One of the things I joke about is the cliché and concern of losing a key member of any team. Try this joke with your client or manager and see their face of concern when you tell them that you are going to the local bus station to play chicken with the buses!
Even if you work with a team of DBAs, often the responsibility of a particular feature or functionality will be on the shoulders of the specialist within the team. This chapter will address some of the concerns about losing a key member of any team by creating and maintaining proper documentation. Yes, your co-workers will miss you. However, follow the suggestions in this chapter and they will sing your praises when you leave.
This chapter covers the following:
- How to create a map of your Streams environment
- Taking a look at some of the basic Streams Views
- How to use
UTL_SPADVto automate collections of Streams performance statistics
Being able to hand over documentation that fully describes your Oracle Streams environment is the goal we are trying to achieve. Getting to the goal in the most efficient manner is the goal of this chapter. As you are probably the person that set up Streams, you are the lucky winner who will do the documentation. If you are the person handed the "opportunity" to learn Streams earlier today, then reviewing, confirming, and building documentation will be part of your task when you take over administration responsibilities.
Like Chapter 5 on N-Way Replication, this chapter will focus on using the Oracle supplied packages. Oracle made substantial improvements to help the Streams Administrator: set up, document, and monitor Streams all through supplied packages. Knowing Streams down to the supplied packages level also allows for creative usages to build custom monitoring beyond Database Control and/or Grid Control.