Before we begin our discussion on the intelligent advisors contained in Oracle10G, it is important that we review the entire architecture from a higher level. I want to make sure that we all have a firm understanding of 10G's Common Manageability Infrastructure before we begin reviewing the individual advisors.

To ensure that we have this firm foundation, we must learn more about the Automatic Workload Repository and Active Session History which capture the data that many of the advisors use as input. Although, the Automatic Workload Repository and Active Session History may not be as exciting as the advice provided by the advisors and the automatic tuning recommendations provided by ADDM, it is important for us to understand the information used as input by these new components.

Let's forge ahead with our discussion on 10G EM's performance monitoring capablities by turning our attention to database performance. Like the blogs on 10G host performance, I’ll break this information up into two blogs. This first blog will provide you with a quick tour of EM's database performance monitoring component. In my next blog, I'll provide you with a brief overview on how to use the information it generates to monitor database performance.

We’ll then take a look at 10G EM’s performance advisors that are grouped together in Advisor Central. Once we have a firm understanding of Enterprise Manager’s performance and tuning capabilities, we’ll put our newfound knowledge to use when we use EM to solve some real-world performance problems.

Before we begin our discussion on 10G EM's database monitoring and tuning features, I thought I would show you how to configure the 10G EM environment to provide automatic notifications. Creating automatic notifications allows database administrators to identify (and correct) performance and availability issues before they negatively impact the database environment.

In many of my blogs, I have been promising to cover this topic. In addition, I'm getting a little tired of writing "We'll learn more about creating and modifying performance alerts in upcoming blogs." So consider this "the upcoming blog."

We took a quick detour from 10G in my last blog. In this blog, we get back on topic by discussing 10G Enterprise Manager's host performance monitoring and tuning features. In the final installment of this two-part series, I'll show you how to use 10G EM's drilldown capabilities to identify performance problems.

What? A 9I article in a 10G blog? What happened? And its not on host monitoring like you promised? Blashpemy! Well, I thought I'd deviate from 10G for one blog to show you something neat that we have been using to tune vendor queries that are not coded for "optimal performance".

So here's what I'll do to make up for it. Because Stored Outline administration has changed somehwat much from 9I to 10G, I'll make sure I cover how Stored Outlines are created and administered in a 10G environment in a future blog.

No matter how expertly you tune an Oracle database, if the server it runs on is overloaded, underpowered or configured incorrectly, you will never obtain "maximus database performis".

So, let's start our discussion on 10G Enterprise Manager's performance monitoring features by investigating the tool's new host monitoring capabilities. This first blog will provide you with a quick tour of EM's hot new host monitoring component. In my next blog, I'll show you how you use the information it generates to monitor operating system and hardware performance.

Ok, I just got notification that the administrators need to "freeze" this blogsite for a few days. The freeze starts on Wednesday (4/13/05) and may last until this coming Friday or Monday. We are converting to a new content management system called Plone. Plone is an open-source content management system that provides the capability for blogs, RSS feeds, and other fun stuff.

I wanted to try and squeeze a blog in that discusses 10G EM's new host monitoring features. These new tools will allow us to monitor and tune the hardware and operating system environment that Oracle runs on. But it looks like I'm not going to make the deadline. I started to rush through the article (or blog or whatever you want to call it) and decided that I would prefer to postpone it until next week. There is just too much information to cover and rushing through it would be a disservice to you and to the host monitoring features that 10G Enterprise Manager provides. I want to cover each new feature as thoroughly as I can. I have numerous screen prints, hints and tips I want to include in this next blog.

So we'll switch topics for a minute and I'll provide you with a quick preview of what's to come in future blogs.

Consider this to be the first of many blogs on the art of performance monitoring and tuning using 10G Enterprise Manager. I'll start the series by discussing how the latest release of Oracle's SGT (Sissy GUI Tool) will force us to change the way administer, monitor and tune Oracle databases.

In upcoming blogs, I'll break 10G EM's monitoring infrastructure into individual components and discuss each one in-depth. By the time I'm done, we'll all be 10G Enterprise Manager experts.

In my last blog, I discussed the various testing strategies we implemented at Giant Eagle to make sure we had a trouble-free migration to Oracle's latest and greatest release. In this blog, I'll discuss some general techniques you can use to make any database upgrade easier and less error-prone.

In upcoming blogs, I'll cover how we have configured 10G Enterprise Manager to monitor and administer our 10G test and production databases. In addition, I'll also describe how we use the tool to perform performance monitoring and tuning. Performance monitoring and tuning using 10G EM is so drastically different than 9I OEM, that it is definitely worthwhile for me to spend some time telling you how we use it. With SQL joining billion row tables on a regular basis, we quickly become experts on all new tools we use here.

It has been a long process, but we have successfully converted our first production warehouse to Oracle10G. The database has been running for over a week now with no problems and is performing better than we thought it would. In this first post-turnover blog, I'll cover some of the testing strategies we used to ensure a successful migration to Oracle10G. In part 2, I'll provide you with a laundry list of helpful tips and techniques you can use to make any database upgrade easier and less error-prone.