Managing Your Database: A Roadmap

This section provides an overview of the tasks involved in managing an Oracle database instance. Each task is described in detail in a different section of this documentation.

To manage your Oracle database:

1. Start the database instance.

   After the installation, your instance is started and your database is open. In the future, there will be times, perhaps for doing database maintenance or because of a power or media failure, that you shut down your database instance and later restart it.

   See "Shutting Down and Starting Up the Oracle Instance".

2. Optionally, configure the network environment to enable clients to connect to your database.

   See "Configuring the Network Environment".

3. Review your database storage structures: tablespaces and data files, online redo log files, and control files. Create or modify storage structures as needed.

   See "Managing Database Storage Structures".

4. Review memory allocation and adjust as needed.

   See "Managing Memory".

5. Review, unlock, and reset passwords for predefined database users as needed. Create new users, and assign privileges and roles to them.

   See "Administering User Accounts and Security".

6. Create the necessary schema objects, including tables, views, and indexes. Populate the tables with data.

   See "Managing Schema Objects".

7. Create or review the backup strategy for the database and back up the database.

   See "Performing Backup and Recovery".

8. Enable archiving of online redo log files, if not already done.

   See "Configuring Recovery Settings".

9. Monitor database performance, diagnose performance problems, and tune the database as necessary.

   See "Monitoring and Tuning the Database".

10. Investigate, gather diagnostic data for, and report to Oracle Support Services any critical database errors.

    See "Investigating, Reporting, and Resolving Problems"

11. Keep Oracle Database software up-to-date with the latest patch releases.

    See "Managing Oracle Database Software".