We have created a new Troublehshooting Assistant for Oracle Fixed Assets for the Create Mass Additions process.  This process (also known by its short name in Assets as FAMACR and in Payables as APMACR) is used to bring addition and adjustment lines from Accounts Payable into Fixed Assets via the mass additions interface.  There have been a number of changes to the process and enhancements made in recent releases.

Troubleshooting Assistants are resources created to help you find a resolution to an issue by guiding you from the problem, through the possible scenarios, and to the proposed solution.  These troubleshooting assistant types of resources were formerly called Search Helpers.  Called by either name, they are designed to provide a path through various topics related to a process and, based on the selections you make, provide suggested solutions. 

The troubleshooting assistant for create mass additions includes solutions for these issues, and more: 

• Addition lines that were not transferred from Payables to Assets
• Addition lines that were transferred into Assets but should not have been 
• Merging of addition lines 
• Transferring freight, tax or miscellaneous lines
• ORA-30926 errors
• Performance issues

You can access this troubleshooting assistant in Troubleshooting Assistant: Create Mass Additions From Payables (AP) to Fixed Assets (FA) (Doc ID 1609542.2)

If you are using Fast Recovery Area (FRA) for the archive destination and the destination is set to USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST, you may notice that the Archive Area % Used metric does not trigger anymore. Instead you will see the Recovery Area % Used metric trigger when it hits a Warning threshold of 85% full, and Critical of 97% full. Unfortunately, this metric is controlled by the database and the thresholds cannot be modified (see MOS Note 428473.1 for more information). Thresholds of 85/97 are not sufficient for some of the larger, busier databases. This may not give you enough time to kickoff a backup and clear enough logs before the archiver hangs. If you need different thresholds, you can easily accomplish this by creating a Metric Extension (ME) and setting thresholds to your desired values.  This blog will walk through an example of creating an ME to monitor archive on FRA destinations, for more information on ME's and how they can be used, refer to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator's Guide. 

In this example, we will create a Metric Extension that uses the following query to monitor the Fast Recovery Area destination:

select name, 
round(space_limit / 1048576) space_limit_in_mb, 
round(space_used / 1048576) space_used_in_mb, 
round((space_used / 1048576) / (space_limit / 1048576),2)*100 percent_usage
from v$recovery_file_dest;

Create a Metric Extension

To create a metric extension select Enterprise / Monitoring / Metric Extensions, and then click on Create.

On the General Properties screen select either Cluster Database or Database Instance, depending on which target you need to monitor. If you have both RAC and Single instance you may need to create one for each. In this example we will create a Cluster Database metric. Enter a Name for the ME and a Display Name. Then select SQL for the Adapter. Adjust the Collection Schedule as desired, for this example we will leave it at 15 minutes.

Enter the query that you wish to execute, in this example we will use the query above that checks for space used on the recovery destination.

The next step is to create the columns to store the data returned from the query. Click Add and add a column for each of the fields in the same order that data is returned.   The table below shows how each field is defined as either a Key or Data column.  

When all columns have been added, review your columns and click Next.

On the Credentials screen, you can choose to use the default monitoring credentials or specify new credentials. We will use the default monitoring credentials established for our target, in this case that is DBSNMP. 

The next step is to test your metric extension. Click on Add to select a target for testing, then click Select.

Now click the button Run Test to execute the test against the selected target(s). 

We can see in the example below that the metric extension has executed and returned a value of 77 for Fast Recovery Area % Used. Click Next to proceed.

Review the metric extension in the final screen and clickFinish.

The metric will be created in Editable status, before you can deploy to targets you must select the metric, click Actions and select Save as Deployable Draft.  This step allows you to test your metric on a set of targets.  Once you've confirmed the metric is as you expect, click Actions and select Publish Metric Extension.  

Finally, we want to apply this metric to a target. You can also add a metric to a template which can be mass deployed to all targets, however in this example we will deploy to a target directly. Select the metric, click Actions and then Deploy to Targets. Click Add and select the target you wish to deploy to, then click Submit.

The deployment job will be shown in the final window.

Once deployment is complete, we can go to the target and select Cluster Database / Monitoring /Metric & Collection Settings to see the new metric and its thresholds.

