Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 12c

by Rick Greenwald, Robert Stackowiak, Jonathan Stern

Overview

Written by Oracle insiders, this indispensable guide distills an enormous amount of information about the Oracle Database into one compact volume. Ideal for novice and experienced DBAs, developers, managers, and users, Oracle Essentials walks you through technologies and features in Oracle’s product line, including its architecture, data structures, networking, concurrency, and tuning.

Complete with illustrations and helpful hints, this fifth edition provides a valuable one-stop overview of Oracle Database 12c, including an introduction to Oracle and cloud computing. Oracle Essentials provides the conceptual background you need to understand how Oracle truly works.

Topics include:

• A complete overview of Oracle databases and data stores, and Fusion Middleware products and features
• Core concepts and structures in Oracle’s architecture, including pluggable databases
• Oracle objects and the various datatypes Oracle supports
• System and database management, including Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c
• Security options, basic auditing capabilities, and options for meeting compliance needs
• Performance characteristics of disk, memory, and CPU tuning
• Basic principles of multiuser concurrency
• Oracle’s online transaction processing (OLTP)
• Data warehouses, Big Data, and Oracle’s business intelligence tools
• Backup and recovery, and high availability and failover solutions

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449343033
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/26/2013
Edition description:	Fifth Edition
Pages:	429
Sales rank:	333,233
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Rick Greenwald has been active in the world of computer software for over two decades, including stints with Data General, Cognos, and Gupta. He is currently Director of Product Management with Oracle Corporation, responsible for the Oracle Database Cloud. He has been a principal author of 19 books and countless articles on a variety of technical topics, and has spoken at conferences and training sessions across six continents. Rick’s titles include 4 editions of Oracle Essentials (principal author with Robert Stackowiak and Jonathan Stern, O'Reilly Media, Inc), a number of books on Application Express and its predecessors, and books on data warehousing, Oracle programming and Exadata.

Robert Stackowiak has more than 25 years of experience in data warehousing and business intelligence architecture, software development, new database and systems product introduction, and technical sales and sales consulting. During the writing of this edition of Oracle Essentials, he is Vice President of Big Data and Analytics Architecture in Oracle’s Enterprise Solutions Group. He has spoken on related Oracle topics at a wide variety of conferences including Gartner Group’s BI Summit, TDWI, ComputerWorld’s BI & Analytics Perspectives, Oracle OpenWorld, and numerous IOUG events. Among the other books he co-authored are the following: Achieving Extreme Performance with Oracle Exadata (McGraw-Hill Oracle Press), Professional Oracle Programming (WROX), and Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Solutions (Wiley). He can be followed on Twitter @rstackow.

Jonathan Stern used more than 13 years of experience in contributing to the original edition of this book. His background included senior positions in consulting, systems architecture, and technical sales at Oracle and other companies. He demonstrated in-depth knowledge of the Oracle Database across major open systems hardware and operating systems. His expertise included Database tuning, scaling, parallelism, clustering, and high availability for transaction processing systems and data warehousing implementations. Some of the fundamentals of Oracle that he originally contributed to the first edition live on in this edition of Oracle Essentials though much has changed in the Oracle Database since Jonathan passed on. Each edition of this book is a reminder of the talent and attention to detail that he possessed.

