Figure 5-1. Since this instance has started, it has consumed 734 seconds of CPU. Statistic 12 from the classic instance statistics view v$sysstat contains the CPU time, in hundredths of a second, since the instance has started.

As I stressed in previous chapters, most of our diagnostic work is based on an interval of time. To capture interval activity, we need both an initial value and a final value. Figure 5-2 shows a simple example of how to capture instance CPU consumption over a 30-second interval. This strategy can be applied to any similarly structured Oracle table or view, including the performance views.

Figure 5-2. Most firefighting requires interval reporting. This figure shows an example of how simple it can be to capture and report interval data from v$sysstat or any similarly structured performance view.