After 15 minutes, we should be able to see the most recent upload. In our example, you can see we have already triggered a Critical event as our destination is 77% full.

If you have and Incident Rule which creates an incident or notification for all events of Warning or Critical, you will receive an incident similar to the one below.  If you have selective metrics creating incidents or notifications, be sure to add your new ME to the Incident Rules.

By creating a Metric Extension, we are now able to customize the monitoring thresholds at which our Fast Recovery Area notifies us when it’s full. Taking this a step further, we could create a Corrective Action on the Metric Extension we just created to kickoff an archive log backup. By creating a Corrective Action to trigger the archive log backup, you can reduce time spent by DBAs logging in, looking at the issue and kicking off a backup.  

With the Academy Awards coming up this weekend, I can’t help but think about how much the motion picture industry has changed over the last 10 years, especially from a production and technology perspective. The transition to digital film making has had a transformational impact on the industry. The onslaught of HD digital cameras and digital technology in the post production workflow has not only overtaken the motion picture industry, but it has also transformed the video production and broadcast segments. The transformation to an all-digital workflow, from content creation, with seamless blending of live action footage and computer-generated imagery, to content delivery and finally to digital archives is now nearly complete. For example, try to find a new analog camera on display at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)show in April in Las Vegas. They will be hard to find.  Shooting with HD and newer UltraHD digital format cameras means huge digital files, creating a new set of storage problems. Most media workflow architects and archivists will tell you that current digital storage solutions are struggling to keep up.Consider this:

• Some of the latest HD cameras produce up to 85TB of data throughout a 24 hour shoot; and these “dailies” need to be backed up, essentially doubling the amount of storage
• The 3D movie Avatar used over one Petabyte of storage; industry experts predict that future feature-length digital motion pictures will consume an Exabyte of storage from initial capture to final cut

So, where will all this data be stored? On efficient and economic digital tape, of course. At Oracle, we recently announced two new storage technologies—the StorageTek T10000D tape drive and Linear Tape File System--that are being embraced by the Media & Entertainment industry. Our StorageTek T10000D tape technology is the highest capacity storage technology available today. At 8.5TB per cartridge, it is more than 2x the capacity of today’s 4TB disk drives. And due to its unique scalability, discrete cost and power/cooling advantages, tape storage (at scale, re: petabyte[s]), carries a total cost of ownership (TCO) that is 26x lower than conventional disk storage.  

In addition, the T10000D supports the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) format, which enables users to easily access files on tape just like a thumb drive or a NAS device. LTFS is popular across the film, video and broadcasting segments. In fact, the StorageTek T10000D with LTFS recently won Best Professional Media and Entertainment Class Archive Storage at the 2014 Storage Visions Conference. I know it’s a mouthful, but there you have it!   

While you may be surprised that tape is in high demand in the Media & Entertainment industry, this is not an isolated case. Indeed, industry influencers and the media have pronounced a resurgence of tape (follow the links below):

• Storage Challenges In The Digital Age of Media– Coughlin Associates [Video]
• Rise of the Machines: The Rebirth of Tape– Wikibon
• Disk-pushers, Get Reel: Even GOOGLE Relies on Tape– The Register
• Magnetic Tape to the Rescue– The Economist
• Meeting Exa-Scale Archive Requirements in the Digital Age of Media and Entertainment– Coughlin Associates

So, when you watch the Oscars, think of the many Petabytes of digital content to be archived and preserved for posterity—and how Oracle StorageTek tape solutions are addressing the Media & Entertainment industry’s storage challenges.

To learn more about how digital tape storage is helping the Media & Entertainment industry to overcome challenges arising from the transition to an all digital business visit the Oracle booth (SL 13909) at NAB in Las Vegas, April 7-10.

The Java Platform provides various options for System Administrators to manage updates on client systems and maintain compatibility with specific applications

This post is intended to guide System Administrators whose clients make use of Rich Internet Applications (Applet & Web Start). Most of this does not apply to System Administrators of server-side applications or locally installed applications using the JRE.

The primary strategies for controlling RIA compatibility are:

• Identify known RIAs.
• Install Java versions through patch-in-place or static installation mode.
• Deploy the latest version of Java.
• Delegate certain RIAs to use specific Java versions.

