Oracle StatsPack

What is Oracle StatsPack?

Oracle StatsPack is a set of SQL, PL/SQL and SQL*Plus scripts which allow the collection, automation, storage and viewing of performance data. A user is automatically created by the installation script - this user, PERFSTAT, owns all objects needed by this package. This user is granted limited query-only privileges on the V$ views required for performance tuning.

Statspack fundamentally differs from the well known UTLBSTAT/UTLESTAT tuning scripts by collecting more information, and also by storing the performance statistics data permanently in Oracle tables, which can later be used for reporting and analysis. The data collected can be analyzed using the report provided, which includes an "instance health and load" summary page, high resource SQL statements, as well as the traditional wait events and initialization parameters.

So why OSPRep?

Oracle StatsPack already includes a reporting engine - so why we need OSPRep then? The big difference is: The reports generated by Oracle StatsPack are plain ASCII files, more or less simply listing up the data collected. You can either report all - or nothing. There are no relations set between the data.

OSPRep on the other side generates its reports as HTML pages, which are much easier to read. On creation, you can decide which parts to include into the reports - and so you get only those parts presented which are of interest for you. Furthermore, OSPRep sets some data in relation and even highlights critical values.

All together, the question "Why do I need OSPRep" will only make sense in context of Oracle 10g and up, where most of these things are already done by Oracle itself, and presented through the db console resp. grid control.