Release 1.6.0
A63730-01
Library |
Product |
Contents |
Index |
| Oracle
Enterprise Manager Concepts Guide
Release 1.6.0 A63730-01 |
|
Oracle Enterprise Manager's functionality can be extended
further by adding one or more of the specialized applications found in
three optional system management packs: the Oracle Diagnostics Pack, the
Oracle Tuning Pack, and the Oracle Change Management Pack. Combined with
Oracle Enterprise Manager, these three packs offer a single integrated
solution for monitoring system bottlenecks, optimizing and tuning system
performance, managing system changes, and planning for increases in resource
utilization of your entire information system environment.
Oracle Corporation also offers other administration utilities that can be integrated into the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console:
This chapter contains the following sections:
| Topic | See Page |
|---|---|
|
Oracle Diagnostics Pack |
5-2 |
|
Oracle Tuning Pack |
5-7 |
|
Oracle Change Management Pack |
5-9 |
The Oracle Diagnostics Pack provides easy-to-use tools for
monitoring the health of your system. This set of tools helps in automatically
detecting problems, diagnosing problems, and planning for the future.
The Oracle Diagnostics Pack Documentation Set includes the following guides:
This section describes each of the Oracle Diagnostics Pack tools:
| Topic | See Page |
|---|---|
|
Oracle Advanced Events |
5-5 |
Oracle Performance Manager is a tool for filtering, monitoring,
and analyzing performance data. With Performance Manager, performance statistics
for both the Oracle server and host operating system are captured in real-time
mode and can be viewed in various tables and charts and in two- and three-dimensional
presentations. Data is sampled via Oracle Enterprise Manager's data collection
mechanism and displayed in real-time graphical views that can be automatically
refreshed at user-defined intervals. The data collection mechanism is part
of the Oracle Enterprise Manager framework.
With Performance Manager, you can define your own custom
charts or choose from the large collection of pre-defined charts and tables
which are provided by Performance Manager. These pre-defined charts are
organized into performance monitoring groups including file IO, CPU use,
database contention, I/O, load, memory use, instance metrics, and parallel
server performance. Each group allows easy access to key metrics for that
performance category. For example, the memory group includes pre-defined
charts for database buffers, library and dictionary cache performance,
memory sort performance, parse ratios, and a tabular presentation of all
cached SQL statements.
Oracle TopSessions and Oracle Lock Manager can also be viewed
as Performance Manager charts. Additionally, Performance Manager provides
other "Top" charts, such as Top SQL and Top Datafiles. These Top charts
allow you to focus on performance bottlenecks in your system.
With Oracle Capacity Planner, you can proactively plan for
your future computing needs. Capacity Planner helps you answer questions
like "When will I need a new disk?" or "What will my hardware requirements
be for the next fiscal year?"
Capacity Planner provides a comprehensive set of database
and operating system statistics that can be collected and customized. When
specifying a collection for a particular database or host, you can select
the entire set of available statistics or a subset, as well as specify
a sampling frequency for the data to be collected. By allowing you to define
the scope of the data collected and the sampling frequency, Capacity Planner
gives you the flexibility to decide how much detail you need in your collected
data. You can then customize the data collections to best suit the specific
capacity planning needs of your site.
Once data has been collected and stored in the historical
database, Capacity Planner can perform analyses on the data. Capacity Planner
includes a set of pre-defined analyses which define the type of data and
the analysis to be done. However, you can also specify your own custom
analyses and save it to be used again.
Oracle Trace provides Oracle Trace Manager, an application
to create, schedule, and administer Oracle Trace collections for products
instrumented with the Oracle Trace API.
Trace Manager is a client-based Windows application that
runs on the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console. Trace Manager automatically
discovers Trace instrumented products that are installed on all nodes that
are known to the Console.
Most Oracle Trace users manage collections for products that
are already instrumented with the Oracle Trace API. Therefore, most users
only need to be familiar with the data that can be collected for the products
and how to use the Trace Manager application to create and administer data
collections.
Oracle Trace Data Viewer is an application that helps you
get information about system activity, such as which statements ran the
longest or the most often. The Trace Data Viewer takes raw, formatted,
Oracle Server data collected by Oracle Trace and displays this data for
your analyses.
Trace Data Viewer provides a pre-defined set of data views,
which are snapshots of data. With these data views you can examine important
statistical data and drill down as needed to get additional details about
the data. You can also define your own data views using the Oracle Trace
Data View Wizard.
Oracle TopSessions provides the ability to pinpoint database
sessions causing the greatest impact on performance. The top "N" sessions
can be identified in real time based on performance impact factors such
as resource usage, open cursors, user transactions, and block changes.
Once a problem session is identified, TopSessions can be
used to drill down into the session to examine detailed statistics on session
activity such as cache processing, redo activity, locks, SQL processing,
and Parallel Server operations. Selected SQL statements and explain plans
can be displayed for analysis. TopSessions also allows the database administrator
to take action by easily terminating problem sessions.
