A Little Help From My Friends

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends 
Mmmm, I get high with a little help from my friends 
Mmmm, I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends
 - From "With A Little Help From My Friends", Lennon and McCartney

One of the great highs about the software business…I make a ton of friends.  And those friends are really, really smart.  Most far smarter than me.  And those far smarter friends are very generous in sharing what they know.

Case in point; a swell little package showed up in the mail last week.  Pal Mike Swing at TruTek sent me a complimentary copy of his latest book:  "The Little R12.1.3 Tuning and Troubleshooting Guide".  Written for Oracle E-Business users, Mike's book hones in on performance tips and common issues/solutions for an EBS 12.1.3 upgrade.

Love the way this book is laid out…light on fluff, heavy on usable content.  Mike works through all the administrative and introductory stuff (Table of Contents, Preface, Copyright, etc.) in the first 14 pages.  Then he dives straight into the meat:  31 snippets of content on 31 basic performance tips related to your 12.1.3 upgrade.  My personal favorite is Tip #16 on understanding CPU and I/O Utilization.  I grapple with CPU and I/O performance issues - a lot!  Years of blood, sweat and tears.  Mike pretty well lays it out in nine pages.  Really? How can anybody explain this stuff in nine pages??? Mike not only does it, but I personally learned a boatload by reading it.

Once Mike wraps up with the performance tips, he adds on an added bonus:  troubleshooting tips for the 24 most common technical issues encountered in a 12.1.3 upgrade.  How to recognize those issues, how to troubleshoot to determine root cause, and what to do about the root cause after you've identified it.

I'll be bugging Mike for a PDF version of this book, as I want it in my iPad reference materials.

Love it when I get a little help from my friends.  You can find out more about Mike's book here.