Expert: Jean-Pierre Zuate - 4/7/2005

Question
The local DBA says that a very large query can "drop the system" (stop one or several ingres servers) How could it be?  

Answer
Hello,

Yes your DBA is right.

A product as Ingres (or Oracle, or so on) is a very complex product. Many differents ressources are manipulated :
- system ressources (hardware, kernel parameter)
- databases ressources

When I talk about system, I think to :
- number and speed of processors
- memory
- disk (speed, how many, how they are used, etc.)
- and so on

When i talk about database :
- how many tables ?
- are they re organised regulary ?
- how much memory Ingres consum ?
- how are your work location ? (to permit to SQL to run correctly)
- and so on

Usualy in the life of an application, tunning (for system, database and all others composants needed) is never a recurant task. And it should be ...

If a very large query drop the system the issue is to tune again the system (Information system. Or : the hardware, the OS, the database, perhaps the application itself, and so on).

Hope this help,
Jean-Pierre ZUATE