Benchmarking

I haven’t been keeping up with asktom lately but I noticed this one when I had a glance today and enjoyed it. Take a look at the last follow-up, dated 14th March 2006, and Tom’s answer. Very true and very appropriate to my recent work. Perhaps the questioner should take the number 1.53215 and display it on a pretty graph. That normally does the trick 😉

See, Tom always has the inside track on Oracle internals!

I liked this blog by Jon Emmons too, which discusses the Run Queue which is very useful in looking at system performance during tests. It’s a shame I couldn’t spell Jon’s name correctly on my comment 🙁

9 comments

  1. Thomas Kyte said…

    “I was feeling snarky this morning…”

    But it was funny 😉

    “Any number given to “management” would be a lie.”

    And that’s true. Sometimes managers are so busy looking for an answer, though, that the truth is just too awkward.

  2. Andy C said…

    “How very timely. The number 1.53215 very nearly found its way into a presentation I am currently preparing.”

    Don’t be too hasty taking it out, it might be *just* the number everyone’s looking for.

  3. Now if you could fudge it to 1.57079633 then I’m sure someone could dream up a theoretical justification.

    (Which reminds me, I once talked to a guy who designed BIG electromagnets for CERN, who told me that their back-of-an-envelope stuff was done in imperial units – becuase there are pi feet per metre, which nicely cancelled out a pi elsewhere in the forumla.)

  4. Dapi said
    becuase there are pi feet per metre, which nicely cancelled out a pi elsewhere in the forumla

    Just like pi^2 is g … or so I used to use in university days

  5. >> It’s a shame I couldn’t spell Jon’s name correctly on my comment 🙁

    Don’t sweat it Doug! You also forgot to put in your URI in for some free publicity!

    As for giving numbers to management… It’s more like a tree falling in the woods. Of course there’s always the trick of throwing a dollar sign next to it, that helps get management attention.

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