I have used the Profiler software since 2002 to solve numerous elusive performance problems. The Method R Profiler and Method R Tools are the best Oracle performance diagnostic tools I have ever used.

Andrew Zitelli

Principal Software Engineer with Honors, Thales-Raytheon Systems

From the very beginning, working with Method-R was an absolute pleasure. ...The code was excellent: well written, modular and reusable where appropriate, and it performed exceptionally well. Of course, there are detailed exception messages to capture any possible errors, and I still haven’t encountered an uncaptured error in testing. The code is also instrumented, providing better visibility of active processes and allowing trace files to be captured easily when needed. Method-R exceeded requirements and expectations in their delivered code, and the difference between the code as it existed a year ago and as it exists today is almost unbelievable.

Robyn Sands

Database Systems Architect, Cisco Systems

No other software comes close to the precision and trustworthiness of Method R software.

Alex Gorbachev

Chief Technology Officer, The Pythian Group

Consistent is key here… Consistency based on a method that has proven his merits in the performance community, to get fast and accurate results. That is what the Method-R Profiler will provide you with, consistency, based on trace file input and a method that has proven very useful in performance analysis. Another advantage is that it the tool will profile all the trace file content given and puts it in context based on the Method-R methodology, that is performance result measurements in the context of response time analysis. One of the things I like is that it also takes into account where time was not spend, said differently, database things “doing nothing”. In the case of a network resolving issue, this could be one of the hints you might get from a Method-R profiling report signifying: “your problem is not in the database, but outside it, see the round trips/time spend…”.

Within half an hour, I presented to my colleague, the offending SQL statement. He needed almost 2 days to figure out the same, after long discussions with other team members, fiddling with report options in tkprof and the trace analyzers and trying to see it all in context; regarding the info presented in his reports. The Method-R profiling method has its merits on that account that you can skip most of these pointers and pinpoints you towards the problem at hand, in context, via profiling. Less time spend is, also in this case, less money “wasted”.

Marco Gralike

Principal Database Consultant, AMIS
Oracle ACE Director, Specialization XML DB
Profiler Review at blog.gralike.com

Using your profiler and Method R is going very well. It was definitely the right decision skipping OraSRP since your software delivers so much more information.

Kim Hindsböl

Senior Oracle DBA, T-Systems International GmbH

Our friend Dave Ensor—the grand old man of Oracle performance science—once told me in private that Cary Millsap was the best man inside Oracle to disprove theories. True. But he can also create. This book is fantastic. Those who read it will be kings for the next few years.

Mogens Nørgaard

Director, Miracle A/S

We really like Profiler. We've always had trace files, but most developers do not know how to read them. It makes things very easy and gives me the evidence I need to demonstrate the problem is in the code, not the database.

Dorrie Keyes

DBA Manager, Indianapolis, Indiana

As a proud owner of MR Tools I think it rocks. I can honestly recommend it to everyone. Easy to use, time saving and also helps to catch problems easily. Thanks for writing it.

A. Coskan Gundogar

Database Administrator, London UK

Within one minute of installation the Method R Profiler exceeded all expectations. We went live with a new warehouse management system this Friday because all of the tuning was done ahead of time. The Profiler pointed out all of the application inefficiencies which we turned over to the vendor. They were able to fix the ones with the largest impact on the online response times. That gave our management the confidence they needed to make the Go/No-Go decision. Until I got the Profiler we were looking at postponing it until next quarter. I pity the poor souls that have to optimize in mere mortal ways.

Tony Aponte

Database Administrator, Clearwater, Florida

Dear Sir,

I owe you and your corporation a long overdue thank you for Method R.

A couple of months ago, I was helping a client get through a serious performance problem on a project that was already late and getting later, we were finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel until we got to the last part of the application. We were facing a query that was part of a customer facing module that had to run in under 2 seconds per execution, and the current tests showed it running in 40 minutes. There was much consternation and many meetings were called, management was getting anxious and lots of memos were being sent.

I finally managed to convince the local DBA over there to send me a trace file of the application while the problem was occurring, then turned the Profiler on it. Out of 40 minutes of response time, over 39 minutes and 59 seconds were being spent one index call. Said call stood out in big bright red in the Profiler file….

One ‘ALTER INDEX ...’ call later to make the index unusable for the test…and the query completed in ½ second. We dropped the index, no recoding, release date met, …customer happy.

Thanks again.

Bernard Antonuk

Orion Data Management

The first time I used it, the Profiler helped me reduce the run time of one query from 6½ hours to less than 11 minutes.

Guðmundur Jósepsson

System Performance Analyst, Reyjkavík, Iceland

The Profiler (combined with Method-R) has enabled me to resolve performance problems that could not have been resolved in any way other than by pure luck. The return of the modest investment cannot be beat. I saved a failing project as soon as I got it. I highly recommend it over the so-called “free” stuff.

Tony Aponte

Database Administrator, Clearwater, Florida

I just finally got ’round to installing MR Trace in SQLDev, and I can say, “Wow... Just wow.” Absolutely blown away by how simple yet effective it is.

John Scott

Apex Evangelists Ltd, Halifax, England

With Method R tools, they not only share their know-how and tools they use to tune systems, but they have polished them into solid, clean, tight, professional-level tools that are dependable, high quality, and written with integrity.

Kyle Hailey

Delphix
“Method-R Tools” at dboptimizer.com

After driving Mr Trace for less than 1 week, I can already see several things that stand out very nicely.

1. MR Trace solves the scoping problem when trying to capture accurate trace files (the importance of correct scoping is mentioned in several places in your book).
2. From an infrastructure perspective, installing MR Trace is unlikely to cause alarm in a corporate DBA group, whereas other tools that I’ve looked at require such things as ftp or ssh access to the oracle trace directory, which in some large shops is absolutely forbidden.
3. And the third item which is also worth mentioning is the speed in which your support organization has turned around requests, I have been very impressed by how responsive your support team has been.
4. When you combine MR Trace and the Profiler, we’ve been able to turn around fixes with almost no interruptions and have taken warehouse queries that use to never finish down to less than ten minutes.

Bernard Antonuk

Orion Data Management

MR Tools 2.0 ROCK! They seem much faster at processing large batches of trace files than v1.0. With MR Tools and the Method R Profiler, I will be invincible! :D

Ian Woodbury-Kuvik

Sparkworx, California

The C. J. Date course produced by Method R was the best investment in my professional career.

Raji Ramachandran

Data Architect, Caxton Associates LP

Every now and then even the best practitioners must take a step back to re-ground themselves in the fundamentals of the trade. The "blocking and tackling." Chris Date does a great job lecturing about logic and set theory—the blocking and tackling of the relational model. No one is more qualified to show us where the tools of our trade have munged the model. And his presentation style makes it a pleasure to learn.

Steve Ollig

Data Architect, Lifetouch Inc.

Method R consistently delivers a world class experience.

Steve Montgomerie

Sr. Oracle/PeopleSoft DBA, Siemens Corporation

I’m a firm believer in the Method R strategy for performance tuning as it has worked well for me countless times over the years.

Brandon Allen

Database Administrator, Scottsdale, Arizona

You guys have optimized every process in the sales path, precise, concise, simple, great work!

Aníbal Gattás

Freelance Consultant and System Engineer, Argentina