About Database Control Preferences

Database Control enables you to set user preferences in the following areas:

Notification

These settings enable Database Control to e-mail you alerts. Alerts are notifications that the database is in an undesirable state and needs your attention. By default, the Database Home page lists all alerts. However, setup is required for e-mail notification. For more information about alerts and setting up notifications, see "Setting Up Direct Alert Notification".

Blackout Administration

Blackouts suspend the collection of database monitoring data and the sending of alerts by Database Control. Blackouts enable you to perform scheduled maintenance on the database without receiving needless alerts and without skewing the monitoring data.

For example, you can stop data collections during a database backup or a hardware upgrade. If you continue monitoring during these periods, then the collected data shows trends and other monitoring information that is not the result of typical day-to-day operations. To get a more accurate, long-term picture of database performance, you can use blackouts to exclude these special-case situations from data analysis. See "Defining Blackout Periods" for more information.

Preferred Credentials

Database Control can automatically execute many routine administrative tasks, such as backups. You can use a job scheduling system that is built into Database Control for these routine tasks. To keep your environment secure, setting up tasks for automatic execution in Enterprise Manager requires you to provide login information for the host computer and database. To avoid entering this information every time you create or run a job or task, Database Control enables you to save this information as preferred credentials. Preferred credentials are stored in the database in encrypted mode to protect them from unauthorized use. See "Setting Preferred Credentials".