Oracle Alerts- Few FAQs

What are Oracle Alerts?

Oracle Alert facilitates the flow of information within your organization by letting you create entities called alerts to monitor your business information and to notify you of the information you want.

What they are capable of?

• Keep you informed of database exception conditions, as they occur.
• Take predefined actions when it finds exceptions in your database, without user intervention.
• Take the actions you specify, depending upon your response to an alert message.
• Perform routine database tasks automatically, according to the schedule you define.
• Keep you informed of exception conditions through Email.

What are the types of Alert?

You can define one of two types of alerts: an event alert or a periodic alert.

• An event alert immediately notifies you of activity in your database as it occurs.
• A periodic alert, on the other hand, checks the database for information according to a schedule you define.

What are the alert actions available?

• Sending the retrieved information to someone in an Email.
• Run a concurrent program
• Run an operating script
• Run a SQL Statement script

What is On-Demand periodic alert?

It is a periodic alert with frequency as ‘On-Demand’. That means there is no specific period assigned to this alert and you can run this alert at any time you want using Request Periodic Alert Check form.

What you specify in the Alert Details window?

• Default values for inputs variables
• Additional characteristics for output variables
• Application installations information you want the alert to run against

What are the Action Levels for your alert actions?

There are three types of level for your action: Detail, Summary and No Exception.

During an alert check, a detail action performs once for each individual exception found, a summary action performs once for all exceptions found, and a no exception action performs when no exceptions are found.

What is Action Set?

An action set can include an unlimited number of actions and any combination of actions and action groups for your alert. You can define as many action sets as you want for each alert. Oracle Alert executes the alert Select statement once for each action set you define. During each action set check, Oracle Alert executes each action set member in the sequence you specify.

What is Distribution List in Oracle Alert?

Distribution lists let you predefine a set of message recipients for use on many actions. If a recipient changes, you need only adjust it in the distribution list, not in the individual message actions.

What is Summary Threshold?

• Oracle Alert can automatically determine whether to perform a detail or summary action, depending upon the number of exceptions found by the alert Select statement.
• If you define a summary threshold, Oracle Alert performs a detail action for each exception found by the Select statement, but if the number of exceptions found exceeds the summary threshold, Oracle Alert performs a summary action.
• You need to first define a detail and a summary action, include them in a threshold group, and then specify a summary threshold.

What is Periodic Set?

You can create a set of periodic alerts that Oracle Alert checks simultaneously. Use the Request Periodic Alert Check window to check the periodic set. Note that each periodic alert you include in a periodic set continues to run according to its individually defined frequency.

What is Response Processing in Alert?

Oracle Alert can process responses to your alert messages. When Oracle Alert receives a response to a specific alert message, it automatically performs the actions you define. Optionally, respondents can supply values that Oracle Alert uses to perform these actions. Response processing lets you automate routine user-entry transactions, streamlining your organization’s operations.

Note: To enable response processing, ensure that you have performed the required setup steps.

What is Action Escalation?

You can define a set of escalating detail actions, called an escalation group, for Oracle Alert to perform when it finds the same exceptions during consecutive alert checks. Oracle Alert performs a different detail action each time it encounters the same exception, so you can define actions that correspond to increasing severity levels.

How event alert works?

Once you define an event alert to monitor a table for inserts and/or updates, any insert or update to the table will trigger the event alert. When an insert or update to an event table occurs, Oracle Alert submits to the concurrent manager, a request to run a concurrent program called Check Event Alert (ALECTC). The concurrent manager runs this request according to its priority in the concurrent queue. When the request is run, Check Event Alert executes the alert Select statement. If the Select statement finds exceptions, Check Event Alert performs the actions defined in the enabled action set(s) for the alert. If the Select statement does not find any exceptions, Check Event Alert performs the No Exception actions in the enabled action set(s) for the alert.