Don Burleson has written a couple of good articles,
one on the Address Windowing Extension for 32-bit
Windows and another on a new SQL Tracing utility
available on MOSC. According to
"Oracle Windows AWE Data Buffer Size"
"If you are an Oracle shop using 32-bit
Oracle Windows, it is highly likely that you are
wasting RAM resources. Most Oracle servers come
with 4-gig or 8-gig RAM while a 32-bit windows
SGA has a maximum size on only about 1.3 gig.
This means that the db_block_buffers cannot be
large enough to fully-cache the working set of
frequently-referenced rows, causing excessive
disk I/O.
Until of you on a 64-bit version of Windows
Oracle (Windows Advanced Server 2003), you can
use either the 4GT or the AWE tools to allow
Oracle to use your expensive RAM to cache
additional data buffers."
"Here is a great new script from Carlos
Sierra, a brilliant developer at Oracle
Corporation.
This script is an enhancement to
the Center of Excellence (COE) script top
produce a super-detailed trace of SQL execution.
This new script is remarkable, and I hope that
you enjoy it as much as I do. The MOSC page
is reproduced here with Mr. Sierra's
permission:"
