OEM 13c Database Plugin 13.3.2 Caveat

I have done some testing on the OEM 13c DB Plugin 13.3.2 (PG) for the last several months. I highlighted some of the changes in this new version in a previous post:


During the last Dallas Oracle User Group (DOUG) conference I got couple of questions though. I will try to answer them as best as possible.

  • OEM 13c Top Activity page has been deprecated

I don’t know the reason why, but is a fact. Oracle is moving towards getting rid of the Top Activity page and replacing this with ASH analytics. As I keep mentioning… we are so used to Top Activity page and this will be a shocking factor for users.

We know that Internet browsers such Chrome, IE or Firefox will no longer support Adobe Flash starting next year. Oracle is now using JET instead of Flash. But the Top Activity page was solely using Flash.

There’s a trick though. Top Activity link will show at the end of the Performance Home page. So you can still access it (while your browser permits it).

  • ASH Analytics can’t be used for our monitoring screens

This was a really good question. There are many companies that have big screens in their command centers to monitor mission critical databases. The Top Activity page is always shown in those screens and is really handful by having a quick glance on the DB’s performance.

Top Activity page will refresh every 15 seconds but the highlighted time frame (5 minutes) always moves to the very end. This means that we only monitor the last 5 minutes every single time. We notices a different behavior with ASH analytics though.

When ASH analytics refreshes, the highlighted time frame won’t move to the very end. This means that we are only monitoring the same 5 minutes (static). See the picture below taken from my lab running 13.2 version:

ASH Analytics EM 13.2 version

I confirmed this behavior in 12c, 13.1, 13.2 and 13.3 versions of the DB Plugin. But there are good news. This didn’t happen in the latest 13.3 PG version using JET. The highlighted time frame always moves to the very end thus showing information of the last 5 minutes every time.

This is another reason to upgrade to the latest version of EM.

  • You can only use DB 19c as a repository if you are using the latest DB plugin

Yes. OEM 13c PG was released with full 19c support. So, the best thing to do is to upgrade to 13c PG version if you want to monitor or use 19c as your DB repository.

Hope this helps to address your questions.

Thanks,
Alfredo

Oracle Enterprise Manager 13.3.2 Database Plugin New Features (Flash and JET)

Oracle EM 13.3 PG was released April 28th 2019. This new (plugin only) release contains 8 new plugins including a new version of the DB plugin.

After installing these plugins we noticed several changes in behavior for the DB targets.  

  1. All pages that used Adobe Flash now use Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET)
  2. Top Activity and Emergency Performance pages were completely removed from the Performance menu  

At the beginning was weird to use just ASH analytics instead of Top Activity page but all the key information is there.   There’s an option to revert 3 JET pages back to Flash if needed.

This can be done through emctl commands. All this information can be found on MOS 2422790.1  

Also, if you really need the old Top Activity page you can still access it using a direct URL link.

For this follow MOS 2528627.1 for more details.  

Thanks,
Alfredo