Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
Enterprise Manager Jobs
by Kellyn Pot'Vin
A database job is defined as “a unit of work an administrator defines to automate commonly run tasks.” The need
for administrators to schedule database maintenance tasks, scripts to maintain or run batch jobs after hours, or
backups of the database is obvious; these jobs are a requirement of the DBA role. The EM Job System grants the user
scheduling flexibility to run jobs at any time and at any interval. It integrates seamlessly with the EM12c environment,
unlike schedulers that are separate from the main database management and monitoring system.
The Enterprise Manager Job System was introduced in Oracle 9i, yet the EM jobs in Enterprise Manager 12c still
aren't utilized as often as other features, such as monitoring, alerting, backups, and performance pages.
Throughout my years as a database administrator, I experienced few environments for which the EM Job System
had been chosen over other job schedulers and was curious as to why. For all the ease of management, notification,
and scheduling that the EM Job System offers, many administrators still appear loyal to their own collection of scripts
to manage work performed in the database. Oracle already provides the historically challenged
DBMS_JOBS
and the
more recently introduced and advanced
DBMS_SCHEDULER_JOBS
, which includes enhancements such as chained jobs
and more-defined scheduling. In addition, the operating system cron scheduler allows the administrator to use any
language that is available at the operating system (OS) level to script what is needed and schedule it.
Offering more options for scheduling and managing, along with another set of database-level views/tables in
regards to support, might seem like overkill. My main task in this chapter is to convince administrators why the EM12c
Job System is not just a better choice, but superior to previous versions of the EM job systems and the more enhanced
way to manage database jobs in any database environment.
Enhancements include the following:
•
Simple interface for job scheduling
•
One location to manage all job events in an environment
•
Job Library to be utilized as a repository of jobs
•
Capability to easily tie in job requirements for blackouts and maintenance
•
Simplification of global tasks through job deployment
The EM Job System also supports all areas of the infrastructure in the EM console, executing jobs for many of the
tasks occurring transparently to the administrator interacting with the console interface.
