT reports. These statistics can be stored permanently in the database so that historical data is available for comparison and diagnosis.

Since version 8.1.6, STATSPACK has been available. Timed_statistics must be set to true prior to the creation of a snapshot. If it is not, the data within STATSPACK will not be relevant. You can tell if timed_statistics was not set by looking at the total times columns in the report. If these are zero then timed_statistics was not set. Make sure that the TIMED_STATISTICES be set to TRUE. If not, then all the total times columns in the report will be zero.

15 minutes in length for each snap shot intervals are reasonable. If there is output that represented by #######, that indicates that its value is too large for the STATSPACK column. You may have to decrease the number of snapshots in the report until you can read the item or decrease the snapshot interval.

The summary information starts with the Database name, DB ID, Instance, etc. It tells you the release of your database, hostname, and the time you started your snap, and ended it with its elapsed time.

Note that here the number of sessions during the snapshot was too large for the sessions field.

It contains the Oracle memory cache information such as the buffer cache, shared pool, standard block, and log buffer sizes. Note that the standard Block size indicates the primary block size of the instance.

Note that the buffer cache size is that of the standard buffer cache. If you have multiple buffer caches such as 4k, 16k, and 32k, and you will need to calculate the others separately.

This report shows the load activities during your snapshots.

Where:

. Redo size: This is the amount of redo generated during this report.

. Logical Reads: This is calculated as Consistent Gets + DB Block Gets = Logical Reads

. Block changes: The number of blocks modified during the sample interval

. Physical Reads: The number of requests for a block that caused a physical I/O.

. Physical Writes: The number of physical writes issued.

. User Calls: The number of queries generated

. Parses: Total of all parses: both hard and soft

. Hard Parses: Those parses requiring a completely new parse of the SQL statement. These consume both latches and shared pool area.

. Soft Parses: Not listed but derived by subtracting the hard parses from parses. A soft parse reuses a previous hard parse and hence consumes far fewer resources.

. Sorts, Logons, Executes and Transactions are all self explanatory

Note that hit ratios are calculations that may provide information regarding different structures and operations in the Oracle instance. Database tuning never must be driven by hit ratios. For example, in a DSS system a low cache hit ratio may be acceptable due the amount of recycling needed due the large volume of data accessed. So if you increase the size of the buffer cache based on this number, the corrective action may not take affect and you may be wasting memory resources.

It is possible for both the 'buffer hit ratio' and the 'execute to parse' ratios to be negative. In the case of the buffer hit ratio (to be negative), the buffer cache is too small and the data in is being aged out before it can be used so it must be retrieved again. This is a form of thrashing which degrades performance immensely.

The execute to parse ratio can be negative when the number of parses is larger than the number of executions. The Execute to Parse ratio is determined by the following formula: 100 * (1 - Parses/Executions) = Execute to Parse

Here this becomes: 100 * (1 - 42,757 pareses/ 42,023 Executions) =

100 * (1 - 1.0175) = 100* - 0.0175 = -1.75

This can be caused by the snapshot boundary occurring during a period of high parsing so that the executions have not occurred before the end of the snapshot. Check the next snapshot to see if there are enough executes to account for the parses in this report.

Another cause for a negative execute to parse ratio is if the shared pool is too small and queries are aging out of the shared pool and need to be reparsed. This is another form of thrashing which also degrades performance tremendously.

This section shows the Top 5 timed events that must be considered to focus the tuning efforts. Before Oracle 9.2 this section was called "Top 5 Wait Events". This information will allow you to determine SQL tuning problems.

These events are particularly useful in determining which sections to view next. For instance if there are fairly high waits on latch or one of the other latches you might want to examine the latch sections first. On the other hand, if the db file read waits events seem abnormally high, you might want to look at the file io section first.

Note that db file scattered and sequential read are generally the top wait events when the instance is tuned well and not OPS/RAC. Wait Events

The following section will describe in detail most of the sections provided in a STATSPACK report.

Foreground wait events are those associated with a session or client process waiting for a resource.

Wait Events for DB: test Instance: test Snaps: 161 -162

Background wait events are those not associated with a client process. They indicate waits encountered by system and non-system processes. The output is the same for all the Oracle releases.

Background Wait Events for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

Examples of background system processes are LGWR and DBWR. An example of a non-system background process would be a parallel query slave.

Note that it is possible for a wait event to appear in both the foreground and background wait events statistics. Examples of this are the enqueue and latch events.

