Autonomicity in Oracle Database Management System

Human world is becoming more and more dependent on computers and information technology (IT). The autonomic capabilities in computers and IT have become the need of the day. These capabilities in software and systems increase performance, accuracy, availability and reliability with less or no human intervention (HI). Database has become the integral part of information system in most of the organizations. Databases are growing w.r.t size, functionality, heterogeneity and due to this their manageability needs more attention. Autonomic capabilities in Database Management Systems (DBMSs) are also essential for ease of management, cost of maintenance and hide the low level complexities from end users. With autonomic capabilities administrators can perform higher-level tasks. The DBMS that has the ability to manage itself according to the environment and resources without any human intervention is known as Autonomic DBMS (ADBMS). The paper explores and analyzes the autonomic components of Oracle by considering autonomic characteristics. This analysis illustrates how different components of Oracle manage itself autonomically. The research is focused to find and earmark those areas in Oracle where the human intervention is required. We have performed the same type of research over Microsoft SQL Server and DB2. A comparison of autonomic components of Oracle with SQL Server is provided to show their autonomic status.