Quick Example: A company has a back-office application for managing contractor timesheets. The application is known to require Java 6. The System Administrator should install the latest Java 7. After installation, the system administrator should statically-install the desired Java 6. The System Administrator should then create a Deployment Rule Set to indicate that a specific RIA requires Java 6.

Identify known RIAs

In order to whitelist RIAs and delegate certain RIAs to specific Java versions, the first step is to identify where those applications are. The two primary ways of doing this:

• Location, the https:// or http:// or other protocol URL where the RIA is hosted and accessed by users. You will be able to wildcard these later. This is easiest when you control or host the destination, such as inside a company.
• Code signing hash, an identifier of a vendor based on their public signing certificate. This can be easier when you have a number of RIAs from a particular vendor.

The way of identifying RIAs will vary between organizations. One important consideration is to provide a way that users can contact you with adjustments, for example reporting an RIA that you may have missed.

Install Java versions through patch-in-place or static installation mode

The JRE installation mechanism provides two types of installation: Patch-in-Place and Static Installation. The default mechanism is Patch-in-Place because it leaves a smaller footprint. It also intentionally does not leave older versions behind. Static Installation intentionally leaves behind the older version so that it can be used to execute specific RIAs.

System Administrators can specify their preference when automating installation of the JRE.

In general, Patch-In-Place is the best default and you should use static installations only on systems known to require a specific version.

Deploy the latest version of Java

Users should always run the latest secure baseline. The latest version of Java always provides the best security defense and enterprise management features. For example, users needing to execute an RIA with Java 6 (end of public updates was in February 2013) should use the latest Java 7 version and let it delegate to Java 6 for the specific RIA.

Java installations contain two features to stay up to date: a security baseline and an expiration date. The security baseline represents the latest Critical Patch Update, whose schedule is published a year in advance. A separate "expiration date" is built-in for clients that cannot dynamically check this security baseline. The "expiration date" set at about a month after the scheduled critical patch and is documented at Java.com for the latest version as well as the Oracle Technology Network release notes for specific versions. Once a JRE detects that it is below the security baseline, it changes its behavior as described in the RIA Deployment Flow Guide.

The Deployment Flow process (including expiration date) can be controlled by delegating certain RIAs to use specific Java versions.

Delegate certain RIAs to use specific Java versions

The majority RIAs are compatible with the latest Java release within major versions. For example, an RIA that runs with JDK 1.7.0_01 is expected to be binary compatible with higher updates like JDK 1.7.0_51.

For specific applications where compatibility issues have been verified, System Administrators can use Deployment Rule Sets as a way of associating a specific RIA with a statically-installed Java version. When specifying a version for your DRS, it is easiest to go in order of: SECURE (no version), then SECURE-1.X (major version only), and only use specific versions like 1.7.0_51 for a verified compatibility issue. Because rules are specified explicitly by a system administrator, their results are applied before other checks that would affect program execution.

If you create any rules that DENY an RIA from running, it is a good idea to provide a way for users to contact you.

Deployment Rule Sets must be cryptographically signed. Commercial code-signing certificates are recommended but if you prefer to self-sign your Deployment Rule Set, you must distribute your public key to clients before they can recognize your signature.

The Deployment Rule Set files are installed to an area outside the Java installation directory and will remain active as clients update their Java installations.

For additional information, please see the complete Deployment Rule Set documentation.

Deployment Rule Set Version request

When specifying the version in a Deployment Rule Set, it is best to choose a version equal to or higher than the one requested by the launching JNLP file. If you specify a Java version below what the application says it needs then it is unlikely to run correctly.  Inside the JNLP file, there is a section that will look like <j2se version="1.X+" />

If the JNLP requests a version and you specify something below, then the application will be blocked.

If the JNLP requests a version and you specify something at or above, then it will run with what you have specified.

Specifying a version in your Deployment Rule Set that looks like SECURE or SECURE-1.X is often the simplest choice.

By Alka Asthana

When you start a discussion on how a cutting edge HCM system can deliver revenue, a few would quickly jump in and say that HR effectiveness has little to do with technology and everything to do with the quality of HR leaders. What perhaps they may be missing is, nobody is questioning the abilities of a good leader.Technology is certainly not a substitute for the leadership qualities we bring to the table. A great leader, is a great leader, is a great leader! We all agree to that. What the tech tools do is they increase your reach and span in terms of leveraging knowledge, capabilities, skills and talents.

