This 12-part series of book excerpts is from Kimberly Floss' soon-to-be-released "Oracle SQL and index internals," courtesy of Rampant TechPress. Each excerpt in this series focuses on a different aspect of Oracle10g CBO internals and SQL tuning optimization. Check back frequently for new excerpts.

Current list of excerpts:
1. High performing SQL -- where do you start?
2. New performance views to identify problem SQL
3. Identify the resource-intensive code
4. Tune the code/database for better performance
5. Methods for creating high-quality code
6. Know thy database
7. EXPLAIN and understand
8. Try different combinations
9. Revisit when necessary
10. And if you can't change the code...
11. Index rebuilds
12. Histograms and finding the poorly running SQL

About the book

Tuning Oracle SQL is the single most important skill of the Oracle professional, and Oracle professionals are challenged to create SQL statements that will support thousands of concurrent executions with sub-second response time. This landmark text focuses on advanced Oracle SQL internals and Oracle indexing management. With combined experience of over a century, the world's best Oracle authors now share their secrets for turbocharging Oracle SQL execution.

This is a super-advanced book for the senior Oracle professional and it is not appropriate for the beginner. The text explores important internal mechanisms within Oracle and illustrates the powerful and complex internals of Oracle SQL execution. Topics include the internals of Oracle cost-based SQL optimizer, SQL execution internals within the library cache, Oracle SQL coding and optimization techniques, and Oracle index internals.

Best of all, this text comes with a ready-to-use code depot that is full of working SQL tuning scripts. By leveraging on the expertise of the worlds leading Oracle experts, you can quickly optimize the SQL and indexes inside your Oracle database.

Click here to order the book.