Defining an Oracle DB Agent List

You can assign jobs to run using Oracle DB agent/adapter lists similar to the way you assign them to individual agents. With Oracle DB lists, however, you have access to useful functions not available with individual connections. You can specify alternate connection(s) to run your jobs if the primary connection is unavailable, you can balance the workload of many jobs among the process servers in the list, or you can broadcast jobs to run on all the servers in the list at the same time.

To define an Oracle DB Agent list:

  1. Click Definitions in the Navigation pane > Agent Lists > Oracle DB to display the Oracle DB Agent Lists pane.

  2. Right-click the Oracle DB Agent Lists pane and choose Add Agent List from the context menu.

    OR

    Click Add on the TA toolbar to display the Agent List Definition dialog.

  3. Enter the name of the Oracle DB list (up to 60 characters) in the List Name field.

  4. Choose a parent list if you want to create nested lists in the Parent List field.

    If you specify a parent list, the list you are editing is a child list of the parent and appears below its parent in the list hierarchy.

  5. Click the List Type list.

  6. Click the type of list based on how you want your jobs to be assigned to an Oracle DB connection in the list.

    • Ordered – In support of high-availability, TA chooses the first available agent to run the job based on the order that the connections appear in the Agents Selected section. For example, if the first (primary) adapter in the list is not available, TA tries the second (alternative) adapter in the list. You might want to use this list type for critical jobs – specifying substitute adapters in case the primary adapter becomes unavailable for any reason.

    • Random – Chooses connections from the Agents Selected field randomly. This is a basic form of workload balancing. For more advanced load balancing, choose the Balanced option.

    • Rotation – TA cycles through the list of connections in the Agents Selected field and launches jobs assigned to that list in rotation. When the end of the list is reached, the first connection in this list is chosen. This is a form of workload balancing where you can predict where the next job will run.

    • Balanced – TA chooses a connection from the Agents Selected section based on lightest load when the job is ready to launch. The Balanced Agent list uses Oracle DB connection load information to decide which connection in the list gets to run a job when its dependencies are met. You can choose this option to balance your workload across all the available connections in the list.

  7. Highlight the appropriate Oracle DB adapter from the Agents Available section on the List tab.

  8. Click left arrow to add the selected connection to the list by moving it from the Agents Available section to the Agents Selected section. You can also drag and drop connections from one section to another.

  9. Click OK.