Core Oracle internal algorithms are covered up until the printing of this book. But don't let that stop you from enjoying and gleaning what this book has to offer. Most of the core Oracle algorithms that I present are so central to Oracle's interworkings that their relation to real-life production Oracle system performance analysis remains constant. Sure, you can find exceptions, but with 99.9% of Oracle performance issues, this is not the case. This book is focused on real systems, not laptop test cases designed just to make a point.

When the specific Oracle version affects the algorithms I present, I'll explain the differences among versions and how they affect our performance work. I think you'll find it very refreshing that to be a stellar performance analyst, you don't need to know every Oracle algorithm in every Oracle release.

Regarding operating systems, unless otherwise stated, references are based on Linux. However, among the various operating systems, when it comes to determining the operating system bottleneck (not tuning) and relating that to Oracle activity, the concepts, words we use, and our objective are similar. The data collection tool may be different, but the specific pieces of information that we want to gather are the same. Most people are surprised that the concepts can be applied to any operating system. The key is knowing what to look for and then finding the tool to get that information.