Oratop is a text-based utility that provides real-time monitoring of Oracle databases. It displays global database information, instance activity across databases, top 5 timed events, and process/SQL information. Oratop is compatible with Oracle 11.2 and higher on Unix/Linux and helps identify bottlenecks, contention, and performance issues. It is installed from MOS and started on the command line to dynamically monitor an Oracle database.