If a manager is great, they probably have a finger on the pulse of the team and intuitively understand what drives creativity and performance within their teams. They would know what motivates their teams the best. But today, teams are often virtual; set up across all geographies and locations. It may be difficult to reach for this ‘pulse’. That is when technology helps bring the pulse to you, literally.

A very small example is that the thumbs-up given by co-workers may not be visible to the manager if they are located elsewhere, but a few kudos on your wall would. With the workforce having gone so global, we certainly need new tools to keep up with the new challenges! I am sure many of you may have noticed this - sometimes managers have trouble getting the last name right; with teams so large and so wide spread. Does this matter? Sure, it does. I would not like it if anyone mispronounced my last name (which they often do). But does this mean that I have to be a non-entity located at a distance? Certainly not!

With the right tools in place, I know quite a few people getting recognition or rewards for their great work! Not being able to get the name right did not stop this award from coming through. That's because you had set the right processes and tools in place to keep track of what is important for your employees. These tools and processes ensure that you don’t lose sight of what is absolutely the biggest revenue driver – your talent, your employees!

Alka Asthana is an HCM Strategist at Oracle and simply loves to dream, strategize, and create technology products - be it an Enterprise class ... or an idea taking shape and getting delivered off one's garage.

Since Oracle BPM PS4FP there is an activity task called UpdateTask, which is able to alter a task within the process. By using it, we can Withdraw, Suspend or Resume a task based on the name of the task (implicitly using the activityId), all instantiated tasks within the process(generally used when we want to terminate the process), or using explicitly the instantiated task id.

Problem:  when multiple instances of the same task (instantiated within a multi-instance subprocess for example), how can I withdraw a specific instance only? On the paper, as mentioned above we can use the TaskId option in the UpdateTask to achieve this goal... but how to get the TaskId?

For once, the documentation could not be any help... it mentions that we can provide a "custom" TaskId during the Human Task instantiation, but without any further indication. So after multiple attempts, including modifying the execData/systemAttributes/taskId directly, I gave up the idea of trying to set my own TaskId. Instead, I explored another direction by checking how I can leverage the IdentificationKey that I have full control on, and when set properly I can definitely end up with a clean one-to-one mapping with the TaskId. The challenge is then to extract the mapping out.
Long story short, I will skip all the detail steps I went through before coming up with the following solution. I can only say that I initially start with using Event Task/Mediator to capture the IdentificationKey/TaskId couple, then creating a XREF definition and an utility service to handling the data lifecycle in the XREF map... A long, but necessary journey to end up with this final and clean solution, which can be considered as a generic pattern for others usages.

And as usual, you can download the complete project of the solution before hand here.

1. First of all, create a simple process with correlation including a multi-instance subprocess with parallel mode, so that we can instantiate multiple instances on a same Human Task at once. Of course, make sure that each instance can be uniquely identified by the IdentificationKey. In my case, I append the correlationId with the pre-defined variable loopCounter. (it is important to have the correlationId in the IdentificationKey,  I will explain later)

5. This is the tricky part: DO NOT EXECUTE the ddl statement as it!
XREF is a generic feature for developer to temporary store process data directly into the SOAINFRA, shareable across multiple processes running from different context. In our case, the data are already present in the SOAINFRA schema, via the WFTASK table. So, we do not need to create the table, to populate, to lookup or to delete data into it. We just need to convert the CREATE TABLE ddl statement into a CREATE VIEW ddl statement to map out the IdentificationKey/TaskId (or any other process/task metadata that you would like to access from the BPM repository from your own process !!!).

6. Here's the CREATE VIEW that I used, but you can amend the WHERE condition to better fit your specific need. Run the view creation ddl into your database:

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW XREF_TASKIDREF
AS SELECT IDENTIFICATIONKEY, TASKID
    FROM WFTASK
  WHERE STATE='ASSIGNED'
     AND IDENTIFICATIONKEY IS NOT NULL;



7. To finish, configure your UpdateTask activity by extracting the TaskId by using the XREF function with IdentificationKey as argument, and you are done !

xref:lookup('TaskIDRef.xref,'identificationKey',bpmn:getDataObject('vIDKey'),'taskId',false())

Now, let's do a simple testing creating a process with 4 tasks instantiated together:

Then, just select one of the tasks to withdraw by selecting the withdrawTask operation and using the IdentificationKey as argument

Voila !!! 

