To configure the Oracle Intelligent Agent, use the following directives within your sqlnet.ora file:

1. Set the trace file directory for the OEM Intelligent Agent. The default value is $ORACLE_HOME/network/trace
   daemon.trace_directory=/ora8/home/agent
2. Control the trace level for Intelligent Agent problems. These trace-level names are identical to the listener trace levels that you looked at in a prior lesson. For example:
   daemon.trace_level=user
   
   Note that the valid values are OFF, USER, ADMIN, and SUPPORT. The default value is OFF.
   
3. Direct that only the Intelligent Agent daemon entries will appear in the trace file. For example:
   Daemon.trace_mask=(106)
   The default value is $ORACLE_HOME/network/trace.

The next lesson discusses how to customize the Intelligent Agent.

Beginning with Oracle 7.3, Oracle provided auto-discovery features that allowed it to find new databases automatically. Support for auto-discovery increased and improved with each Oracle release since then. Since Oracle8i, the Universal Installer and Oracle Net Manager work together smoothly to automatically configure your Oracle Net network.
A key piece of the Oracle network that enables auto-discovery is the Oracle Intelligent Agent. The agent is a piece of software that runs on the machine with your Oracle Database(s). It acts as an agent for other functions that need to find and work with the database on the machine. For example, the agent knows about the various Oracle instances on the machine and handles critical management functions, such as monitoring the database for certain events and executing jobs. The agent provides a central point for auto-discovery: Oracle Net discovers instances and databases by interrogating the agent.