Automating Scripts- Configuring an Efficient Environment
Having these scripts in your arsenal allows for quickly resolving issues and performing tasks. It also provides a standard process for running these things against the database instead of having different SQL or tasks running. It is a first step to automating the work against the database.
The objective is to have a database that can provide information and perform the needed tasks to address these issues. It might seem that talking about these scripts in this chapter does not make any sense now; however, having these scripts can provide the basis for the automation. Understanding what needs to be monitored assists in setting up an environment that is proactive and does not require a DBA to be running scripts manually at all hours of the day and night.
Most of these scripts fit nicely with an Oracle Enterprise Management tool as they can be inserted into scheduled jobs and run at different level of permissions. The scripts are also good to deploy for the initial testing of the database environments when they are provisioned by a more automated response file or cloud control. These tests can validate that the creation steps are still properly set up and working with each version. Scripts can be scheduled and standardized for who gets alerted, track alerts, and enable and disable blackouts for patching and maintenance windows. Definitely a tool to explore and use to assist in managing the environment.
Automation makes it easier to manage a very large database environment. Standardizing the scripts and environment setup is going to allow for a team of DBAs to work together to manage the enterprise database systems. These are just a few of the scripts for some quick checks; there are other checks and monitoring that can be automated, even for the performance and scaling of the database. We will take a look at that later with Autonomous Database but also look how to leverage what Autonomous Database does to script and do the same with the on-premises databases.
That was our little detour to configure an efficient environment. This is especially important for DBAs who manage multiple databases on multiple servers. Regular maintenance and troubleshooting activities require you to log in directly to the database server. To promote efficiency and sanity, you should develop a standard set of OS tools and SQL scripts that help you maintain multiple environments. You can use standard features of the OS to assist with navigating, repeating commands, showing system bottlenecks, quickly finding critical files, and so on.
With just a small amount of setup, you can make certain that your OS prompt always shows information such as the host and database. Anything that needs to be run against the database a few times is a perfect candidate for automation. Now we are ready to dive into other database administration tasks.
