This article notes that Oracle has again increased the prices of their
Oracle diagnostic pack and Oracle performance pack, from $3,500 per seat to
$5,000.
"It was "a brilliant move" by Oracle to keep
enterprise-edition database licenses at $47,500 per CPU but hike prices on
the add-ons, since they will become virtually indispensable over time"
Try it, you'll like it
Unlike other database vendors who sell and install
extra-cost packages separately, Oracle put their expensive tuning packs
right in your face, a smart marketing move.
Oracle guru Steve Karam has a different view, he calls
it the
disable or pay approach:
"Imagine buying a new car. In the new car comes leather
seats, A/C, and a killer sound system. After driving it around for a few
days, you get a reminder from the dealership:
The leather seats, A/C,
and sound system are separately licensed products. Please pay the license
fees or remove these add-ons from your vehicle."
Oracle automatically installs the Automated workload
Repository and Automated Session History, but AWR and ASH require extra cost
licenses to use these advanced tuning features.
No replacement for a human tuning expert
To date, neither Oracle nor any other third-party
vendor has successfully developed a tuning tool with the intuition and
expertise of a human Oracle tuning expert.
Further, many of Oracle tuning advisors are designed to
grab only the :low hanging" fruit. For example the Oracle SQLTuning
advisor serves only to detect missing indexes and recommend materialized
views. In the real world, these are only a tiny sub-set of tuning
tools used to optimize SQL. See
Oracle SQL Tuning tricks
Despite the dramatic price increases, not everyone is
happy with the Oracle performance and diagnostic packs. None of these
automated tuning tools can replicate the expertise of a real human expert,
and Oracle has a less than stellar history of automated tuning tools, such
as the ill-fated "Oracle Expert" utility, a dismal failure.
Third-party alternatives to Oracle tuning packs
With Oracle hiking prices on their performance packs,
savvy Oracle professionals are looking for better, less expensive options.
Instead of paying these hefty licensing fees, many shop
choose to use the free STATSPACK utility and deploy superior third party
tools such as Ion for Oracle.
