A process monitor based on periodic sql selects - does this exist or do I need to build it?

Question

I need a simple tool to visualize the status of a series of processes (ETL processes, but that shouldn't matter). This process monitor need to be customizable with color coding for different status codes. The plan is to place the monitor on a big screen in the office making any faults instantly visible to everyone.

Today I can check the status of these processes by running an sql statement against the underlying tables in our oracle database. The output of these queries are the abovementioned status codes for each process. I'm imagining using these sql statements, run periodically (say, every minute or so), as an input to this monitor.

I've considered writing a simple web interface for doing this, but I'm thinking something like this should exist out there already. Anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

If just displaying on one workstation another option is SQL Developer Custom Reports. You would still have to fire up SQL Developer and start the report, but the custom reports have a setting so they can be refreshed at a specified interval (5-120 seconds). Depending on the 'richness' of the output you want you can either:

• Create a simple Table report (style = Table)

Paste in one of the queries you already use as a starting point.

• Create a PL/SQL Block that outputs HTML via DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE statements (Style = plsql-dbms_output)

Get creative as you like with formatting, colors, etc using HTML tags in the output. I have used this to create bar graphs to show progress of v$Long_Operations. A full description and screen shots are available here Creating a User Defined HTML Report in SQL Developer.

If you just want to get some output moving you can forego SQL Developer, schedule a process to use your PL/SQL block to write HTML output to a file, and use a browser to display your generated output on your big screen. Alternately make the file available via a web server so others in your office can bring it up. Periodically regnerate the file and make sure to add a refresh meta tag to the page so browsers will periodically reload.

Answer 2

Oracle Application Express is probably the best tool for this.

Answer 3

I would say roll your own dashboard. Depends on your skillset, but I'd do a basic web app in Java (spring or some mvc framework, I'm not a web developer but I know enough to create a basic functional dashboard). Since you already know the SQL needed, it shouldn't be difficult to put together and you can modify as needed in future. Just keep it simple I would say (don't need a middleware or single sign-on or fancy views/charts).