Uses of AWR

STATSPACK is one of the manual ways for looking at historical data. However, this required the DBA to know when and where to get the information, and how to apply that information to the problem. STATSPACK is still available in Oracle database 10g.

Here are a few items and features of AWR to keep in mind when contemplating the switch from STATSPACK.

• In order to use the workload repository, application code will have to be changed. 
   

• There is no supported path to migrate STATSPACK data into the workload repository. 
   

• There is no view created on top of the workload repository to simulate the STATSPACK schema. 
   

• Users who use AWR and STATSPACK at the same time will receive unwanted errors.
   

• AWR utilizes historic data to compare against the current performance data of the system to identify performance bottlenecks, predict future problems, and to help improve the performance.
   

• The AWR statistics data is accessible by DBAs, external users, and third party vendors to develop performance monitoring scripts and tools.
   

• AWR can be used to perform trend analysis.

The next section will examine the architecture of AWR by describing some of the many statistics that are collected.