Having a hard time reading and deciphering AWR?  This article will guide you in starting the process.  Once the initial document has been read, then proceed to the next article which gives detailed information on how to resolve performance issues with AWR. Furthermore, there is an open thread discussing the articles.  So follow it in our community!

https://community.oracle.com/thread/3522607

Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity. Please feel free to send us your news!

For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center.

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About Oracle

Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Info

Greg Lunsford
Oracle
+1.650.506.6523
greg.lunsford@oracle.com

EclipseCon 2014 is March 17-24 and Oracle is once again a sponsor.  Check out the GREAT content Oracle is organizing below and register today if you haven't already!

Java 8 Day
The Eclipse Foundation and Oracle are hosting a Java 8 Day at EclipseCon 2014. This will be a great opportunity for Java developers to learn about the new Java 8 features and share in the excitement of the Java 8 launch.

Developing On-Device Java Mobile Apps for iOS ... and Android too!
Now you can leverage your Java development skills to build mobile applications that install and run on both iOS and Android phones and tablets. Build HTML5 user interfaces, integrate with native device feature (camera, GPS, etc.) and use Java for the business logic - then deploy to multiple platforms from the same code base. This demo focused session.

Java Application Development Lifecycle in the Cloud
This demo-driven session, explores how to quickly provision a development environments, manage application source code with GIT and Maven, track development Tasks using Mylyn-based issue tracking system, collaborate with teammates on code changes with Code Review, document development processes with hosted Wikis, and implement Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery with Eclipse Hudson with Oracle’s Developer Cloud Service.

We are excited to share that our very own Jeff Porter - director, Go-to-Market and Cloud Channel Programs, Oracle - has been selected as a winner of the 2013 Circle of Excellence Awards by Channel Partners magazine for his role in developing and bringing Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Cloud Partner programs to market.

The Channel Partners 2013 Circle of Excellence award recognizes the top IT channel leaders that are helping partners create business value for their   customers. Editors from Channel Partners handpicked 14 winners based on their forward-looking vision, innovation and advocacy of the indirect channel during a time of transition and convergence.

Since the announcement of these programs, OPN has seen an average growth rate of partner deal registrations for Oracle Cloud solutions of 130 percent quarter over quarter. In addition, nearly 13,000 individuals have achieved Oracle Cloud specialist certifications since the launch of the program. And we are only just getting started!

We thank you, Jeff, and congratulations!!

Customers are just starting to realize the many benefits that Oracle Multitenant offers.  Take a look at the infographic below to see how Oracle Multitenant dramatically increases consolidation density while allowing for the management of many databases as one---all without having to make application changes.  

What's been your early experience with Oracle Multitenant? 

One of the marquee events for PeopleSoft customers is right around the corner.  COLLABORATE 14 is Monday, April 17 – Friday, April 11 in Las Vegas, NV.  COLLABORATE brings together the Quest International Users Group, the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), Oracle, and customers for an event rich with education sessions, networking activities, and more.

As always, PeopleSoft will have a strong presence at COLLABORATE.  The vast majority of session content for PeopleSoft is delivered through the Quest International Users Group with over 170 PeopleSoft-centric sessions planned.  That includes over 60 PeopleSoft customer led sessions and over 45 Oracle led sessions.  Leaders from Oracle’s PeopleSoft product management and development team will be on hand to deliver updates on the investment strategy for PeopleSoft applications as well as the value PeopleSoft applications can deliver today to customers.  Key Oracle led sessions focused on PeopleSoft investment strategy and other key topics include:

