SAP R/3 Performance Optimization [With CD-ROM]

After taking the SAP class Workload Analysis on performance tuning and being thoroughly baffled and confused, I bought a copy of this book. Much clearer and comprehensive than SAP's technical training I like the sections on memory and sql tuning for R/3. If you're a serious Basis admin or consultant you absolutely must get a copy of this book and learn it!

As a product manager that writes product specifications for SAP performance monitoring utilities I have found this book to be invaluable. As you may suspect I have a veritible library of SAP performance, capacity and administration books but I refer to this one 95% of the time. Undoubtedly the best guide ever written on SAP Performance.

I have said before that performance tuning SAP is more art than science... an arguable point. Thomas Schneider's depth of knowledge and experience regarding this tricky task comes clear in this book. Although lacking in specificity when it comes to database or operating systems, there is a world of usefull information about SAP buffers, processes, traces, and SQL tuning for the BC Admin tasked with improving performance without simply buying more hardware. This book is every bit as good as SAP's monitoring class. I would suggest a solid understanding of performance measurement and tuning for your RDBMS and OS as a pre-requisite to this volume.

I found this book to be well-written, well-organized, and full of useful ideas and explanations on how to recognize performance problems in R/3. The book does not address OS-specific or DB-specific performance problems in detail, but does discuss expensive SQL statements and OS memory issues. There is some discussion of the uniqueness of R/3 memory management on NT. What you will find is a thorough discussion on R/3 memory management, work process distribution, SQL statements, enqueues, table buffering, and much more.Initially, I was disappointed that there was not a thorough discussion on platform-specific performance issues, but after seeing how well the R/3 aspects are covered, I recommend this book to any R/3 Basis administrator faced with the task of tuning a production system.The fact that the author is part of SAP's TCC group is obvious. I consider this an advanced text, but written simply enough for even a beginning R/3 adminsitrator to comprehend.