The Oracle Lock Manager application helps to identify troublesome
locking situations. Lock Manager provides a graphical display of database
locks, including details such as the locking user, lock type, object locked,
and mode held and requested. Sessions blocking and waiting are displayed
in a graphical tree view for easy analysis. If necessary, locked sessions
can be easily terminated by Lock Manager's "kill session" feature.
The Oracle Diagnostics Pack provides a collection of additional
pre-defined event sets called Oracle Advanced Events. Advanced Events are
an addition to the standard pre-defined event sets included with the Oracle
Enterprise Manager. Just like the standard events, Advanced Events run
on the Event Management system and can be launched from the Console. Advanced
Events also use the Intelligent Agents, which reside on managed nodes,
to autonomously monitor and detect specified events and then react according
to DBA specifications, such as notifying an administrator or fixing the
problem.
Advanced Events includes four types of pre-defined database events:
Advanced Events also includes pre-defined node events such
as excessive CPU utilization, load or paging problems, and disk capacity
problems.
Like the standard, pre-defined events, Advanced Events allow
you to decide when, how, and how often to be notified of a problem through
the Event Management system. Advanced Events can be customized with user-defined
event thresholds and monitoring intervals for detecting pre-defined events.
Administrators can be contacted by page, email, or by receiving a visual
alert at the Console. Third party systems can also be notified, such as
the HP Openview product.
In addition to alerting the administrator, Advanced Events
also can be configured with a fixit job to automatically correct a problem,
just as with the standard pre-defined events. Fixit jobs are created by
the administrator using the Oracle Enterprise Manager Job system. For example,
a fixit job could be created to increase the size of a datafile, and then
be available as a corrective action in response to an occurrence of the
Datafile Limit event.
The Oracle Tuning Pack is a set of tools that addresses the tuning needs of a network's databases and applications to ensure that they run at peak efficiency. The Oracle Tuning Pack Documentation Set includes the following books:
This section describes each of the Oracle Tuning Pack tools:
| Topic | See Page |
|---|---|
|
Oracle Expert |
5-7 |
|
Oracle SQL Analyze |
5-7 |
|
Oracle Tablespace Manager |
5-9 |
When used on a periodic, proactive basis, Oracle Expert discovers
tuning opportunities in your network and automatically generates an analysis
with the recommended tuning changes that would increase the performance
of your database(s).
Oracle Expert contains hundreds of rules for tuning an Oracle
database. Data collected by Oracle Expert is fed into the rules engine
along with other information supplied by the user. Oracle Expert evaluates
this data, looking for tuning opportunities, and produces a set of recommendations
for tuning improvements.
Oracle Expert provides the user with flexible, focused tuning
in three categories: instance tuning, application tuning, and structure
tuning. Oracle Expert generates a full explanation of the recommendations
and supporting evidence. The various tuning recommendations are listed
according to performance-gain impact, and you can automatically generate
scripts and reports which support the analysis.
Inefficient SQL statements are a major contributor to database
performance problems. Oracle SQL Analyze is a tool for creating, evaluating
and benchmarking optional SQL statement formats and optimizer modes, which
dramatically simplify the complexities of SQL tuning.
SQL Analyze starts by executing SQL under various optimizer
modes and presenting explain plans and execution statistics for easy comparison.
SQL Analyze also automatically checks SQL statements for basic SQL design
violations. It achieves this by running your SQL statements through a "rules-of-thumb"
repository that will evaluate and then, if necessary, generate alternative
SQL that corrects the problem and positively impacts your database's performance.
Additional tuning tools provided in SQL Analyze allow you
to walk through an analysis of a SQL statement's potential join orders
and methods. Using a cost-based optimizer, SQL Analyze allows you to control
the join strategy through the use of SQL hints.
However, using hints to control the join method and order
for specific queries can be complex and risky. To assist you with this
process, SQL Analyze provides an automated methodology that can be used
to evaluate alternative join strategies where appropriate. If an alternative
join order can be used, it will rewrite the statement with the necessary
hints or reordering of objects.
Finally, SQL Analyze helps you fine tune your SQL statements
by performing multiple "what-if" scenarios, executing the statements one
or more times to measure performance. The relative performance of SQL statements
can be measured against three parameters: elapsed time to perform the query,
CPU time, and a number of logical and physical reads.
The Oracle Tuning Pack also includes Oracle Tablespace Manager,
an application for monitoring and managing tablespace usage. This application
provides graphical, at-a-glance views of tablespace details, such as the
number of extents allocated in a tablespace, the number of blocks in each
extent, and the amount of free space. The navigator on the left displays
a hierarchical tree list of tablespaces, segments, and datafiles. When
you select a tablespace container or its contents, a dialog box with a
graphical chart displays on the right.
