The only book devoted exclusively to optimizing Oracle SQL code. -- Covers the latest release, Oracle 8. -- Detailed coverage of parallel query tuning and when to substitute PL/SQL for SQL. -- CD-ROM contains exclusive Oracle SQL performance tuning tools. -- Presents detailed Oracle SQL tuning case studies. Most Oracle applications perform below their potential due to imperfectly tuned SQL. Oracle SQL High Performance Tuning Kit is the first guide to Oracle performance that focuses primarily on tuning SQL code, rather than server issues -- making it an essential resource for all Oracle database developers who write Oracle SQL code. It briefly introduces the basics and philosophy of SQL, and then presents a detailed overview of SQL processing in the Oracle database environment. Developers will learn specific techniques for tracing SQL statement execution, and building indexes to support efficient queries. Then, Oracle SQL High Performance Tuning Kit presents comprehensive SQL tuning guidelines, including techniques for choosing execution plans, working with joins, and searching for nulls and ranges. The book includes detailed coverage of Oracle's parallel query facility for large-volume queries, and helps developers identify opportunities to use PL/SQL instead of standard SQL. It presents several real-life examples of poorly tuned SQL and shows how they can be improved. Finally, the book briefly considers Oracle server bottlenecks and building efficient data models and application architectures.