Oracle Concepts - Dynamic Performance v$ Views Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

The Oracle Dynamic Performance v$ Views

In this section we will discuss the Dynamic Performance Views. These views are very helpful in monitoring your database for real time performance. In this section we will cover the following:

* The purpose of the Dynamic Performance Views

* The architecture of the Dynamic Performance Views

* Uses of the Dynamic Performance Views

Here is a description of some of the Oracle x$ tables and sample queries against the x$ table structures.  You can also grep your $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin directory and see how the x$ structures are mapped to v$ views.

Also see the x$ kernel service & cache table.

For a map of the important data on the v$ views that are built from the Oracle x$ tables, see this Oracle Poster.

The purpose of the Dynamic Performance Views

The dynamic performance views (we will call them the V$ views to shorten the name) are real-time or almost real time views into the guts of Oracle. What is the difference between the data dictionary views and the V$ Views? You can think of the data dictionary views like a parts manual…. It lists all the parts of the car, and shows you pictures of where they are located. This is handy if you want to know where something is, or if you need to replace a part, but not so helpful when you want to adjust the timing of the car.

The V$ Views are like the speedometer and the tachometer in your car, they tell you how fast the car (or the database) is going (or not), or like the timing light that helps you adjust the timing. They provide almost immediate feedback as to the condition of the database.

The architecture of the Dynamic Performance Views

The basic foundation of the Dynamic Performance Views is a set of very low level Oracle views you should rarely if ever need to access…. These views are called the X$ views. The X$ views are very low level representations of Oracle internal database structures. They are not tables, but database representation of C structures that are maintained by the Oracle kernel.

The naming conventions of the X$ views and the columns in these views is such that you don’t want to have to go looking in the X$ views, trust me. Be happy you don’t need to access these things.

Lying on top of the X$ views, Oracle has created a very complete set of views called the V_$ views. Oracle then provides synonyms that have the V$ names that point to the V_$ views (we discussed synonyms earlier in this book, recall they are used to provide pointers to other things in the database). Hence, in the end when we want access to real time database information, it’s the V$ synonyms that we will use (but we call them V$ views, go figure!).

One last thing to note is that only those with DBA privileges have access to the V$ views. There are ways around this, but it requires some rather advanced DBA work. You will just need to do some research to find your answer.

Uses of the V$ Views

As with the earlier section on the Data Dictionary Views, we felt it would be worthwhile to provide some examples of the use of the V$ views.

Again, the whole idea here is to get you to thinking about using the V$ views to monitor your databases performance. In the end, there are a ton of scripts out on the internet that you can find that will do just about whatever you need. Hence, here are some example uses of the V$ views:

* See who is on the system

* See what SQL users are running on the system

* See what session is blocking other session

* See what waits are occurring in your database.

Viewing current Oracle users

One thing DBA’s want to know is who is on the system. The following query is a good introduction to the V$ views. It uses the v$session view to show you who is currently connected to the database.

Notice in the results of this query the SID and SERIAL# columns. These columns individually identify each user session. The USERNAME columns shows us the Oracle username of the person signed into the system, and the OSUSER column shows us the OS username that the person is signed into the client as. These two columns can be very handy when trying to figure out who is actually connected to your system. For example, if I’m on a UNIX system we can run the finger command on the GRUMPY user, and we might well find out GRUMPY’s identity:

Here we find that Grumpy is actually Mike Dwarf Sr. If Mike isn’t supposed to be on the system, we might be making a phone call right about now.

There are a number of these V$ views in Oracle, providing a wealth of information. You can find them documented in the Oracle Database 10g Reference Guide.

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