Top Activity missing in Cloud Control 13.4

DBA’s and other users of the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control  are very familiar with the ‘Top Activity’ page under Performance of a database target. 

Mostly, this is the first page to watch when questions arise on database performance.

This page uses Adobe Flash for the graphs. Hopefully, you are aware that Flash is end-of-life by the end of 2020. So how does this affect Oracle Enterprise Manager?

Until OEM 13.3, we see the Top Activity. If you use the Database Plugin 13.3.2, this is being supported by JET and not by Flash (see https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2309503.1).

Not only this page uses Flash, many more pages are listed in the support note.

 

You can check your plugin version, via Setup > Extensibility > Plug-ins

 

In the above example, the 13.3.2 plugin should be deployed on the OMS, this would disable the Flash usage. Updating the plugin is an option, if you are not able to upgrade the OMS to 13.4.

Now what about the latest Enterprise Manager version 13.4?

Below a screenshot of a fresh 13.4 installation. As you see, the Top Activity is gone (!!!) This may be a horror scenario to many DBA’s, who have used this option for over a decade.

 

The document describing this not-so-sudden disappearance, is https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2528627.1 .

This document explains to start using Performance Hub > ASH Analytics. The latest version of Active Session History Analytics provides a whole new view

on the top Processes/Users in the database. This page will also show you again a Top-n view, as shown in the larger example below.

What I’ve seen thus far on the ASH Analytics, is a very detailed and well-designed replacement of the Top Activity page. So don’t be scared, things will change – as always.

Disclaimer: all views and ideas are my personal interpretation on the way Oracle software works. Note that you are always self responsible for your environment, its configuration and licensing. 

Import in Autonomous Transaction Processing Database

In this article, I would like to show the easy steps to import a Oracle datapump exportfile into an (existing) ATP database. Note, you are always responsible yourself to check the documentation and make your own decisions. We all know that documentation can be confusing, showing too many details and referring you back and forth to other locations. I hope these simple steps will provice some help.

Create a credential

Connect with SQL*Developer to the ATP database, and run (set parameters how you like)

BEGIN
  DBMS_CLOUD.CREATE_CREDENTIAL(
    credential_name => 'MY_CRED_NAME',
    username => 'john.doe@mycompany.com',
    password => 'password'
  );
END;
/

Upload the datapump file to a bucket

Go to Object Storage>Object Storage.

Create a bucket for holding the dumpfile.

Once the bucket is created, upload your dumpfile into the bucket.

In the menu to the right (three dots) on this dumpfile, you can Create a Pre-authenticated request.

This will give you a “Pre-Authenticated Request URL” that you need to copy/save.

Run the import

Now with a local Oracle Client (I used Oracle 18c client on windows 10), you can import.

The client_home needs the files from the wallet-zip (unzipped) in network/admin folder.

You can now check connectivity with the Oracle Client:

sqlplus admin/<admin_pw>@db01_high

The import can be run as:

impdp admin/<admin_pw>@db01_high directory=data_pump_dir credential=my_cred_name dumpfile=<pre-authenticated_request URL>

You may add extra impdp parameters as you wish.