Introduction to OEM Oracle 11g New Features Tips by Burleson Consulting June 27, 2008

Oracle 11g New Features Tips

Oracle Enterprise Manager was originally introduced in 1996 as a database management tool.  OEM version 1.0 billed itself, allowing the Remote DBA to quickly and easily administer database.  Earlier versions were cast off by veteran Oracle professionals, favoring to instead execute commands directly from SQL*Plus. 

OEM improved over the years however, with new enhancements and greater integration of third party applications.  Consequently, OEM 10g took a massive leap from a tool that many Remote DBAs turned their noses at, to a powerful management tool.  OEM 10g also became known as Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control or simply DBConsole, and was no longer just a database management tool. It went beyond the database to include management capabilities for Fusion Middleware, Oracle Applications and other applications. This improvement was driven primarily due to Oracle’s acquisitions over the past few years, as many of the acquired products do not run solely on the Oracle stack. 

As stated by Oracle, OEM is the foundation on which management for Oracle’s Fusion Applications is being built.  With this future goal in mind, it is well advised that users should become familiar with this powerful management tool.

In general, the OEM screens are better organized in 11g, and lead to a better tool with greater ease-of-use.  Oracle has built upon the success of the previous version with several new enhancements:

• Improved Database Home Page and Performance changes

• Integrated Interface for LogMiner

• Advanced Replication Interface

• Wait Activity Detail Enhancement

• Easy Oracle Text Management

• Better OEM Grid Tools

• Clone Database Enhancements

• Migrate Database (and more!) to ASM

• Workspace Manager

Improved Database Home Page and Performance Changes

The Database Home Page gives a general overview of the status of the database.  While the Database Home Page is not in opposition of the previous database home page that Remote DBAs are familiar with, it does have a few new advantages.  The first noticeable layout change is more tabs.  Figure 4.1 shows the additional tabs  available.  The tabbed links, across the top of the page offer access to performance, availability, and additional administration pages for managing the database:

Figure 4.1 New Database Home Page

As seen in Figure 4.1, 11g also added a new button to the Database Home Page labeled “Blackout”.  Previously, 10g required the Remote DBA to drill into the Administration tab, to set Blackouts .

As noted in Oracle documentation, there are also new charts in 11g to more easily access performance of the database.  Figure 4.2 shows the changes to the Performance Page in DBConsole.

Figure 4.2 Performance Page in DBConsole

Though the throughput of the database was present in 10g, the new tabs for I/O, Parallel Execution and Services are offered in 11g.  These allow performance issues to more quickly be identified.

This is an excerpt from the new book Oracle 11g New Features: Expert Guide to the Important New Features by John Garmany, Steve Karam, Lutz Hartmann, V. J. Jain, Brian Carr. You can buy it direct from the publisher for 30% off.