The idle wait events appear at the bottom of both sections and can generally safely be ignored. Typically these type of events keep record of the time while the clien is connected to the database but not requests are being made to the server.

- The idle wait events associated with pipes are often a major source of concern for some DBAs. Pipe gets and waits are entirely application dependent. To tune these events you must tune the application generating them. High pipe gets and waits can affect the library cache latch performance. Rule out all other possible causes of library cache contention prior to focusing on pipe waits as it is very expensive for the client to tune their application. A list of most wait events used by the RDBMS kernel can be found in Appendix A of the Oracle Reference manual for the version being used.

Some wait events to watch:

- global cache cr request: (OPS) This wait event shows the amount of time that an instance has waited for a requested data block for a consistent read and the transferred block has not yet arrived at the requesting instance. See Note 157766.1 'Sessions Wait Forever for 'global cache cr request' Wait Event in OPS or RAC'. In some cases the 'global cache cr request' wait event may be perfectly normal if large buffer caches are used and the same data is being accessed concurrently on multiple instances. In a perfectly tuned, non-OPS/RAC database, I/O wait events would be the top wait events but since we are avoiding I/O's with RAC and OPS the 'global cache cr request' wait event often takes the place of I/O wait events.

- Buffer busy waits, write complete waits, db file parallel writes and enqueue waits: If all of these are in the top wait events the client may be experiencing disk saturation.

- log file switch, log file sync or log switch/archive: If the waits on these events appears excessive check for checkpoint tuning issues..

- write complete waits, buffer waits or buffer busy waits: If any of these wait events is high, the buffer cache may need tuning.

- latch : If high, the latch wait event indicates that there was contention on one or more of the primary latches used by the instance. Look at the latch sections to diagnose and resolve this problem.

SQL Information

The SQL that is stored in the shared pool SQL area (Library cache) is reported to the user via three different formats in 8i. Each has their own usefulness.

. SQL ordered by Buffer Gets

. SQL ordered by Physical Reads

. SQL ordered by Executions

9i has an additional section:

. SQL ordered by Parse Calls

SQL ordered by Gets:

SQL ordered by Gets for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

-> End Buffer Gets Threshold: 10000

-> Note that resources reported for PL/SQL includes the resources used by all SQL statements called within the PL/SQL code. As individual SQL statements are also reported, it is possible and valid for the summed total % to exceed 100

CREATE TABLE "PHASE".:Q3236003("PID","CAMPAIGN","SCPOS1","SCPOS2

This section reports the contents of the SQL area ordered by the number of buffer gets and can be used to identify CPU Heavy SQL.

- Many DBAs feel that if the data is already contained within the buffer cache the query should be efficient. This could not be further from the truth. Retrieving more data than needed, even from the buffer cache, requires CPU cycles and interprocess IO. Generally speaking, the cost of physical IO is not 10,000 times more expensive. It actually is in the neighborhood of 67 times and actually almost zero if the data is stored in the UNIX buffer cache.

- The statements of interest are those with a large number of gets per execution especially if the number of executions is high.

- High buffer gets generally correlates with heavy CPU usage.

SQL ordered by Physical Reads:

SQL ordered by Reads for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

This section reports the contents of the SQL area ordered by the number of reads from the data files and can be used to identify SQL causing IO bottlenecks which consume the following resources.

- CPU time needed to fetch unnecessary data.

- File IO resources to fetch unnecessary data.

- Buffer resources to hold unnecessary data.

- Additional CPU time to process the query once the data is retrieved into the buffer.

- SQL ordered by Executions:

SQL ordered by Executions for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

This section reports the contents of the SQL area ordered by the number of query executions. It is primarily useful in identifying the most frequently used SQL within the database so that they can be monitored for efficiency. Generally speaking, a small performance increase on a frequently used query provides greater gains than a moderate performance increase on an infrequently used query

SQL ordered by Parse Calls (9i Only):

SQL ordered by Parse Calls for DB: S901 Instance: S901 Snaps: 2 -3

This section shows the number of times a statement was parsed as compared to the number of times it was executed. One to one parse/executions may indicate that:

Bind variables are not being used.

- On RDBMS version 8172 and higher the init.ora parameter session_cached_cursors was not set in the init.ora (100 is usually the suggested starting value).

- The shared pool may be too small and the parse is not being retained long enough for multiple executions.

- cursor_sharing is set to exact (this should NOT be changed without considerable testing on the part of the client).

