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Intelligent Agent Overview

This chapter provides a brief overview of the Intelligent Agent and its characteristics.

• Oracle Intelligent Agent: An Overview
• Characteristics
• Simple Network Management Protocol Support

Oracle Intelligent Agent: An Overview

The Oracle Intelligent Agent is an autonomous process running on a remote node in the network. The Agent resides on the same target as the services it supports and performs the following functions:

• Provides local services or calling operating system dependent services to interact locally with the managed targets.
• Checks for events, and queueing the resulting event reports for Oracle Enterprise Manager.
• Runs Oracle Enterprise Manager jobs, collecting their results and output, and/or queuing the results as required.
• Handle data collection.
• Cancels jobs or events as directed by the Console or other applications.
• Handles requests to send SNMP traps for events if SNMP is supported on the Intelligent Agent's platform.

For information on configuring the Agent, see the Oracle server platform-specific installation documentation for your system.

Characteristics

Intelligent Agents are autonomous because they function without requiring that the Console or Management Server be running. An Agent that services a database can run when the database is down, allowing the Agent to start up or shut down the database. The Intelligent Agents can independently perform administrative job tasks at any time, without active participation by the administrator. Similarly, the Agents can autonomously detect and react to events, allowing them to monitor the system and execute a fixit job to correct problems without the intervention of the administrator.

The Agents operate independently of the Console and Management Server and are able to execute jobs and monitor events when the administrator has logged out of the Console. The Agents queue any job or event messages destined for that administrator, and deliver them to the Management Server. When the administrator logs in to a Console again, the Management Server delivers pending messages to the administrator who is currently logged in. Information about the state of jobs and events are stored in files on the Agent's node. These files have a ".q" extension and are stored in the $ORACLE_HOME/network/agent directory.

Jobs and events are implemented as Tcl scripts. When the Agent executes a job or tests for an event, it runs the appropriate Tcl script.

When the Management Server sends a message to an Agent on behalf of an administrator logged into the Console, it also sends the information about the administrator's language and character set environment. The Agent uses the NLS environment information when it performs database administration tasks on behalf of the administrator. This allows administrators to manage databases in their native languages. For example, an administrator in France can administer a database in Germany and receive messages in French.

The Intelligent Agent uses specific cartridges to collect specific types of data. For example, operating system or database information. Agents can collect statistical date for discovered services on its node. Once requested, collections occur independent of the Oracle Performance Manager and Oracle Capacity Planner. Also collected are statistical data used for evaluation of operating system and database specific metric events registered from the Enterprise Manager Console.

Integrators can write their own cartridges to collect other types of data.

Simple Network Management Protocol Support

The Agent supports Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), allowing third-party systems management frameworks to use SNMP to receive SNMP traps directly from the Agent. The Agent provides access to Oracle's database Management Information Base (MIB) variables. You can submit jobs or events that access Oracle MIB variables even when the database resides on a platform that does not support SNMP. For more information on SNMP, see the Oracle SNMP Support Reference Guide.