The long running thread on monitoring tools has piqued my curiosity. What would you say are the essentials for database monitoring? Here's a list of things I consider important and track closely. These are just *monitor* items. There are several other automated jobs that run against databases, but cannot really be considered as a *monitor* type job. * Space available on archive log volumes - kick off a backup if % too low and delete logs * Is database up? - window during which paging occurs varies by database * Alert log - monitor for ORA-, TNS and 'crash' * There are monitors to check the database monitors and restart them if necessary. (The biggest problem is on Windows where a service may not start at startup) * dba_jobs - are any jobs stuck? * dba_jobs - are any jobs broken? * rman - check catalog to see if backups are restorable up to yesterday * rman - do a validate on 2 random databases ( once a month ) * security - monitor for accounts with default password * security - monitor for accounts that should be locked * security - monitor for expiring passwords * storage - are any segments in danger of running out of space? * performance - gather response time metrics ( db perspective) Your list is likely highly dependent on the environment: Size of IT shop, number of DBA's, size of company, etc. If you respond to this thread, please include a little environment information if you can. Here's ours: we are a small to medium size business, about 30 people in IT altogether, with a single Oracle DBA. There are about 30 Oracle databases, and about a third of those are for production use by end users, with a fair amount of applications: SAP, Oracle Apps, Agile PLM are the critical ones, along with a host of smaller apps. Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist