Configuring and Tuning Databases on the Solaris Platform - 2nd Edition?

For some time people have been asking if I'm planning a second edition of Configuring and Tuning Databases on the Solaris Platform. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've recently taken the first step of having an initial conversation with the publisher.

What would a second edition focus on? It isn't hard to come up with a short list. The IT industry has been moving in some new directions. In particular there's a lot of excitement building around open source databases; our customers are increasingly asking about them and beginning to deploy them in earnest. Solaris 10 opens up a lot of new possibilities (Containers/Zones and DTrace just for starters), and Open Solaris introduces all of these topics to a wider audience. There's nothing significant in the first edition about Oracle RAC, an omission that should be corrected. And for most of the products covered in the first edition, there are later versions, feature updates, and new insights to be explored.

If you think there should be a second edition, please let me know. And feel free to suggest the topics you'd most like to see covered.

I'll let you know if and when there's more news...

Allan

Posted on: Oct 06, 2005

Posted by: allanp

Category: Book

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Comments:

It's a bit early, but by the time the book comes out ZFS will be all the rage :) ZFS is a different (simpler) beast and understanding it's impact on databases would make many of my customers darn happy.

Posted by John Clingan on October 06, 2005 at 09:58 PM PDT #

A nice collection of generic DTrace scripts to figure out where the (insert your choice of OS DB) database is spending its time, memory, i/o so that it can be all minimized.

Would like to see it cover PostgreSQL and MySQL.

Effect of memcached or similar tool on database performance.

Posted by Amit Kulkarni on October 06, 2005 at 10:53 PM PDT #

Hi Allan,
A very good idea indeed. I would like to see better detailed:

Solaris internals:
- DISM and ISM under Solaris and what db vendors are using these features
- Solaris 10 new features which are cool for db usage
- Using DTrace/mdb/truss to debug real live examples: a core dump from Oracle or any other suitable examples

Other DB vendors:
- PostgreSQL under Solaris

thanks,
Stefan

Posted by Stefan Parvu on October 07, 2005 at 12:04 AM PDT #

I was planning to mention something about PostgreSQL but then I saw Amit's comment... Another thing I wanted to point out is largepage support. It may be interesting to see some real performance data comparing DBMS with different page sizes. (While Oracle and DB2 tune everything, opensource DBMS users are faced with compiler settings...) Finally, it should not be all about performance tuning - may be covering things like failover/HA (Solaris cluster) is important as well.

Posted by Rayson (via proxy) on October 07, 2005 at 12:11 AM PDT #

Some of my customers would like to see more of opensource db coverage. Tx. e1, CSO Asia South

Posted by Iwan Rahabok on October 07, 2005 at 06:14 AM PDT #

Hmmm,
Looks like Sun's own HADB (High Availability Database) is not being pushed? My brother heard that they are hiring for HADB jobs back in India. Shouldn't HADB be covered too?

The reason I mentioned memcached is because of a typical install of PostgreSQL/MySQL with memcached on geographically separate Solaris 10 machines. (Sort of like Rayson mentioned)

Posted by Amit Kulkarni on October 07, 2005 at 12:37 PM PDT #

PostgreSQL + Slony. DTrace. Lots of folks are using Hibernate; evaluating how various 2nd level caches can be tuned would be very useful (particular JBossCache + cacheloaders).

Posted by Dan on November 16, 2005 at 11:49 PM PST #

A few pages on sqlite would also be nice.

Posted by 83.177.244.230 on November 18, 2005 at 01:21 PM PST #

Some discussion around x64 specific tuning and issues would be good also.

Posted by Robin on December 06, 2005 at 02:36 PM PST #

PostgreSQL and MySQL - including tuning on x64 and T1000/T2000

Posted by Igor on December 15, 2005 at 03:12 PM PST #

hi every body I, am instalin slony-1 in solaris 10 with postgres 8.0.1. When i try to compile slony-l in solaris say me that i need to compile with --anabled-thread-sefety, i found some help and say me the i need the path for libpq, i just found the 7.4.2, but i need some one to work in postgres 8.0.1 where i can found this and how put the path, y hope some people can help me. tanks

Posted by Angel Quiñones on January 28, 2006 at 10:59 AM PST #

Your book is a great book, the 2nd edition is needed by the Sun community. Information on /etc/system on Solaris 10 in your 2nd edition would be great.

Posted by Bundit Kunsuwan on May 11, 2007 at 02:56 AM PDT #

Please publish a second book as soon as possible. The material you cover should be required reading for everybody (SysAdmin, DBA, etc.) responsible for a DB on Solaris.

Posted by Dwight Lowry on July 23, 2007 at 06:36 AM PDT #

I'll throw in for sybase and cache(intersystems) and echo the rest of the comments, stuff on tuning the open source dbs (mysql, postgres, javadb)- chapters on high availability(sun cluster), solaris 10, large pages, monitoring w/truss, dtrace, etc and zones and tuning regular sparc vs niagara vs x64. Thanks for a great first book. A chapter for connectivity using jdbc and hibernate would be nice too.

Posted by Dean Ross-Smith on October 10, 2007 at 02:45 PM PDT #

Yes please, looking forward to it. We have a large number of databases on Informix, MySQL and Postgres running in zones and out. Also using some of the newer SPARC 64 (Fijitsu chips) so tuning these will also be great.

Posted by S Haycroft on May 12, 2008 at 05:25 AM PDT #

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