Oracle 10g provides a multitude of new features that allow better performance monitoring and management. The content below give you a high level overview of the Performance Management Features and we will cover each of them in detail in the coming weeks

Active Session History Reports
Active Session History (ASH) reports contains ASH information that can be used to identify blocker and waiter identities and their associated transaction identifiers and SQL for a specified duration.

Automatic PGA Memory Management
A new view has been added to monitor dynamic PGA memory usage for each Oracle process. See "Monitoring the Performance of the Automatic PGA Memory Management" for descriptions of the V$PROCESS_MEMORY view.

Automatic Shared Memory Management
Automatic Shared Memory Management simplifies the configuration of System Global Area (SGA) memory-related parameters through self-tuning algorithms. Automatic Shared Memory Management has been enhanced and the streams pool is now auto tuned as part of the automatic SGA management.

Automatic Tuning of Multiblock Read Count
The DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT initialization parameter is now automatically tuned to use a default value when this parameter is not set explicitly. See "Controlling the Behavior of the Query Optimizer" for more information on the DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT parameter.

Automatic Workload Repository Reports
Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) reports display statistics for a range of snapshot Ids. Two new reports, awrsqrpt.sql and awrsqrpi.sql, have been added to view statistics for a particular SQL statement.

Configurable Automatic Workload Repository SQL Collection
The Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) collects, processes, and maintains performance statistics for problem detection and self-tuning purposes, including SQL statements that are producing the highest load on the system. This feature has been enhanced to enable the configuration of the number of Top SQL to flush for each SQL criteria (Elapsed Time, CPU Time, Parse Calls, Shareable Memory, and Version Count).

Enhanced End to End Application Tracing
End to End Application Tracing identifies the source of an excessive workload, such as a high load SQL statement. This feature has been enhanced to enable SQL tracing on a session, instance wide, or an entire database level.

Improved System Statistics
The V$SYSSTAT view has added rows to capture the total number of physical I/O's performed by any Oracle process. See "Examine Load". Additionally, a new event has been added to reduce the memory used for maintaining statistics on events in the Other wait class.

SQL Access Advisor
The SQL Access Advisor and its related DBMS_ADVISOR package now recommend function-based indexes, the recommendation process can now be interrupted and there are improvements in the Oracle Enterprise Manager.

SQL Profiles
The DBMS_SQLTUNE package now also offers the ability to allow SQL with text differing only in its literal values to share a SQL Profile by normalizing literal text values to bind variables.

SQL Tuning Advisor
It is now possible to monitor the execution progress of the SQL Tuning Advisor using the new V$ADVISOR_PROGRESS view.

SQL Tuning Sets
SQL Tuning Sets can now be exported to or imported from another system using the DBMS_SQLTUNE package procedures.

V$SQLSTATS View
A new view, V$SQLSTATS, returns performance statistics for SQL cursors. V$SQLSTATS contains a subset of columns that appear in V$SQL and V$SQLAREA. However, the V$SQLSTATS view differs from V$SQL and V$SQLAREA in that it is faster, more scalable, and has a greater data retention. It is recommended that V$SQLSTATS be used in place of V$SQL when fetching statistics for SQL cursors.