> What benefit, exactly, do you expect someone to get from a 'glimpse' at
> the MON tables?

We use it to track down the queries/operations which are occurring when users complain about slow performance.

We also use it when we need to kill a run-away query.

> I really would not know how to interpret these 8 snapshots.

IMO the 8 snapshots have little value; they only show you what was running at the exact moment of the snapshot not 1 milli-second before or after.

As such, while the snapshot shows the current operations there are plenty of operations which could now be idle which were killing the system 1 ms before the snapshot.


To properly understand the slow system operations, the TRACE functionality is required.

We have used it to log long running SQL statements (starting with longer than 60 seconds and then progressively decrease the time value to 5 secs). This allowed us to find some really bad queries and significantly improve their performance.

Taken to an extreme, it would be possible to log all activity and then use those details to develop an operational profile of a client/system over a series of days.

From this profile, a further analysis of the statements which need optimization could be developed, sometimes it is not the long running operations that have the most significant performance impact. The optimization of a statement which currently executes in 4sec to execute in 1sec but is executed 1000 times a day could be more significant than the optimization of a 60 sec SP, which executes 10 times a day, to 5 secs.


Sean