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Introduction
Thank you for purchasing this book. We worked hard on it for a long time. Our hope is that you find it
useful as you begin to work with Exadata. We’ve tried to introduce the topics in a methodical manner
and move from generalizations to specific technical details. While some of the material paints a very
broad picture of how Exadata works, some is very technical in nature, and you may find that having
access to an Exadata system where you can try some of the techniques presented will make it easier to
understand. Note that we’ve used many undocumented parameters and features to demonstrate how
various pieces of the software work. Do not take this as a recommended approach for managing a
production system. Remember that we have had access to a system that we could tear apart with little
worry about the consequences that resulted from our actions. This gave us a huge advantage in our
investigations into how Exadata works. In addition to this privileged access, we were provided a great
deal of support from people both inside and outside of Oracle for which we are extremely grateful.
The Intended Audience
This book is intended for experienced Oracle people. We do not attempt to explain how Oracle works
except as it relates to the Exadata platform. This means that we have made some assumptions about the
reader’s knowledge. We do not assume that you are an expert at performance tuning on Oracle, but we
do expect that you are proficient with SQL and have a good understanding of basic Oracle architecture.
How We Came to Write This Book
In the spring of 2010, Enkitec bought an Exadata V2 Quarter Rack. We put it in the tiny computer room at
our office in Dallas. We don’t have a raised floor or anything very fancy, but the room does have its own
air conditioning system. It was actually more difficult than you might think to get Oracle to let us
purchase one. They had many customers that wanted them, and they were understandably protective of
their new baby. We didn’t have a top-notch data center to put it in, and even the power requirements
had to be dealt with before they would deliver one to us. At any rate, shortly after we took delivery,
through a series of conversations with Jonathan Gennick, Randy and I agreed to write this book for
Apress. There was not a whole lot of documentation available at that time, and so we found ourselves
pestering anyone we could find who knew anything about it. Kevin Closson and Dan Norris were both
gracious enough to answer many of our questions at the Hotsos Symposium in the spring of 2010. Kevin
contacted me some time later and offered to be the official technical reviewer. So Randy and I struggled
through the summer and early fall attempting to learn everything could.
I ran into Tanel at Oracle Open World in September, 2010, and we talked about a client using
Exadata that he had done some migration work for. One thing led to another, and eventually he agreed
to join the team as a co-author. At Open World, Oracle announced the availability of the new X2 models,
so we had barely gotten started and we were already behind on the technology.
testfank2012-11-21有沒有中文的,不過還是本好書
