Discovering usage of Oracle Database features

To retrieve detailed information about Oracle Database editions, options, and management packs that are used in your infrastructure, use Get Oracle Database Measurements fixlet. When the information is imported to BigFix Inventory, it is displayed on the Oracle Databases report.

Before you begin

There are two options on how to gather the data:
  • For Linux, AIX, and Solaris endpoints, the Get Oracle Database Measurements fixlet provides accurate information.
  • Distribute the Oracle reporting script to the relevant endpoints and run the Get Oracle Database Measurements fixlet.

The rest of the section refers to the Get Oracle Database Measurements functionality.

About this task

The discovery of Oracle Database editions, options, and management packs is based on the use

The task establishes an Oracle database connection as an Oracle instance owner. This username is configured as ‘oracle’. To check the name of the instance owner user, run the following command:

ps -ef | grep ‘ora_pmon_’

Ensure that this user has the Oracle SYSDBA privilege.

The following examples show the available usage of Oracle features :
  • Potential use of Tuning Pack or Real Application Testing might be reported based on the data from SQL Tuning Sets. If they are contained in the results, the Tuning Pack or Real Application Testing license is required.
  • Potential use of Diagnostic Pack might be reported based on control_management_pack_access data if the value of control_management_pack_access is DIAGNOSTIC or DIAGNOSTIC+TUNING.

Procedure

  1. To retrieve information about features of the used Oracle databases, log in to the BigFix console, and go to Sites > External Sites > BigFix Inventory > Fixlets and Tasks. Then, click Get Oracle Database Measurements.
  2. Optional: To enable creation of the auditing report, enable Oracle Audit preparation. This enables upload of a large portion of the gathered data for further processing at the server side. As it may impact network and server performance, it's advised to enable it only when full audit report is required.
  3. Optional: To enable debug logging, select Debug mode.
    The information is logged in the script_trace.txt file. By default, the file is in the following location.
    • Unix /var/opt/BESClient/LMT/ORACLE
    • Windows C:\Program Files (x86)\BigFix Enterprise\BES Client\LMT\ORACLE
  4. Optional: On Unix endpoints, you can change the folder in which the temporary script used by the fixlet is created. By default, it is Oracle instance owner's default folder. In case there is a security policy in place which forbids keeping executable scripts in this folder, you can select a subfolder of /tmp folder.
  5. To run the task, click Take Action. On the Target tab, select computers from which you want to retrieve the information, and click OK.
  6. Ensure that software identification tags scan and upload of its results are scheduled. For more information, see: Initiating software scans and Uploading software scan results.
  7. To make the data available in BigFix Inventory, wait for the scheduled import of data or run it manually.

Results

Information about the used features is available on the Oracle Databases report. It is also included on the Software Installations report.

Additionally, raw output of the script is sent to the to BigFix server. It can be found in the following directory: <BigFix Enterprise>\BES Server\UploadManagerData\BufferDir\sha1\<last_2digits_of_computer_ID>\<computer_ID>\oracleresults_0_<computer_ID>(.zip/.tar.gz).

10.0.11 Starting from version 10.0.11, pluggable databases (CDB/PDB) can be distinguished. The below image shows the detected licensable options grouped by the database, on which they were detected. The image also shows the theta database instance, which has CDB root named CDB$ROOT and pluggable database THETAPDB. Databases without multitenancy are not renamed, such as beta database. Databases prior to version 12 are named after the name of the instance.

Note: The 'Version' column is renamed to 'Release'. A new 'Detailed Version' column is available which shows the version details along with patch-level information.

Oracle Databases report