Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 10g

by Rick Greenwald, Robert Stackowiak, Jonathan Stern

Overview

An enormous system comprising myriad technologies, options, and releases, Oracle's complexities have spawned numerous areas of specialization. For each area of specialization there are equally specialized how-to books and manuals. O'Reilly's Oracle Essentials claims a unique place among these books. Rather than focusing on one area, the book explains the foundational concepts of the Oracle technology and the core technical and business aspects of using it.The new edition of this classic book, Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition: Oracle Database 10g, distills a vast amount of knowledge into an easy-to-read volume covering every aspect of the Oracle database. Readers of all levels will learn about Oracle's features and technologies, including the product line, architecture, data structures, networking, concurrency, tuning, and much more.Featuring focused text, abundant illustrations, and helpful hints, the new edition offers a valuable overview of Oracle's Database 10g--the industry's first database to support grid computing. Recent releases such as Oracle 9i and 8i are also covered. The book contains chapters on:

• Oracle products, options, and overall architecture for Oracle 10g and prior recent releases
• Installing and running Oracle: how to configure, start up, and shut down the database, and various networking issues
• Oracle data structures, datatypes, and ways of extending datatypes, with an introduction to Oracle objects (e.g., tables, views, indexes)
• Managing Oracle: security, the Oracle Enterprise Manager, fragmentation and reorganization, and backup and recovery
• Oracle performance: characteristics of disk, memory, and CPU tuning
• Multi-user concurrency, online transaction processing (OLTP), and high availability
• Hardware architectures (e.g., SMP, MPP, NUMA) and their impact on Oracle
• Data warehousing and distributed databases
• Network deployment: using Oracle as an Internet computing platform and for grid computing
• What's new in Oracle 10g: a summary of the database changes described in the book

Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition: Oracle Database 10g was written for anyone whose job involves managing or building systems using Oracle DBMS technology or working with staff that uses Oracle technology. This book is the perfect all-in-one source for understanding the complexities and capabilities of Oracle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596552350
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	02/11/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Robert Stackowiak is Vice President of Business Intelligence in Oracle's Technology Business Unit. He has worked for over 20 years in business intelligence, data warehousing, and IT-related roles at Oracle, IBM, Harris Corporation, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His papers regarding business intelligence and computer and software technology have appeared in publications such as "President & CEO Magazine," "Database Trends and Applications," and The Data Warehousing Institute's publications. He also co-authored the books "Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 10g" (currently in 3rd Edition, February 2004, O'Reilly), "Oracle Application Server 10g Essentials" (1st Edition, August 2004, O'Reilly), and "Professional Oracle Programming" (1st Edition, June 2005, WROX).

Joseph Rayman leads the Oracle Consulting Business Intelligence Practice in North America with over 20 years of business experience in a vast array of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, healthcare, and federal government. His technical and business leadership spans enterprise architecture design, enterprise data modeling, VLDB system tuning, data warehouse design, data mining, and quality assurance activities for data warehouse practices. Joe is a key contributor in defining and authoring Oracle Consulting's Data Warehousing Methodology. Prior to joining Oracle, Joe designed and deployed business intelligence and statistical analysis solutions for a large food manufacturer and provided real-time trading and analysis solutions for a major international financial organization.

Rick Greenwald has worked in the IT field for over 20 years for major vendors, includingOracle, Gupta Technologies, Cognos, and Data General. He has coauthored more than a dozen books, including "Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 10g" (currently in 3rd Edition, February 2004, O'Reilly), "Oracle Application Server 10g Essentials" (1st Edition, August 2004, O'Reilly), and "Professional Oracle Programming" (1st Edition, June 2005, WROX). Mr. Greenwald currently works for Ingres Corporation.

Stackowiak is a data warehousing specialist at Oracle Corporation in Chicago. He works with Oracle's largest customer in the central area of the U.S. providing insight into the company's products and data warehousing strategy.

