Oracle tuning packs increase in price

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.