Oracle – Hide Zero Hours and Minutes with NLS_DATE_FORMAT

first think about what it costs if the database gets lost. For this there are several levels.

1. lost completely and forever because of lack of backup
2. lost production because you perform a restore without being able to recover last TX.
3. lost production because the site was unavailable

For all scenarios there are solutions. Normally I work for sites that won't allow the loss of any data. Most of the times they also want protection against unplanned downtime. This is the ultimate protection. As most things, it also has a price. Most protection has the highest cost. But if you need this, there will be a business case for it. That is why you should start with the question what dataloss costs your company. This will give you a budget.

For documentation start with DBA Essentials A very nice third party solution for DR can be found here dbvisit standby

Hiring support from a good dba can make a huge difference for your company. A good dba has your business in mind when he/she proposes solutions. Your question a asking a bit much. You need dba support. For an overview pick the Oracle concepts guide. Read it and use it to help you hire a good dba.

Since you're using dbms_scheduler, you can set the max_run_duration attribute of the job to some limit, and then have the scheduler email you if that event is raised. Behind the scenes Oracle uses queueing tables (which can enable you to create jobs that fire when an event is raised, if you wanted to take the extra steps to do more automation around your response). But basically any job that runs over the max_run_duration you setup will raise event type: JOB_OVER_MAX_DUR

The email piece is built in 11gr2, see here for good writeup.

Hope that helps.