Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system for policy driven data placement and information lifecycle management in a database management system are provided. A user or database application can specify declarative policies that define the movement and transformation of stored database objects. The policies are associated with a database object and may also be inherited. A policy defines, for a database object, an archiving action to be taken, a scope, and a condition before the archiving action is triggered. Archiving actions may include compression, data movement, table clustering, and other actions to place the database object into an appropriate storage tier for a lifecycle phase of the database object. Conditions based on access statistics can be specified at the row level and may use segment or block level heatmaps. Policy evaluation occurs periodically in the background, with actions queued as tasks for a task scheduler.

Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system for custom policy driven data placement and information lifecycle management in a database management system are provided. A user or database application can specify declarative custom policies that define the movement and transformation of stored database objects. A custom policy defines, for a database object, a custom function to evaluate on an associated database object to determine whether an archiving action is triggered. Archiving actions may include compression, data movement, table clustering, and other actions to place the database object into an appropriate storage tier for a lifecycle phase of the database object. The custom function is defined by the database user, and can flexibly include any customized business logic using data sources internal and external to the database, including database access statistics such as segment level or block level heatmaps.

Abstract: Software, systems and methods for managing a distributed network environment including a plurality of computers interconnected by a network link, where at least some of the computers include a layered communications protocol stack for providing a data interface between an application program and the network link, the communications stack having a transport protocol layer for providing an end-to-end communications connection. The invention includes a control module and a plurality of agent modules, each agent being associated with one of the computers and adapted to dynamically monitor the associated computer at a data transmission point between an application program running on the computer and the transport protocol layer and repeatedly communicate with the control module in order to effect management of the distributed network system.