Re: DB Maintenance and Monitoring Advice?

Suggest you spend some time reviewing the Concepts manual to get in touch with the basics of Oracle operations. This can be reviewed or downloaded from Oracle's Tech Net site at http://otn.oracle.com >> documentation (alt: http://docs.oracle.com after you've registered). I've deliberately avoided pointing at a specific URL since you don't mention the version(s) you need to monitor.

Once you've learned a bit from the Concepts manual the various answers will make a lot more sense.

Supplementing this, you might want to dig into Oracle's supplied tool called Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM). Version 9.2 (which will monitor and administer back to Oracle 8.0.x) provides canned reports that answer the pertainent questions.

By far the most important is to get some training. Intuition without relevant training in the Oracle environment and Oracle thought processes is more than counter-productive.

Direct response to some of your questions:

1. unless auto-extend is turned on, most files do not ever change in size; unless you are workjing with 9iR2, the SGA stays static in size; many applications are written wrong - tend to use a single userid for all users - so the 'who and what apps' questions depend on you understanding the environment and the apps. The one thing I'd consider monitoring regularily is the "alert.log" which i) can grow; ii) contains important config change information and iii) contains most (if not all) information when the system starts getting unhealthy.
2. At the same place as the Concepts manual is the Database Administration Guide. Chapter 1 has an excellent overview of the role, definition and tasks of a DBA.

HTH
/Hans Received on Sat Jun 28 2003 - 19:41:36 CDT