script to check DB status
Platform: Oracle 9.R2 on Solaris 8
I need to write a (Perl) script to check whether a DB on a different Solaris server on the same LAN is down. My question is what condition do I specify to check the DB? For example, if the DB is down like it was shutdown or hang for whatever reason, what criteria to check when this happens? If it hangs, when I make a connection, it won't return. Do I have to spawn a seperate process in the script which attempts to make a connection to the DB while the other process checks whether the spawned process returns? This sounds an overkill to me. There gotta be an easy way.
How do people usually do this?
Thanks,