Using the dialog boxes in Tablespace Manager, you can reorganize
tables, indexes, and clusters for more efficient space usage. During the
reorganization process, you have the option of modifying the storage attributes
of segments, such as the number and size of extents and data-block percent
free/used parameters. If the database objects become fragmented, Tablespace
Manager can defragment them to optimize performance.
One of the most challenging tasks for an administrator of
an Oracle database is managing changes to database schemas and objects,
particularly to those used in mission-critical applications. Changes to
schema objects, like tables, need to be implemented without error or loss
of data and with minimal downtime.
The Oracle Change Management Pack is a set of tools that
provides a complete solution for managing complex schema changes in the
Oracle environment. Using Oracle Change Manager's intuitive graphical interface,
you can specify the types of changes that need to be made; the Oracle Change
Management Pack then performs the necessary analysis of dependencies and
generates a script for implementing the changes. It also provides an impact
report, so you can evaluate the effects of the changes before actually
making them. Additionally, the application allows you to back out of changes
and recover to the state before the changes were made.
By using Oracle Change Manager to manage change, administrators
can respond quickly to new requirements, eliminate errors or loss of data
when making changes, minimize downtime, and maximize productivity.
For more information please refer to the Oracle Enterprise
Manager Getting Started with Oracle Change Manager manual.
This section describes each of the Oracle Change Management Pack tools:
| Topic | See Page |
|---|---|
|
Oracle Plan Manager |
5-9 |
|
Oracle DB Alter |
5-10 |
|
Oracle DB Quick Change |
5-12 |
The core interface of the Oracle Change Management Pack is
Oracle Plan Manager, which combines change specifications and deployment
into one general-purpose tool. Experienced users can accomplish everything
that Oracle Change Management Pack can do from the Plan Manager interface.
The other tools in Oracle Change Manager are dedicated to giving step-by-step
guidance for certain tasks.
Oracle DB Alter guides you through the process of making
changes to one or more object definitions in one or more databases. You
indicate changes to objects by directly manipulating their representation
in property pages that are similar to those used by Oracle Enterprise Manager's
Schema Manager tool. DB Alter can also create a group of changes to object
definitions that can be executed as a unit.
When you use DB alter, you are aware that change requests
are being bundled into a plan; you can save the plan, select a destination
database, generate a script for the destination database, and apply the
script against the destination database immediately or at a later time.
Oracle DB Capture allows you to capture a database or subset
of a database in a form that is useful to other applications in the Oracle
Change Management Pack, as well as non-Oracle Change Management Pack tools.
DB Capture captures a database's object definitions, taking a snapshot
of a baseline or of a SQL DDL script.
A baseline is an object with a unique name that contains
a set of database definitions captured at a certain time. A baseline records
the time and date it was created and the scope specification, which is
a filter used to limit objects included in a baseline by object type and/or
schema. A baseline stores definitions in a form that other Oracle Change
Management Pack applications can use.
A SQL DDL script is a script that contains commands needed
to re-create the definitions in an empty database. You can use the script
to create the definitions in a new database, or as input to CASE tools
that accept SQL DDL input.
Oracle DB Diff helps you compare databases, schemas, and individual database objects. When used for comparison only, DB Diff guides you through the process of designating two things to compare and then compares them. You can use DB Diff to compare
DB Diff allows you to drill into areas of difference and
see the differences in definition between corresponding objects. After
you have found and analyzed differences, you can use DB Diff to synchronize
the objects you have compared, making one set like the other (with the
exception of baselines, which are read-only and cannot be modified). The
Synchronization Wizard creates a change plan (a container for one
or more change requests which describe the definition changes you want
to make to one or more database objects) from which a script can be generated
to apply the changes at the selected database.
Oracle DB Propagate guides you through various database life cycle activities such as
You reproduce these items by using DB Propagate to first
select object definitions from a source database, then assembling them
to be propagated and applied to one or more destination databases or to
a destination schema within a database. The resulting definitions, which
are stored in a plan, are applied to a destination database by your generating
a script and executing it against the database.
Oracle DB Quick Change simplifies the process of making one
or more changes to an object definition in a single database. With DB Quick
Change, saving your change requests in a change plan is optional.
Oracle Corporation also offers other administration utilities
that can be integrated into the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console.
Oracle Replication Manager enables you to perform many system
management tasks for a replicated environment.
Oracle Rdb for NT provides graphical tools to administer
an Oracle Rdb database.
Oracle Fail Safe Manager is the graphical, high-availability
option for Oracle solutions on Windows NT clusters.
Oracle Biometrics Manager administers the biometric credentials
(fingerprints) of Oracle database users that use the Oracle Advanced Networking
Option.
Note: Other systems management applications are also
available for Oracle Enterprise Manager from Oracle Corporation and third-party
software developers.