Table of Contents

Preface; Goals of This Book; Audience for This Book; About the Fifth Edition (Oracle Database 12c); Structure of This Book; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; How to Contact Us; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: Introducing Oracle; 1.1 The Evolution of the Relational Database; 1.2 The Oracle Database Family; 1.3 Summary of Oracle Database Features; 1.4 Database Application Development Features; 1.5 Database Connection Features; 1.6 The Role of Oracle Fusion Middleware; 1.7 Distributed Database Features; 1.8 Data Movement Features; 1.9 Database Performance Features; 1.10 Managing the Oracle Database; 1.11 Database Security Features; 1.12 Oracle Database Development Tools; 1.13 Other Oracle Databases; Chapter 2: Oracle Architecture; 2.1 Databases and Instances; 2.2 Deploying Physical Components; 2.3 Instance Memory and Processes; 2.4 Configuration, Engineered Systems, and the Cloud; 2.5 The Data Dictionary; Chapter 3: Installing and Running Oracle; 3.1 Installing Oracle; 3.2 Creating a Database; 3.3 Oracle Net Services and Oracle Net; 3.4 Starting Up the Database; 3.5 Shutting Down the Database; 3.6 Accessing a Database; 3.7 Oracle in the Cloud; 3.8 Oracle at Work; Chapter 4: Oracle Data Structures; 4.1 Datatypes; 4.2 Basic Data Structures; 4.3 Additional Data Structures; 4.4 Extended Logic for Data; 4.5 Data Design; 4.6 Constraints; 4.7 Triggers; 4.8 Query Optimization; 4.9 SQL Translation; 4.10 Understanding the Execution Plan; 4.11 SQL Advisors; 4.12 Data Dictionary Tables; Chapter 5: Managing Oracle; 5.1 Manageability Features; 5.2 Oracle Enterprise Manager; 5.3 Backup and Recovery; 5.4 Working with Oracle Support; Chapter 6: Oracle Security, Auditing, and Compliance; 6.1 Security; 6.2 Auditing; 6.3 Compliance; Chapter 7: Oracle Performance; 7.1 Oracle and Resource Usage; 7.2 Oracle and Parallelism; 7.3 Oracle and Memory Resources; 7.4 Oracle and CPU Resources; 7.5 Performance Tuning Basics; Chapter 8: Oracle Multiuser Concurrency; 8.1 Basics of Concurrent Access; 8.2 Oracle and Concurrent User Access; 8.3 Oracle’s Isolation Levels; 8.4 Oracle Concurrency Features; 8.5 How Oracle Handles Locking; 8.6 Concurrent Access and Performance; 8.7 Workspaces; Chapter 9: Oracle and Transaction Processing; 9.1 OLTP Basics; 9.2 Oracle’s OLTP Heritage; 9.3 Architectures for OLTP; 9.4 Oracle Features for OLTP; 9.5 High Availability; Chapter 10: Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence; 10.1 Data Warehousing Basics; 10.2 Data Warehouse Design; 10.3 Query Optimization; 10.4 Dimensional Data and Hierarchies in the Database; 10.5 Analytics and Statistics in the Database; 10.6 Other Datatypes and Big Data; 10.7 Loading Data into the Data Warehouse; 10.8 Managing the Data Warehouse; 10.9 Business Intelligence Tools; 10.10 The Metadata Challenge; 10.11 Putting It All Together; Chapter 11: Oracle and High Availability; 11.1 What Is High Availability?; 11.2 The System Stack and Availability; 11.3 Protecting Against System Failure; 11.4 Site and Computer Server Failover; 11.5 Recovering from Failures and Data Corruption; 11.6 Planned Downtime; Chapter 12: Oracle and Hardware Architecture; 12.1 System Basics; 12.2 Oracle’s Engineered Systems; 12.3 Choosing and Defining the Right Platform; Chapter 13: Oracle Distributed Databases and Distributed Data; 13.1 Accessing Distributed Databases; 13.2 Replication and Data Transport; Chapter 14: Oracle Extended Datatypes; 14.1 Object-Oriented Development; 14.2 Extensibility Features and Options; 14.3 The Extensibility Architecture Framework; Chapter 15: Oracle and the Cloud; 15.1 Cloud Definitions; 15.2 Oracle Database in the Cloud; 15.3 Oracle Database Cloud Service; 15.4 Implementing Provider Clouds; What’s New in This Book for Oracle Database 12c; Chapter 1: Introducing Oracle; Chapter 2: Oracle Architecture; Chapter 3: Installing and Running Oracle; Chapter 4: Data Structures; Chapter 5: Managing Oracle; Chapter 6: Oracle Security, Auditing, and Compliance; Chapter 7: Oracle Performance; Chapter 8: Oracle Multiuser Concurrency; Chapter 9: Oracle and Transaction Processing; Chapter 10: Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence; Chapter 11: Oracle and High Availability; Chapter 12: Oracle and Hardware Architecture; Chapter 13: Oracle Distributed Databases and Distributed Data; Chapter 14: Oracle Extended Datatypes; Chapter 15: Oracle and the Cloud; Additional Resources; Web Sites; Books and Oracle Documentation; Colophon;