Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
• Database manageability features and advisors and how they aid management
• Oracle Enterprise Manager, which provides an intuitive interface and underlying
framework for many database management tasks
• Backup and recovery operations and information lifecycle management, which are
the foundation of database integrity protection
• Oracle Support
In subsequent chapters, we'll cover other related topics in more depth, including secu‐
rity, performance, and high availability. You will need an understanding of all of these
areas as you plan and implement effective management strategies for your Oracle Da‐
tabase environment.
Manageability Features
Oracle's goal of simplifying management of the database became clear with the intro‐
duction of the “Intelligent Infrastructure,” first highlighted with Oracle Database 10
g
,
eliminating many manual steps required to manage the database. Subsequent database
versions and releases added more self-tuning and self-management features and advisor
tools. Automatic database optimizer statistics gathering, the Segment Advisor, and the
SQL Tuning Advisor are just a few of the many such features introduced.
Today, statistics containing active session history are automatically gathered and pop‐
ulate the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). The Automatic Database Diagnostic
Monitor (ADDM) tracks changes in database performance by leveraging the data in the
AWR. Server-generated alerts occur “just in time” and appear in Enterprise Manager.
Resolving system utilization problems can be as simple as reviewing the alerts and ac‐
cepting the recommendations. This is in sharp contrast to steps typically taken prior to
Oracle Database 10
g
that included actively watching for events, exploring
V$
views,
identifying related SQL, and then figuring out the needed steps to resolve the problem.
With its focus on the cloud, Oracle Database 12
c
introduces pluggable databases that
can further simplify management where large numbers of Oracle Databases are de‐
ployed since many management functions are more efficient when defined for multi‐
tenant container databases instead of dozens of pluggable databases. The number of
database management activities online also continues to grow, further simplifying man‐
agement considerations (e.g., datafile movement, partition and subpartition movement,
and redefinition of tables that contain multiple partitions or that have Virtual Private
Database (VPD) policies are a few of the recent additions).
Key to understanding the infrastructure Oracle has created for managing the database
is exploring the various management components. We will start with the Oracle Data‐
base advisors and then describe the role of Automatic Storage Management.
