🧠 Oracle Database Administration – Oracle Instance & Memory Architecture (SGA/PGA)
20 questions · 15 min timer · Explanations included · Free
Almost every Oracle performance conversation eventually becomes a memory conversation. This quiz checks whether you can name each structure, say what lives in it, and explain what happens when it’s sized wrong.
The split to keep straight: the SGA is shared across all sessions; the PGA is private to each server process. Sorting happens in the PGA. Cached blocks and parsed SQL live in the SGA.
What this quiz covers
- Database Buffer Cache — cached data blocks, and what a low hit ratio actually indicates
- Shared Pool — parsed SQL, execution plans, compiled PL/SQL, and the library cache
- Redo Log Buffer — its role in the write path
- Large Pool, Java Pool, Streams Pool — what each exists for
- PGA — session memory, sorting, and automatic PGA tuning
- ASMM and AMM — automatic shared memory management against full automatic memory management, and which parameters drive each
MEMORY_TARGETandSGA_TARGET— what setting them actually changes
Common mistakes
- Putting session-specific data in the SGA — that’s the PGA
- Assuming AMM is always the right choice; it’s incompatible with HugePages, which matters on large systems
- Sizing the shared pool for hard parses instead of fixing the hard parsing
Twenty questions below, each with an explanation.
