Harry - Performance Scraper for Oracle Database
Performance investigations need evidence
Database performance problems rarely begin when somebody opens a monitoring screen. A slowdown may have ended, an execution plan may already have changed, or a high-frequency SQL statement may only become significant when its impact is measured over time.
Harry was created to preserve that evidence.
It collects Oracle Database workload and operational information and writes structured samples to PostgreSQL. Grafana dashboards then provide historical views of database activity, SQL consumers, execution plans, sessions, blocking, capacity and operational health.
The result is a performance repository that runs in your own infrastructure, uses components your team can inspect and operate, and keeps the collected data under your control.
See what happened, identify what consumed the resources, and retain the evidence needed to act.
Why Harry exists
Oracle Database exposes excellent diagnostic information, but turning it into useful and persistent performance history presents practical challenges:
- Real-time views often lose the evidence before an investigation begins.
- High-cardinality SQL, plan and session data does not fit naturally into a conventional time-series monitoring model.
- Monitoring and performance investigation are frequently split across several unrelated tools.
- Retention, dashboarding and operational alerting must still be designed and maintained.
- Smaller organizations need useful performance visibility without making an expensive monitoring platform the starting point of every investigation.
Harry addresses these problems with purpose-built collectors, a partitioned PostgreSQL schema, controlled retention, Grafana dashboards and PostgreSQL-backed operational alerts.
Its default session-based activity collection is designed to work without Oracle Diagnostics Pack. Optional collectors that may require separately licensed Oracle features are disabled by default and must only be enabled after the user has verified the applicable licensing requirements.
Built for practical troubleshooting
Harry is focused on the information a DBA needs when moving from a symptom to a cause:
- Database activity over time, grouped by wait class and SQL identifier
- Top SQL by elapsed time, CPU, I/O, execution frequency and efficiency
- SQL text and bounded execution-plan collection for selected consumers
- Current sessions, blockers and blocked-session chains
- Tablespace, ASM, resource-limit and connectivity information
- Grafana alerting backed directly by the PostgreSQL repository
- Retention-managed historical data for comparison and post-incident analysis
Harry is not a replacement for DBA judgement. It provides the evidence and correlation needed to make that judgement faster and more defensible.
Developed independently, supported professionally
Harry is developed by Jorge Holgado and commercially supported under the OneClickDBA brand.
The software can be deployed and operated independently. Commercial support is available for organizations that want experienced assistance with architecture, deployment, security, validation, operation or interpretation of the collected data.
OneClickDBA services can include:
- Proof-of-concept and production deployments
- Linux service, container, Docker Compose and Kubernetes installations
- PostgreSQL sizing, partitioning and retention design
- Oracle least-privilege collector configuration
- Grafana datasource, dashboard and alerting provisioning
- Collection-overhead validation and configuration review
- Dashboard customization and operational integration
- Performance assessments based on collected workload history
- Recurring SQL, execution-plan and workload reviews
- Upgrade assistance and troubleshooting for supported deployments
See Oracle Database Performance services for available deployment, assessment and continuous-review options.
Technical documentation
Installation instructions, architecture, configuration references, Oracle grants, database schemas, dashboards, alerting and release information are maintained on the dedicated Harry technical documentation site.
The source code and release history are available from the Harry GitHub repository.
Talk to OneClickDBA
Whether you are evaluating Harry, planning a production deployment or looking for help investigating an existing Oracle Database workload, begin with the environment and the outcome you need.
Tell us how many databases you operate, your deployment model, retention requirements and the performance problems you want to investigate.
Harry is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Oracle. Oracle and Oracle Database are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.