The statistics section shows the overall database statistics. These are the statistics that the summary information is derived from. A list of the statistics maintained by the RDBMS kernel can be found in Appendix C of the Oracle Reference manual for the version being utilized. The format is identical from 8i to 9i.

Instance Activity Stats for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

Of particular interest are the following statistics.

- CPU USED BY THIS SESSION, PARSE TIME CPU or RECURSIVE CPU USAGE: These numbers are useful to diagnose CPU saturation on the system (usually a query tuning issue). The formula to calculate the CPU usage breakdown is: Service (CPU) Time = other CPU + parse time CPU Other CPU = "CPU used by this session" - parse time CPU Some releases do not correctly store this data and can show huge numbers. The rule to decide if you can use these metrics is: Trustworthy if : (db version>= 8.1.7.2 and 9.0.1) OR ((db version >= 9.0.1.1) = 8.0.6.0 AND not using job_queue_processes AND CPU_PER_CALL = default)

- DBWR BUFFERS SCANNED: the number of buffers looked at when scanning the lru portion of the buffer cache for dirty buffers to make clean. Divide by "dbwr lru scans" to find the average number of buffers scanned. This count includes both dirty and clean buffers. The average buffers scanned may be different from the average scan depth due to write batches filling up before a scan is complete. Note that this includes scans for reasons other than make buffer requests.

- DBWR CHECKPOINTS: the number of checkpoints messages that were sent to DBWR and not necessarily the total number of actual checkpoints that took place. During a checkpoint there is a slight decrease in performance since data blocks are being written to disk and that causes I/O. If the number of checkpoints is reduced, the performance of normal database operations improve but recovery after instance failure is slower.

- DBWR TIMEOUTS: the number of timeouts when DBWR had been idle since the last timeout. These are the times that DBWR looked for buffers to idle write.

- DIRTY BUFFERS INSPECTED: the number of times a foreground encountered a dirty buffer which had aged out through the lru queue, when foreground is looking for a buffer to reuse. This should be zero if DBWR is keeping up with foregrounds.

- BUFFER INSPECTED: the number of buffers skipped over from the end of the LRU queue in order to find a buffer. The difference between this and "dirty buffers inspected" is the number of buffers that could not be used because they were busy or needed to be written after rapid aging out. They may have a user, a waiter, or being read/written.

- RECURSIVE CALLS: Recursive calls occur because of cache misses and segment extension. In general if recursive calls is greater than 30 per process, the data dictionary cache should be optimized and segments should be rebuilt with storage clauses that have few large extents. Segments include tables, indexes, rollback segment, and temporary segments.

NOTE: PL/SQL can generate extra recursive calls which may be unavoidable.

- REDO BUFFER ALLOCATION RETRIES: total number of retries necessary to allocate space in the redo buffer. Retries are needed because either the redo writer has gotten behind, or because an event (such as log switch) is occurring

- REDO LOG SPACE REQUESTS: indicates how many times a user process waited for space in the redo log buffer. Try increasing the init.ora parameter LOG_BUFFER so that zero Redo Log Space Requests are made.

- REDO WASTAGE: Number of bytes "wasted" because redo blocks needed to be written before they are completely full. Early writing may be needed to commit transactions, to be able to write a database buffer, or to switch logs

- SUMMED DIRTY QUEUE LENGTH: the sum of the lruw queue length after every write request completes. (divide by write requests to get average queue length after write completion)

- TABLE FETCH BY ROWID: the number of rows that were accessed by a rowid. This includes rows that were accessed using an index and rows that were accessed using the statement where rowid = 'xxxxxxxx.xxxx.xxxx'.

- TABLE FETCH BY CONTINUED ROW: indicates the number of rows that are chained to another block. In some cases (i.e. tables with long columns) this is unavoidable, but the ANALYZE table command should be used to further investigate the chaining, and where possible, should be eliminated by rebuilding the table.

- Table Scans (long tables) is the total number of full table scans performed on tables with more than 5 database blocks. If the number of full table scans is high the application should be tuned to effectively use Oracle indexes. Indexes, if they exist, should be used on long tables if less than 10-20% (depending on parameter settings and CPU count) of the rows from the table are returned. If this is not the case, check the db_file_multiblock_read_count parameter setting. It may be too high. You may also need to tweak optimizer_index_caching and optimizer_index_cost_adj.

- Table Scans (short tables) is the number of full table scans performed on tables with less than 5 database blocks. It is optimal to perform full table scans on short tables rather than using indexes.

