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.

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. You can also view alerts with transaction DB16.

Prerequisites

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

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 Oracle error codes are taken into account for the standard test conditions (-d option).

See “Oracle Messages” in Database Health Alerts.

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:

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 SAP Notes 124361 and 180605 (SAP BW) for Oracle 9i and SAP Note 830576 for Oracle 10g.

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.

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_excludeparameter.

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