The Oracle Database is a powerful development environment

How many application developers truly understand what a database can do for them? Many times I have seen code written by developers for business or presentation logic placed outside the database when it did not need to be. The load on the database, on the client and across the network increase unnecessarily, since more calls to the database are made, more data is transferred between the database and the application has to process more data.

It would be nice if all developers would learn more about the power of the database they are using. There is a nice picture over at the ORA-00001 blog that shows this. I'll delve into some of these capabilities in future posts.

As a developer, it does not matter which database you use: Oracle, MS SQL Server, or DB2, take the time to learn what it can do for you. You may be surprised at how much more effective you become!

A beginner's look at Oracle Performance

While reading the Helsinki Declaration posts, I got to thinking about a short document on Oracle Performance for Developers I wrote a while back for a US based fund company (AUM > 1Trillion USD).

I'd like to share one paragraph:

"An efficient application reads the fewest blocks from memory (logical reads) to perform the work it needs. It has a transaction size (redo size) that contains all the work that must be committed or rolled back together that comprises a business transaction. It does not do any unnecessary commits or rollbacks. It also, parses a statement once, and reuses (executes) it over and over again."

One of the take aways from the Helsinki Declaration posts is "spreading the work unnecessarily across many tiers makes the servers and developers do more work" .

Why do we do this?