My colleagues (and Enterprise Manager experts) Debu Panda and Arvind Maheshwari have a very handy book out, titled Middleware Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10gR5 (that’s the latest release of Enterprise Manager). The publisher sent me a copy of the book. It illustrates well that Enterprise Manager does a lot more than just database management; it also provides coverage of most of the Oracle middleware stack (and some non-Oracle middleware components).
I am happy to provide an outline of the book, because it shows both how complete the book is and how wide the coverage of Enterprise Manager is for the Oracle middleware stack.
- Chapter 1 provides an overview of the base Enterprise Manager product and its various packs.
- Chapter 2 describes the installation process.
- Chapter 3 describes the key concepts of the different subsystems of Enterprise Manager.
- Chapter 4 covers management of WebLogic server, the centerpiece of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
- Chapter 5 covers management of the core of the pre-BEA Oracle Application Server (OC4J, OHS and WebCache).
- Chapter 6 is about managing Oracle Forms and Reports (used by EBS and many client-server applications).
- Chapter 7 is about managing the BPEL server, a major component of the SOA Suite.
- Chapter 8 (available as a free download) covers management of another part of the SOA Suite, namely Oracle Service Bus (previously AquaLogic Service Bus).
- Chapter 9 addresses management of Oracle Identity Manager.
- Chapter 10 covers management of Coherence (a distributed in-memory cache) clusters.
- Chapter 11 describes the capability to manage non-Oracle middleware for these youthful errors you committed before seeing the (red) light.
- Chapter 12 introduces some of the cool new application management features: Composite Application Modeler and Monitor (CAMM) to manage a distributed application across all its components, and Application Diagnostic for Java (AD4J) to drill down into a specific JVM.
- Chapter 13 invites you to roll-up your sleeves and write your own plug-in so that Enterprise Manager can manage new types of targets.
- Chapter 14 ends the book by sharing some best practices from customer experience.
All in all, this is the most user-friendly and accessible way to learn and become familiar with the scope of what Enterprise Manager has to offer for middleware management. The gory details (e.g. the complete list of target types, metrics and their definitions) are not in the book but available from the on-line documentation.
To end on a ludic note, you can use this table of content to test your knowledge of some Oracle acquisitions. Can you associate the following acquired companies with the corresponding chapter? Auptyma, Oblix, BEA, ClearApp, Collaxa, Tangosol.
The ROT-13-encoded answer is: ORN: 4&8 – Pbyynkn: 7 – Boyvk: 9 – Gnatbfby:10 – Nhcglzn: 12 – PyrneNcc: 12