SAP Database Administration Using the DBA Cockpit – Sybase ASE

SAP have now released some documentation on the DBA Cockpit for Sybase ASE in the SAP environment.

What is DBA Cockpit? It’s a graphical application that facilitates the management of databases supporting SAP applications.  Until recently SAP supported MAXDB, SQL Server DB2 and Oracle.  Of course now the focus is on SAP applications running on Sybase database products.  Hence the delivery of DBA Cockpit for Sybase ASE.  It would seem the monitoring side of DBA cockpit relies on extracting data from ASE; I would guess   stored procedure(s) feed back data from key system and MDA tables.   It also seems that repository can be configured for storing data for later analysis.  Certain aspects are focused on SAP application only.

So what can you do via DBA Cockpit?  Can it be the central point of administration for SAP running on Sybase ASE? Well it does offer monitoring, diagnostics and the ability to schedule tasks (jobs).  So it does potentially offer a single point for daily ASE administration within a SAP application environment- it does seem to cover much of what a DBA routinely does.  A few questions come to mind :-

• – Can it be utilized to raise alerts?
• – How does it monitor ASE – what frequency of monitoring doe it support?
• – Where – and in what structure – is historical monitoring data stored

I’ve already posted on ’Automatic Table Maintenance’ via DBA Cockpit,(http://www.linkedin.com/groups/SAP-Sybase-ASE-Automatic-Table-4634032.S.171802404?qid=bc57f904-15ee-48e2-a33f-149ddcd8bcdb&trk=group_most_recent_rich-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmr_4634032)

A quick look at some of what DBA Cockpit provides.

Monitoring / Diagnostics

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A number of monitoring screens are documented for DBA Cockpit, this include Processes; Statement Cache ; System Waits ; Temporary Database Activity; Procedure Cache Usage and Lock Wait Events.

SAP have not provided detail for all of this functionality but it would seem there’s a reliance on MDA tables.

Performance: Statement Cache :-

“This function provides monitoring capability for all prepared SQL statements that reside in ASE’s global SQL statement cache”

SAP document some functionality detail for this window.  Notable the ability to sort and filter data.    I would presume this is data from monCachedStatement. 

As SAP does not utilize stored procedures I’d expect this screen to be important for identifying statements that are incurring significant resource overheads.

Lock Wait Events :-

A key facet of monitoring ASE systems – especially being able to review  historical block events.    Lock wait events provides a view of active, on going block events and you can review historical block events.  The SQL involved ib block events can be identified.

Missing Tables and Indexes :-

SAP specific.  SAP has tens of thousands of tables so I presume that this type of check is useful after installations and upgrades.

Error log :-

View events in the ASE errorlog.

Configuration

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DBA Cockpit allows for reporting and alteration of ASE configuration :-

Server Configuration: –

ASE Configuration parameter can be views and altered.

Data Caches :-

Data  cache information can be reviewed.

Jobs

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DBA Planning Calendar :- 

Various database administration tasks can be scheduled via a calendar view.   This includes backups; transaction log management and table maintenance