Stern has more than 11 years of IT experience including senior positions in consulting, systems architecture, and technical sales.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
1.	Introducing Oracle	1
	The Evolution of the Relational Database	2
	The Oracle Family	6
	Summary of Oracle Features	8
	Database Application Development Features	9
	Database Connection Features	13
	Distributed Database Features	17
	Data Movement Features	18
	Performance Features	20
	Database Management Features	22
	Oracle Developer Suite	27
	Oracle Lite	29
2.	Oracle Architecture	31
	Instances and Databases	31
	The Components of a Database	32
	The Components of an Instance	46
	The Data Dictionary	51
3.	Installing and Running Oracle	53
	Installing Oracle	53
	Creating a Database	56
	Configuring Oracle Net	60
	Starting Up the Database	65
	Shutting Down the Database	67
	Accessing a Database	68
	Oracle at Work	75
4.	Data Structures	80
	Datatypes	80
	Basic Data Structures	88
	Additional Data Structures	94
	Data Design	97
	Constraints	99
	Triggers	102
	Query Optimization	104
	Understanding the Execution Plan	112
	SQL Tuning Advisor	115
	Data Dictionary Tables	116
5.	Managing Oracle	118
	Management and Enterprise Manager	119
	Oracle Database 10g Self-Tuning and Management	125
	Implementing Security	127
	Fragmentation and Reorganization	136
	Backup and Recovery	137
	Working with Oracle Support	140
6.	Oracle Performance	142
	Performance Tuning Basics	142
	Oracle and Disk I/O Resources	146
	Oracle and Parallelism	155
	Oracle and Memory Resources	163
	Oracle and CPU Resources	169
	Database Resource Manager	171
	Monitoring	172
	Real Application Clusters and Performance	174
7.	Multiuser Concurrency	175
	Basics of Concurrent Access	176
	Oracle and Concurrent User Access	179
	Oracle's Isolation Levels	180
	Oracle Concurrency Features	181
	How Oracle Handles Locking	183
	Concurrent Access and Performance	185
	Workspaces	187
8.	Oracle and Transaction Processing	190
	OLTP Basics	191
	Oracle's OLTP Heritage	194
	Architectures for OLTP	195
	Oracle Features for OLTP	200
	High Availability	205
	Oracle Advanced Queuing and Streams	206
	Object Technologies and Distributed Components	209
9.	Oracle and Data Warehousing	211
	Business Intelligence Basics	212
	Data Warehouse Design	216
	Query Optimization	218
	Analytics, OLAP, and Data Mining in the Database	221
	Managing the Data Warehouse	223
	Other Data Warehouse Software	224
	The Metadata Challenge	232
	Best Practices	233
10.	Oracle and High Availability	237
	What Is High Availability?	237
	System Crashes	241
	Protecting Against System Crashes	246
	Recovering from Disasters	259
	Complete Site Failure	266
	Data Redundancy Solutions	270
11.	Oracle and Hardware Architecture	274
	System Basics	274
	Uniprocessor Systems	276
	Symmetric Multiprocessing Systems	277
	Clusters	279
	Massively Parallel Processing Systems	280
	Non-Uniform Memory Access Systems	282
	Grid Computing	283
	Disk Technology	285
	Which Platform Deployment Solution?	286
12.	Distributed Databases and Distributed Data	289
	Accessing Multiple Databases as a Single Entity	289
	Two-Phase Commits	292
	Moving Data Between Distributed Systems	294
	Advanced Queuing	297
	Oracle Streams	299
13.	Extending Oracle Datatypes	302
	Object-Oriented Development	302
	Extensibility Features and Options	308
	Using the Extensibility Framework in Oracle	312
14.	Network Deployment Models	314
	The Impact of the Internet	314
	The Oracle Database and the Internet	315
	Oracle Application Server	321
	Grid Computing	333
A.	What's New in This Book for Oracle Database 10g	339
B.	Additional Resources	347
	Index	357