IO Activity

IO ActivityInput/Output(IO) statistics for the instance are listed in the following sections/formats:

- Tablespace IO Stats for DB: Ordered by total IO per tablespace.

- File IO Stats for DB: Ordered alphabetically by tablespace, filename.

In Oracle 8.1.7 many other columns were included as follow:

- Avg. Read / Second

- Avg. Blocks / Read

- Avg. Writes / Second

- Buffer Waits

- Avg. Buffer Waits / Milisecond

Tablespace IO Stats

Tablespace IO Stats for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

File IO Stats

File IO Stats for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

....

Note that Oracle considers average read times of greater than 20 ms unacceptable. If a datafile consistently has average read times of 20 ms or greater then:

- The queries against the contents of the owning tablespace should be examined and tuned so that less data is retrieved.

- If the tablespace contains indexes, another option is to compress the indexes so that they require less space and hence, less IO.

- The contents of that datafile should be redistributed across several disks/logical volumes to more easily accommodate the load.

- If the disk layout seems optimal, check the disk controller layout. It may be that the datafiles need to be distributed across more disk sets.

Buffer cache Activity Information

This section can have multiple entries if multiple buffer pools are allocated. This section is in both 8i and 9i and is identical in both.

Buffer Pool Statistics for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

A baseline of the database's buffer pool statistics should be available to compare with the current STATSPACK buffer pool statistics. A change in that pattern unaccounted for by a change in workload should be a cause for concern.

This section shows a breakdown of each type of object waited for. This section follows the Instance Recovery Stats for DB in 9i and is identical to that in 8i.

Buffer wait Statistics for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

The above shows no real contention. Typically, when there is buffer contention, it is due to data block contention with large average wait times, like the example below:

Buffer wait Statistics for DB: GLOVP Instance: glovp Snaps: 454 - 455

Instance Recovery Statistics

This section was added in 9i and is useful for monitoring the recovery and redo information.

Instance Recovery Stats for DB: S901 Instance: S901 Snaps: 2 -3

This section was added in 9i and which helps when using the new model to allocate PGA in Oracle9i using PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET.

PGA Memory Stats for DB: S901 Instance: S901 Snaps: 2 -3

This section is particularly useful when monitoring session memory usage on Windows servers.

An enqueue is simply a locking mechanism. This section is very useful and must be used when the wait event "enqueue" is listed in the "Top 5 timed events".

Enqueue activity for DB: S901 Instance: S901 Snaps: 2 -3

The action to take depends on the lock type that is causing the most problems. The most common lock waits are generally for:

- TX - Transaction Lock: Generally due to application concurrency mechanisms, or table setup issues.

- TM - DML enqueue: Generally due to application issues, particularly if foreign key constraints have not been indexed.

- ST - Space management enqueue: Usually caused by too much space management occurring. For example: create table as select on large tables on busy instances, small extent sizes, lots of sorting, etc.

Undo (Rollback) Information

Undo (Rollback) information is provided in two sections. They are identical in both 8i and 9i and are self explanatory.

- Rollback Segment Stats

- Rollback Segment Storage

In 9i the following two sections are added to provide similar information on the System Managed Undo (SMU) tablespace. Both are self explanatory.

- Undo Segment Summary for DB

- Undo Segment Stats for DB

The examples below show typical performance problem related to Undo (rollback) segments:

Rollback Segment Stats for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

....

In this case, the PCT Waits on three of the rollback segments indicates that there is some minor contention on the rollbacks and that either another rollback or more space should be added.

Rollback Segment Storage for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

In this case, the client does not have optimal set.

Rollback Segment Storage for DB: RW1PRD Instance: rw1prd Snaps: 10489 - 1

In this instance optimal is set and we can see an overflow for average active for RBS 1 and that RBS 9 was also larger than optimal. If this is a consistent problem it may be that the optimal value should be raised.

Undo Segment Summary for DB: S901 Instance: S901 Snaps: 2 -3

The description of the view V$UNDOSTAT in the Oracle9i Database Reference guide provides some insight as to the columns definitions. Should the client encounter SMU problems, monitoring this view every few minutes would provide more useful information.

Undo Segment Stats for DB: S901 Instance: S901 Snaps: 2 -3

This section provides a more detailed look at the statistics in the previous section by listing the information as it appears in each snapshot.

