Database System Check with BRCONNECT (SAP Library - SAP Database Guide: Oracle (BC-DB-ORA-DBA))

Database System Check with BRCONNECT

Use

You can use BRCONNECT to check the Oracle database system. The aim is to prevent database problems that might lead to downtime for the database.

Recommendation

We strongly recommend you to use this BRCONNECT function rather than the equivalent SAPDBA one, sapdba -check. The reason is that we will in future no longer develop the SAPDBA functions, whereas BRCONNECT functions will always be fully up-to-date.

You can use BRCONNECT to check the following conditions:

Database administration, such as configuration, space management, state of the database, and so on

Database operations, such as backup results, failed operations, and so on

Critical database messages in the Oracle alert file, such as ORA-00600

Incorrectly set database profile parameters in the init<DBSID>.ora file, such as log_archive_start = false

When a critical situation is discovered, BRCONNECT writes an alert message to the detail log and to the results table DBMSGORA.

Integration

The check conditions are specified in the control table DBCHECKORA. You can change these with transaction DB17. Detected alerts are also reported to the database monitor (transaction RZ20). For more information, see Monitoring the Oracle Database.

Prerequisites

BRCONNECT can also use internal default conditions, which mostly correspond to the initial state of the DBCHECKORA table when we deliver it.

Note

For up-to-date information on the BRCONNECT default conditions, see SAP Note 435290.

BRCONNECT Default Conditions for Database Administration

See BRCONNECT Default Conditions for Database Administration.

BRCONNECT Default Conditions for Database Operations

See BRCONNECT Default Conditions for Database Operations.

BRCONNECT Default Conditions for Database Messages

You can enter any Oracle error codes or error text as a condition name for this condition type. BRCONNECT searches the Oracle Alert log for corresponding Oracle error messages and might generate Alert messages. The following Oracle error codes are taken into account for the standard test conditions (-d option):

ORA-00272 Error writing archive log

ORA-00376 Database file cannot be read

ORA-00600 Oracle internal error

ORA-01113 Data file needs media recovery

ORA-01115 I/O error reading database file

ORA-01122 File verification check failed

ORA-01135 Database file is offline

ORA-01149 Cannot shutdown - data file in backup mode

ORA-01555 Snapshot too old

ORA-01562 Failed to extend rollback segment

ORA-01578 Database block corrupted

ORA-03113 End-of-file on communication channel

ORA-07445 Exception encountered: core dump

Checkpoint not complete

Note

You can easily add any Oracle error codes as new test conditions for database messages using transaction DB17. You can also search any texts (character strings) in the Oracle Alert file by specifying the text in the PARAM field. Since the search in the Oracle Alert file takes the upper/lower case spelling into account and the entry in the PARAM field is always converted into upper case letters using DB17, the entry must be made using SQL with SQLPLUS, as in the following example:

Example

INSERT INTO DBCHECKORA (TYPE, PARAM, OBJECT, ACTIVE, SEVERITY, CHKOP, CHKVAL, UNIT, CHKREP, REPUNIT, MODFLAG, MODDATE, MODUSER, REACTION, CORRTYPE, CORRNAME, CHKDESC)

VALUES ('ORA', 'Checkpoint not complete', ' ', 'Y', 'W', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', 'D',

'Increase the size of online redo log files',

'Cannot switch to the next online redo log due to pending checkpoint');

BRCONNECT Default Conditions for Database Profile Parameters

These test conditions check the values of Oracle parameters. The standard test conditions for the database profile (-d option) correspond to the current SAP recommendations described in note 124361 and 180605 (SAP BW).

Note

You can use transaction DB17 to easily adjust the test conditions for the database profile parameters, depending on the changed recommendations and for new Oracle releases.

Downward compatibility

For earlier SAP releases (up to Release 4.0B), BRCONNECT for SAP Web Application Server 6.10 supports the old SAPDBA test conditions. In Releases 4.6X, however, you can replace the old test conditions in table DBCHECKORA with the new ones. To do this, run the following SQL script:

sapserv*:/general/misc/sapdba/scripts/dbcheckora.sql

SQLPLUS> connect sapr3/<pwd>

SQLPLUS> @dbcheckora

Then you can maintain the check conditions as of the specific service packages using transaction DB17 (see note 427673 for this). If required, you can also maintain the check conditions using native SQL.

Activities

You run the checks regularly (for example, daily). We recommend you to use the Database Planning Calendar in the SAP System for this. For more information, see Database System Check.

You use transaction DB16 to view alerts written by BRCONNECT to the results table DBMSGORA. For more information, see Displaying Alert Messages from Database System Check.

You use transaction DB17 to configure database system check. This includes activating or deactivating check conditions and changing the threshold and severity levels (that is, error, warning, or exception). For more information, see Configuring Database System Check (Oracle).

You can exclude specified tables or indexes from the checks using the check_exclude parameter.

For more information on the command line options for the database checks, see -f check.