[Laskey99] Section 5.5. Oracle Network Manager

5.5. Oracle Network Manager

The Oracle Network Manager is a poorly named tool; it does not perform network management at all. Rather, it is a tool provided by Oracle to configure the various components of Oracle's networking software.

Oracle networks can be very complex, often with servers running on various operating systems, and with multiple network topologies running different protocols and frequently utilizing WAN technologies to implement geographically dispersed networks. In such complex networks, change is often the norm, and since detailed information about the composition of most components of the network must be made available to Oracle products in various parameter files, it would be difficult indeed to keep all network parameter files up to date.

Network Manager was developed and bundled with Oracle7 to help handle this network complexity and to simplify the DBA's job of configuring and maintaining an Oracle network. Network Manager is a GUI tool that you can use to create, change, and distribute the required Oracle parameter files.

It is important to know that Network Manager was originally developed to run under Windows 3.1, and while it runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT clients, it is not installed with the normal Oracle installer on those platforms. Rather, you must navigate to the \WINDOWS\INSTALL directory on the Oracle client installation CD-ROM, then run ORAINST to install Network Manager. The resulting executable will be found in the \ORAWIN \BIN directory on the client, rather than in the expected \ORAWIN95 directory.

Although Network Manager can be used to configure a network running Oracle8 and Net8, Oracle is now shipping a new configuration product called the Net8 Assistant that replaces Network Manager for Oracle8 installations.

Network Manager is a GUI tool that runs only on the Windows 95/98 and Windows NT platforms. The files that are created are used on other host machines, but must be created in the Windows environment.

5.5.1. Network Manager Data Storage

A major advantage of Network Manager is that data about the network is entered only once, then stored in a repository that may be either a flat file (operating- system-level) structure or an Oracle database. When a change is required, only the affected component is changed, and all parameter files can be quickly and easily regenerated and distributed as required.

If the Network Manager data is being stored in the database, several scripts must be run by the SYSTEM account to create the required database objects. These scripts, which are normally found in the \ORAWIN \DBS directory on a Windows client machine, are shown in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1. Network Manager Scripts Required to Run

Script Name	Function
rosbild.sql	Builds the Resource Object Store database objects
rosgrnt.sql	Grants access to the Resource Object Store objects
rosrvke.sql	Revokes access to the Resource Object Store objects
rosdrop.sql	Drops Resource Object Store objects from the database
nmcbild.sql	Builds database objects required by Network Manager
nmcgrnt.sql	Grants access to Network Manager database objects
nmcrvke.sql	Revokes access to Network Manager database objects
nmcdrop.sql	Drops Network Manager objects from the database

5.5.2. Using Network Manager

Before beginning to define an Oracle network using Network Manager, you'll need to collect the answers to some basic questions, including the following:

• What protocols will be supported?

• Will the MultiProtocol Interchange be used?

• How will you name your Oracle services?

• Will you use Oracle Names?

• What are the physical or logical addresses of the servers in your Oracle network?

• What are the SIDs (instance names) of the databases on each server?

Once this information is available, you can begin defining your network. Network Manager easily walks you through the configuration process. After starting Network Manager, choose the "new" option from the "File" menu, and answer "yes" to the prompt that asks "Would you like to walk through configuration of a network definition?" From this point on, you can simply answer questions on the screen and provide the necessary information to complete your configuration.

5.5.3. Files Created by Network Manager

When the network is specified to Network Manager (or a change is made to an existing network definition), a set of SQL*Net configuration files is created on the Windows workstation. Individual directories are created for each client and server node defined in the network. In each of these directories, you'll find the files shown in Table 5.2.

Table 5.2. Files Generated by Network Manager

File	Distributed to	Description
tnsnames.ora	Client (and server when using database links or distributed processing)	Contains all service names for all databases and interchanges on the network.
sqlnet.ora	Client	Contains parameters to control SQL*Net diagnostics (logging and tracing).
tnsnav.ora	Client	Contains a list of local communities in the client profile or node. This file also contains information to identify the location of interchanges for connections across communities.
listener.ora	Server	Contains information unique to each server specifying how SQL*Net should configure and operate the TNS (Transparent Network Substrate) listener on the server.
intchg.ora (Oracle7)	MultiProtocol Interchange	Contains parameters to control the operation of a particular MultiProtocol Interchange.
tnsnet.ora	MultiProtocol Interchange	Contains information to describe the relationships of all the communities and interchanges in the network.
cman.ora (Oracle8)	Connection Manager	Contains parameters to control the operation of the Oracle Connection Manager.
names.ora	Names Server	Contains parameters to control the operation of a single Oracle Names server.

Once these files are created, the DBA must copy the files, using a technique such as FTP or Windows copy, to the appropriate node (identified by the directory name).