It should be noted that 9i introduces an optional init.ora parameter called UNDO_RETENTION which allows the DBA to specify how long the system will attempt to retain undo information for a committed transaction without being overwritten or recaptured. This parameter, based in units of wall-clock seconds, is defined universally for all undo segments.

Use of UNDO_RETENTION can potentially increase the size of the undo segment for a given period of time, so the retention period should not be arbitrarily set too high. The UNDO tablespace still must be sized appropriately. The following calculation can be used to determine how much space a given undo segment will consume given a set value of UNDO_RETENTION.

Undo Segment Space Required = (undo_retention_time * undo_blocks_per_seconds)

As an example, an UNDO_RETENTION of 5 minutes (default) with 50 undo blocks/second (8k blocksize) will generate:

Undo Segment Space Required = (300 seconds * 50 blocks/ seconds * 8K/block) = 120 M

The retention information (transaction commit time) is stored in every transaction table block and each extent map block. When the retention period has expired, SMON will be signaled to perform undo reclaims, done by scanning each transaction table for undo timestamps and deleting the information from the undo segment extent map. Only during extreme space constraint issues will retention period not be obeyed.

Latch information is provided in the following three sections.

" Latch Activity

" Latch Sleep breakdown

" Latch Miss Sources

This information should be checked whenever the "latch " wait event or other latch wait events experience long waits.

Latch Activity for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

This section is identical in both 8i and 9i. This section is particularly useful for determining latch contention on an instance. Latch contention generally indicates resource contention and supports indications of it in other sections.

Latch contention is indicated by a Pct Miss of greater than 1.0% or a relatively high value in Avg Sleeps/Miss.

While each latch can indicate contention on some resource, the more common latches to watch are:

- cache buffer chains: Contention on this latch confirms a hot block issue.

- shared pool: Contention on this latch in conjunction with reloads in the SQL Area of the library cache section indicates that the shared pool is too small. Contention on this latch indicates that one of the following is happening:

- The library cache, and hence, the shared pool is too small.

Latch Sleep breakdown for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

This section provides additional supporting information to the previous section. It is identical in 8i and 9i.

Latch Miss Sources for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

This section provides a detailed breakdown of which latches are missing and sleeping. It is particularly useful in identifying library cache bugs as it provides latch child information not available in the previous two sections.

Search on the latch child name experiencing high misses or sleeps and you can often find the bug responsible.

It is identical in 8i and 9i.

This is an interesting section to monitor but about which you can do very little as the only way to change the size of the dictionary cache is to change the shared pool size as the dictionary cache is a percentage of the shared pool. It is identical in 8i and 9i.

Dictionary Cache Stats for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

This section of the report shows information about the different sub-areas activity in the library cache.

Library Cache Activity for DB: S901 Instance: S901 Snaps: 2 -3

Values in Pct Misses or Reloads in the SQL Area, Tables/Procedures or Trigger rows indicate that the shared pool may be too small. To confirm this, consistent values (not sporadic) in Pct Misses or Reloads in the Index row indicate that the buffer cache is too small. (No longer available in 9i.)

Values in Invalidations in the SQL Area indicate that a table definition changed while a query was being run against it or a PL/SQL package being used was recompiled.

This section provides a breakdown of how the SGA memory is used at the time of the report. It is useful to be able to track this over time. This section is identical in 8i and 9i.

This section shows a detailed breakdown of memory usage by the SGA at the beginning and ending of the reporting period. It allows the DBA to track memory usage throughout the business cycle. It is identical in 8i and 9i.

SGA breakdown difference for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

The final section shows the current init.ora parameter settings. It displays those that are more commonly used including some hidden. It is identical in 8i and 9i.

init.ora Parameters for DB: MYDBS Instance: mydbs Snaps: 100 -104

Q: What is a reasonable snap shots interval for the STATSPACK utility?

Q: What does it mean if an output be represented by #######?

Q: What does the Instance Workload Information section contain in the STATSPACK report output?

Q: What does the Instance Cache Information section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the Load Profile Information section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the Instance Efficiency Ratios section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the Foreground and Background Wait Events section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the Buffer Pool and Buffer Wait Statistics section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the PGA Memory Statistics section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the "Rollback Segment Stats/Storage/Summary for DB" section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the Latch Activity section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the Latch Sleep Breakdown and Miss Sources section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the Library Cache Statistics section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the SGA Memory Summary section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the SGA Memory Detail section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?

Q: What does the INIT.ora Parameter Summary section contain in the STATSPACK report utility?