• PeopleSoft General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Roadmap (Session ID: 109590)
• PeopleSoft General Session: Technology Update and Roadmap (Session ID: 108630)
• What's New in PeopleSoft Human Capital Management 9.2 and Beyond (Session ID: 108450)
• What's New in PeopleSoft Financials 9.2 and Beyond: Improve the Bottom Line (Session ID: 108770)
• What's New in PeopleSoft Supplier Relationship Management 9.2 and Beyond (Session ID: 108410)
• Optimizing Maintenance Strategies Using PeopleSoft Update Manager (Session ID: 108520)
• What You Need to Know to Get Enabled on PeopleSoft 9.2 and PeopleTools 8.53 (Session ID: 108390)

Another focus area for Oracle led PeopleSoft sessions is to highlight customer successes with the latest release, PeopleSoft 9.2.  With PeopleSoft 9.2 being available for just about a year now, more and more customers are upgrading and deploying PeopleSoft 9.2 every day.  If you are one of these customers there still is a unique opportunities to share your PeopleSoft 9.2 success story at COLLABORATE 14.  If interested in sharing your PeopleSoft 9.2 success story at COLLABORATE 14, let us know.  We will be awarding the best story receive between now and March 31 one (1) complimentary pass to Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco.  So contact us at psoft-infodev_us@oracle.com; tell us who you are, your organization, what PeopleSoft applications you are using, and a brief description of why you think your story is the best PeopleSoft 9.2 success story out there.

This year at COLLABORATE 14, in addition to focusing on delivering important updates on PeopleSoft applications, the various product teams within Oracle have worked together to deliver content on the synergies between PeopleSoft and other key Oracle solutions.  PeopleSoft attendees will not want to miss these great Oracle led sessions:

• Jump Start Your Upgrade with UPK PeopleSoft 9.2 Content (Session ID: 108420)
• Oracle GRC Advanced Controls For PeopleSoft (Session ID: 108700)
• Hyperion and More, Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management for PeopleSoft (Session ID: 108500)
• Accelerate Accounts Payable Processes with Oracle WebCenter (Session ID: 108790)
• Get to PeopleSoft 9.2 in the Fastest, Leanest, and Lowest-Risk Way by Using the Oracle Upgrade Factory (Session ID: 108800)
• Support in the Age of PeopleSoft Update Manager (Session ID: 108840)

So what are you waiting for? Register for COLLABORATE 14 now and I will see you there!

I often have the opportunity to present about Oracle's mobile technologies. In those presentations, I usually explain to the audience that building and maintaining a mobile application will force them to make their software development processes more agile. The reason for this is simple. Mobile technologies evolve at consumer speed. Mobile operating systems are updated frequently, and applications must follow suit. The best proof I can give is the evolution of ADF Mobile itself. The initial version of the framework has been released in October 2012. Between that date and January 2014, we published one new version and five distinct patch sets for it; that's one update every 11 weeks on average. Such frequent releases are unusual for Oracle. In the mobile space, they're the norm

Recently, I installed ADF Mobile Patch 5. This version includes a new skin which brings an iOS 7 look and feel for Apple devices as well as a native look and feel for Android devices. In addition, JDeveloper now supports version 5 of XCode to package and deploy iOS applications. After the update, my applications didn't look right when I deployed and ran them. It turns out you must update the skin-family in adfmf-config.xml from this

<skin-family>mobileFusionFX</skin-family>

to this

<skin-family>mobileAlta</skin-family>

In addition, I suggest you perform a clean all (Build > Clean All) before deploying your applications. Mine would not pick up the new skin otherwise. 

This is the third post on controlling data access and restricting privileged data in Oracle Database, pulled from the free ebook, Securing Oracle Database 12c: A Technical Primer. Here are the first and second posts. The book highlights new security features found in Oracle Database 12c; however, the majority of the solutions are applicable to earlier Oracle Database releases as well.

Users with Administrative Privileges

Certain users can connect with special administrative privileges, such as SYSDBA and SYSOPER, to allow maintenance operations even when the database is not open. These users can authenticate using a network-based authentication service such as Oracle Internet Directory or based on membership of the connecting user in a particular operating system group.

Basic Access Control

Least Privilege and Separation of Duty

Implementations typically need to establish performance goals that the system will need to meet.  At times these goals come from customer requirements.  When establishing performance goals, we use a set of “default” performance requirements, and any change from that (higher or lower) is an exception, usually based on the weight or complexity of the transaction.  Forms Validations and Posting is an example of an exception.  The implementation team will have to be careful about applying the general rules to everything.   

