Setting Up Enterprise Manager Preferences

Enterprise Manager enables you to set up preferences that help you manage the database. These include the following:

Notification

These settings enable Oracle to e-mail you alerts. Alerts are notifications of when a database is in an undesirable state and needs your attention. By default, the Enterprise Manager home page lists all alerts. However, set up is required for e-mail notification. For more information about alerts and setting up notifications, see "Setting up Direct Alert Notification" in Chapter 10, "Monitoring and Tuning the Database".

Blackout Administration

When you have planned downtime for database maintenance, you can indicate that you do not want false alerts to be sent to you. To do so, you define a blackout period. See "Defining Blackout Periods" .

Preferred Credentials

Enterprise Manager can automatically execute many routine administrative tasks, such as backups. This is done using sophisticated job scheduling system built into the Enterprise. To keep your environment secure, setting up tasks for automatic execution in Enterprise Manger requires you to provide login information for the machine and database. To avoid having to enter this information every time you create a job or task, Enterprise Manager enables you to save this information as preferred credentials. Preferred credentials are stored in the database in encrypted mode to protect them from unauthorized use. See "Setting Preferred Credentials" .

Defining Blackout Periods

When you plan to bring your database down for maintenance, you can indicate that you do not want alert notifications to be sent to you. Alerts are notifications of when the database is in an undesirable state and needs your attention. For more information about alerts, see "Alerts".

To define a blackout time period, follow these steps

From the home page, click Setup at the top of the page. The Setup page appears.
Click Blackouts in the left hand pane. The Blackouts page appears.
Click Create to start the Create Blackout wizard. On the Properties page, name your blackout, enter a reason, and select the target that has planned downtime. Click Next.
On the Schedule page, enter the start time of your planned blackout, or choose Immediately if you are bringing the database down now. Also select the duration of the blackout, either as indefinite, as a length or time, or until a time in the future. Under Repeating, accept the default of Do Not Repeat. If you want to repeat the blackout periodically, you can select a repeat frequency in the pull down menu. Click Next.
The review page appears. Review what you have entered, and click Finish. You can click Back to change a setting.

Setting Preferred Credentials

You can have Enterprise Manager automatically fill in host and database login credentials for you, such as when you schedule jobs and tasks to perform administrative operations like backup and recovery. For security, Oracle stores preferred credentials in encrypted mode.

To set preferred credentials for the database, do the following:

From the home page, click Preferences at the top of the page. The Preferences page appears.
Click Preferred Credentials in the left hand pane. The Preferred Credentials page appears. For the Database target, click the icon under Set Credentials. The Database Preferred Credentials page appears.
For your database, enter the credentials for Normal Username/Password, SYSDBA Username/Password, and Host Username/Password.
Click Test to test your credentials. You should get a confirmation message if your credentials can be verified.
Click Apply to apply the changes.