This final chapter brings a natural and fitting finality to Oracle Performance Firefighting. We started with method, moved into diagnosis and data collection, then into relevant Oracle internals, enabling us to intelligently choose valid performance-enhancing solutions, and then finally anticipate the impact of our proposed solutions. It's part of being an effective Oracle performance firefighter.

I truly wish this book had been available in 1989 when I first joined Oracle's consulting division. It would have made such a difference! So to those of you who are relatively new to Oracle optimization, here it is and enjoy! And those of you who have been slugging along for years optimizing Oracle systems, I hope you have a renewed enthusiasm and expectation for your work.

1 The number of CPUs or the number of CPU threads does not accurately reflect the processing power for an Oracle-based system. There are many reasons for this, but in summary, this is based on Oracle's multiple process architecture that can take advantage of multiple cores, but not so much multiple threads per core or CPU.