Home : Extremely Flexible Oracle Monitoring (XFIM)

Revision Notes

July 3, 2001 - Document Created

Downloads/Links

• Sample Code - View some of my PL/SQL coding.  XFIM is not publicly available so only some of the required files are included.

• Screen Shot - Here is a screen captures of the GUI built in MS Access that worked with a prior version of XFIM. 

• Sample Report - Check out one of the reports you can produce with the data acquired using XFIM.  Requires the free Report Snapshot Viewer from Microsoft.

Overview

XFIM is an Oracle performance monitoring tool I built using PL/SQL.  I have developed a number of Oracle monitoring tools in the past 3 years and each one builds upon the knowledge I have gained from the last.  XFIM is only my latest swing at the bat and by no means my last.

There are a lot of Oracle performance monitoring solutions out there.  Most are either expensive or did not suit my needs.  There is no secret to building a good performance monitor.  All you need to do it grab a performance statistic at regular intervals and store it somewhere.  These are the challenges I overcame in the design of XFIM.

• Design a system that efficiently stores historical data.

• Design a system that has minimal impact on the databases it is responsible for monitoring.

• Design a system that is capable of monitoring multiple databases easily from a central location (single installation).

• Design a system that works on multiple versions of Oracle.

XFIM will work on any version of Oracle over 7.3.  A single installation of XFIM takes only a few minutes and can multiple multiple database via the use of database links.  The administrator has great flexibility in deciding how much data will actually be stored by the system.  This flexibility allows performance storage characteristics such as:

• Store 8 hours of data at 10 minute intervals.

• Take the above information and aggregate it into weekly, monthly and yearly storage tables.

• Store the hour by hour averages for each day of the week in a compact rolling averages table.

• Deactivate the metric that has been configured and only reactivate if the average for a given hour is exceeded consistently for more than 60 minutes.  Also email the admin an alert when this type of event occurs.

As you can see XFIM is "extremely flexible".  You have a increadible capacity to adjust polling interval and data storage characteristics for each metric you want to gather.  Metrics are simply SQL statements so can monitor a lot more than just Oracle performance measurements.  XFIM comes with a huge set of pre-defined metrics and allows you to quickly add new ones.