EM’s popularity grew as deployment of the Oracle database expanded within com-panies to multiple operating systems and as additional Oracle software components were added to the mix. EM provides a common interface to managing all of these environments, something that DBA scripts were not always designed for. Further, the Enterprise Manager interface and framework provide simple access to new data-base self-monitoring features, responding to alerts, and managing jobs, reports, roles, and privileges. An EM console and the underlying “Intelligent Infrastructure” are installed as part of the normal Oracle database installation process. EM automati-cally discovers target databases as soon as it is installed.
Simple EM management interfaces can also be deployed through the Oracle Applica-tion Server Portal. Management portlets are prepackaged for use with the Portal providing displays of target summaries, outstanding alerts (notifications where thresholds are reached or exceeded), metric details, availability timelines, and execu-tive summary information.
Logging into Enterprise Manager after a typical installation brings youto the home page database management console. Tabs are shown to enable quick navigation of EM and can vary based on the Enterprise Manager version deployed. Oracle has continued to modify the interface over the years to make finding management capa-bilities through the interface more intuitive. The version shipping with early versions of Enterprise Manager for Oracle Database 11g includes tabs for Home, Perfor-mance, Availability, Server, Schema, Data Movement, and Software and Support pages. Prior to Oracle Database 11g, the Enterprise Manager version included tabs for Home, Administration, Maintenance, and Performance pages (see Figure 5-3). At the top of the console page in each of these versions are links to setup (for setting up and managing additional administrators, notification methods, etc.), preferences (for example, notification schedules), help, and logout.
Figure 5-2. Oracle Enterprise Manager architecture Central Console
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In the Oracle Database 11gversion, some of the key manageability functionality in each of the tabs includes:
Home page
Provides a quick view of database status including whether the database is up, the database version, the hostname, and listener. Key metrics describing status of the host CPU, active sessions, and SQL response time are typically displayed in graphical form. Summaries of diagnostics, space utilized, and high availability status, alerts, and policy violations are also typically displayed. Related links are provided from this page to Advisor Central (a page for quick access to the advi-sors) and other key metrics such as the alert log content.
Performance page
Includes a summary of important performance statistics such as CPU utiliza-tion, average active sessions, disk I/O, and instance throughput.
Availability page
Here you can manage backup and recovery using tools such as RMAN and LogMiner.
Server page
Includes links to automated maintenance features, such as Automatic Memory Management, the AWR, and scheduling.
Figure 5-3. Oracle Enterprise Manager Database home page
Oracle Enterprise Manager | 131 Schema page
Here youcan manage users and privileges, Oracle tables, indexes, views, syn-onyms, sequences, and database links, and can initiate related management functions such as Flashback.
Data Movement page
Manages data movement features such as Streams and transportable tablespaces.
Software and Support page
Provides access to the Support Workbench for reporting problems to Oracle Support that you observe in the AWR.
The sophistication of Enterprise Manager continues to grow, as illustrated by the Real Applications Testing Option’s database workload capture and replay capability introduced in Oracle Database 11g. Youcan now use Enterprise Manager to re-create your production environment in a test environment and test your changes in the test environment before propagating those changes back into production.
You will find this new capability under the Software and Support tab. Here you can define and start or schedule the capture of the production workload (e.g., the load and concurrency in the production system). You can also view other previous cap-tured workloads, manage replays, and stop an active capture or replay. You then move the captured workload, in replay format, to the test system. You can then replay the production workload against the changes you make to the test system while checking for errors, data divergence, and performance changes.
EM2Go
EM2Go is a mobile version of Enterprise Manager introduced with Oracle Database 10g. It can be used for remote wireless management of Oracle database instances and Oracle Application Servers. Providing a subset of the functionality in Enterprise Manager, EM2Go leverages the previously described OMS, associated Management Repository, and Oracle Agents in the EM architecture. The Enterprise Manager Con-sole is accessed through a Microsoft Pocket PC Internet Explorer browser on a PDA device. Communication between the console and OMS and between OMS and the Agents is via HTTP.
The administrator begins by logging into Enterprise Manager from the EM2Go Home page by entering the appropriate EM username and password. Upon logging in, administrators are presented with a summary of alerts and targets. Each is a link that you can drill to for more detail.
You can set up EM2Go to forward alert notifications by way of email directly to your PDA. It supports ad-hoc SQL and operating system commands. Performance moni-toring includes metrics history graphing of warnings and alerts from the Oracle database and Oracle Application Server and access to the database home page.
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