Our default performance requirements are:

• OLTP, 3 secs for an average weight transaction (for 90% of transactions)
• OLTP, 5 secs for a above average weight transaction (for 90% of transactions)
• Batch - 50K records per hour

Unless the transaction is a known or suspected exception (based on weight or complexity), partners could reasonably expect to meet these objectives in planning with good sizing, competent infrastructure planning, good testing, and quality configuration.  These default goals could help flag items that need further examination. 

If you are using Fast Recovery Area (FRA) for the archive destination and the destination is set to USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST, you may notice that the Archive Area % Used metric does not trigger anymore. Instead you will see the Recovery Area % Used metric trigger when it hits a Warning threshold of 85% full, and Critical of 97% full. Unfortunately, this metric is controlled by the database and the thresholds cannot be modified (see MOS Note 428473.1 for more information). Thresholds of 85/97 are not sufficient for some of the larger, busier databases. This may not give you enough time to kickoff a backup and clear enough logs before the archiver hangs. If you need different thresholds, you can easily accomplish this by creating a Metric Extension (ME) and setting thresholds to your desired values.  This blog will walk through an example of creating an ME to monitor archive on FRA destinations, for more information on ME's and how they can be used, refer to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator's Guide. 

In this example, we will create a Metric Extension that uses the following query to monitor the Fast Recovery Area destination:

select name, 
round(space_limit / 1048576) space_limit_in_mb, 
round(space_used / 1048576) space_used_in_mb, 
round((space_used / 1048576) / (space_limit / 1048576),2)*100 percent_usage
from v$recovery_file_dest;

Create a Metric Extension

To create a metric extension select Enterprise / Monitoring / Metric Extensions, and then click on Create.

On the General Properties screen select either Cluster Database or Database Instance, depending on which target you need to monitor. If you have both RAC and Single instance you may need to create one for each. In this example we will create a Cluster Database metric. Enter a Name for the ME and a Display Name. Then select SQL for the Adapter. Adjust the Collection Schedule as desired, for this example we will leave it at 15 minutes.

Enter the query that you wish to execute, in this example we will use the query above that checks for space used on the recovery destination.

The next step is to create the columns to store the data returned from the query. Click Add and add a column for each of the fields in the same order that data is returned.   The table below shows how each field is defined as either a Key or Data column.  

When all columns have been added, review your columns and click Next.

On the Credentials screen, you can choose to use the default monitoring credentials or specify new credentials. We will use the default monitoring credentials established for our target, in this case that is DBSNMP. 

The next step is to test your metric extension. Click on Add to select a target for testing, then click Select.

Now click the button Run Test to execute the test against the selected target(s). 

We can see in the example below that the metric extension has executed and returned a value of 77 for Fast Recovery Area % Used. Click Next to proceed.

Review the metric extension in the final screen and clickFinish.

The metric will be created in Editable status, before you can deploy to targets you must select the metric, click Actions and select Save as Deployable Draft.  This step allows you to test your metric on a set of targets.  Once you've confirmed the metric is as you expect, click Actions and select Publish Metric Extension.  

Finally, we want to apply this metric to a target. You can also add a metric to a template which can be mass deployed to all targets, however in this example we will deploy to a target directly. Select the metric, click Actions and then Deploy to Targets. Click Add and select the target you wish to deploy to, then click Submit.

The deployment job will be shown in the final window.

Once deployment is complete, we can go to the target and select Cluster Database / Monitoring /Metric & Collection Settings to see the new metric and its thresholds.

After 15 minutes, we should be able to see the most recent upload. In our example, you can see we have already triggered a Critical event as our destination is 77% full.

If you have and Incident Rule which creates an incident or notification for all events of Warning or Critical, you will receive an incident similar to the one below.  If you have selective metrics creating incidents or notifications, be sure to add your new ME to the Incident Rules.

By creating a Metric Extension, we are now able to customize the monitoring thresholds at which our Fast Recovery Area notifies us when it’s full. Taking this a step further, we could create a Corrective Action on the Metric Extension we just created to kickoff an archive log backup. By creating a Corrective Action to trigger the archive log backup, you can reduce time spent by DBAs logging in, looking at the issue and kicking off a backup.