CHAPTER 5
Enterprise Manager and Grid Control (DBA and Developer)

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control finally matches or exceeds the market's answer to monitoring and tuning the Oracle 10g database. Oracle has usually been behind the market with an okay-to-good product over the years. No longer is this the case; Oracle has stepped up to the plate and delivered one of the best products ever. This chapter provides a quick tour of why Oracle's Enterprise Manager Grid Control (EM) is now at the next level. The tour will not explore the entire product, nor will it teach you how to use all of the features (it would take an entire book). Rather, this chapter exposes you to some of the tools and tuning features that will be helpful in your tuning endeavors. With Oracle's focus on the grid in Oracle 10g, many screen shots show multiple instances so that either a single-instance or multi-instance cluster can be seen with the product. Oracle Enterprise Manager is an excellent tuning tool for all levels of DBAs and is especially valuable as we head into the decade of the grid. There are two versions of EM in 10g. There is Grid Control, which is a separate product, and EM Database Control, which is installed along with the database (unless you specify that you do not want to use it for monitoring your database). You can do most of the functions for RAC with Database Control, but I personally prefer using Grid Control when monitoring Oracle RAC databases.