Interview Questions on Oracle Alerts

Q: Can one create event alerts on custom tables, triggered by custom applications?
A: For a customer to use event alerts on a custom application, they willneed to register the application, the application's ORACLE ID, theevent table and the form with AOL.
In Release 9, additional user-exit calls need to be added to thecustom form. See the R9 Alert Reference Manual.
In Release 10, the above requirement is due to the event alertdatabase trigger needing the correct application context that isderived from signing-on to AOL (with some username, responsibility).
When triggered by custom apps not registered with and accessible byAOL, event alerts can't properly function. Although it's technicallyfeasible to default the username/responsibility for this case, wehaven't implemented it for competitive reasons (ie. we still need toweigh the pros/cons.)


Q: Can one create event alerts triggered by applications built using tools other than Oracle Forms or registered concurrent programs?
A: No.

Q: Which electronic mail facilities does Alert use/support?
A: Oracle Alert is shipped with e-mail capabilities integrated withOracle Office and Oracle InterOffice. VMS mail and UNIX sendmailtechnologies are also supported.
A single-user license of Oracle Office is bundled with the OracleAlert kit. For Oracle Alert Release 10.7 or later, a single-userlicense of Oracle InterOffice Messaging Options is bundled instead.
Other mail facilities can be linked to Alert using OracleOffice/InterOffice server and gateways that support various mailstandards and platforms.
For some mail facilities that provide SMTP gateways (such as cc:Mail),Oracle Office/InterOffice server and gateways are not required asAlert has the capability to send mail by calling any command-lineexecutable that understands SMTP.
To use Response Processing (receiving and parsing user mail replies),Oracle Office/InterOffice is REQUIRED. The single-user licensebundled with Alert satisfies this requirement. Currently there are noother supported configurations to support this feature.

Q: My Alert concurrent programs cannot connect to the Oracle Office (orOracle InterOffice) account, displaying "Cannot login to Oracle*Mail".
A: Verify that your server environment is correct. Particularly, makesure that $ORACLE_HOME/office subdirectory exists, containing twosubdirectories: mesg/ and oacore/. Verify that$ORACLE_HOME/office/mesg/OAE message file exists.
Verify that your mail database has been registered correctly withAlert. Ensure that database name, account names and passwords areentered correctly.


Q: How often should the Alert tables be purged?
A: There is no recommended purge frequency. It all depends on how manyalerts have been enabled and their frequency. The site's dba may wishto monitor the ALR tables to determine the purge frequency.
Also note bug 451137, in which the "Purge Alert and Action Set Checks"alert has a poor performance. The customer may choose to run the SQLstatements supplied in the bug text instead.

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