The previous scripts and tasks when scheduled are just scratching the surface of automating jobs for the Oracle database. Processes that start to take the results of these scripts and apply the fixes and perform the next actions are getting closer to automation.
Oracle 23c database has many processes and hooks that allow for environments to configure even more automation.
Oracle Autonomous Database is a service available in the Oracle Cloud environment (OCI) and is available for serverless or dedicated implementations.
Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer can provide on-premises Autonomous Database. This database is a self-healing, self-patching, and self-driving database. This allows you to focus on the data and application development and let Autonomous maintenance be handled by the automation built into the environment.
Autonomous databases are managed and backed up by automated processes, and, if needed, they perform failover and basic troubleshooting to handle issues. Issues can be an increase in processing power that is needed or additional storage.
If the database is not heavily utilized, it can shrink back down to save costs. The database has information about when activities occur, and through learning it can monitor performance issues and take measures to remediate.
A secure configuration along with security options are implemented by default in the Oracle Cloud. The Autonomous Database has enabled threat detection and encryption, which protect the data that it is storing. Patching is also automated so that when there
is a vulnerability, the patching process can apply the fix. These steps happen without manual intervention, and with a highly available environment, the database experiences no downtime.
In this cloud environment, what is a DBA to do? There are plenty of opportunities with development, data integrations, and quality, and other areas of security and business intelligence that add value to the enterprise.
There are plenty of features of the database that can be used to manage other areas of the business, and even new features of the database should be built into applications.
The DBAs can be the ones to help drive this. The Oracle Cloud and Oracle Cloud@ Customer (in your data center) provide the monitoring, support, and automation of the processes for provisioning and patching databases for backup.
The Oracle Cloud databases (Autonomous Databases, Oracle Base Database Service) can even be managed with the same tools as an on-premises database with tools that DBAs are already familiar with such as SQL Developer, DB Actions, and Cloud Control.
Figure 16-1 shows the interface for DB Actions. You can see there are options for SQL, Data Modeler, REST, Graph, and Data Load available through this tool. This tool is similar to using SQL Developer. Users are managed through the cloud services, and DBAs can help manage these resources and provide input for migrations to the cloud environments.
Obviously, not all of the pieces need to be managed, such as the file system; backups are scheduled, and database activity and performance are monitored.
Figure 16–1. Database Actions interface
As the Autonomous Database continues to gather information about the activity for performance and security, it provides changes in query plans and indexes to improve and detect anomalies for security prevention controls.
The Oracle 23c Database is being used to transform how database environments are being implemented. Even if not using Autonomous, you can leverage the information about how Autonomous is being managed to your on-prem environment to deploy some of the automated tuning.
There are auto-upgrades that help with patching, but because Autonomous lives on Oracle Exadatas and in the Oracle Cloud, there are plenty of ways for the environment to be automated and tuned.
Even though you are able to copy some of the processes and tuning, there are additional jobs and tasks that allow Autonomous to run more efficiently and leave the management to Oracle systems.
The databases are just services that can be supplied on demand for business needs. The processes and steps to make that service available need to have fewer manual steps and more automated processes along with remediation.
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