Re: monitoring

1. Management - create users, add datafiles, etc
2. Systems Monitoring = 24x7 alerts
3. Performance Monitoring - what's the load, is there a problem, how to fix it

For 1 DB Artisan you already have and should address this well For 2 something like Nagios can be good if you want to do it yourself For 3, DB Optimizer is the best and the cheapest is DB Optimizer, see http://oraclemonitor.com

Of course I'm biased about DB Optimizer. I wanted a tool like DB Optimizer after my experiences contributing to the redesign of the OEM performance pages (http://sites.google.com/site/youvisualize/active-session-history) and being frustrated with the clunky UI limitations.

DB Optimizer works on Oracle 8 - 11 with out any install. Just point it at the database. It does ASH style collection (less than 1% of one CPU  overhead) ie doesn't touch the licensed ASH table but collects it on its own ( see http://ashmasters.com for more info on doing this yourself for free)
DB Optimizer's licenses is unlimited data sources and CPUs for $1500 where as diagnostics pack needed to for ASH and the correpsonding OEM screens is $5000 per cpu per database.
DB Optimizer also load tests SQL statements, tunes queries both with hints and rewrites and has a full SQL editor with code assist, type a head, and syntax checking. We are adding powerful functionaltiy at a fast pace, for example we go beta next week with additional funcitonality of diagrams SQL : see http://sites.google.com/site/embtdbo/tuner/graphic-sql. Feel free to write me directly if you'd like to participate in the beta.

Kyle Hailey
http://oraclemonitor.com

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