Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i and Oracle8, Second Edition

Book description

The second edition of O'Reilly's bestselling Oracle Essentials has been updated to include the latest Oracle release, Oracle9i.Oracle Essentials distills an enormous amount of information about Oracle's myriad technologies and releases into a compact, easy-to-read volume filled with focused text, illustrations, and helpful hints. Oracle9i promises to be an even more significant upgrade than Oracle8i, offering such major features as Real Application Clusters, flashback queries, Oracle personalization, clickstream intelligence, and Oracle Database Cache and Web Cache; it also promises significant improvements in Oracle's business intelligence, XML integration, high availability, and management capabilities. The book includes overviews of these features, as well as the new Oracle9I Application Server (Oracle9iAS) and Oracle9i Portal. The book contains chapters on:

  • Oracle products, options, and overall architecture for Oracle9i and other recent releases

  • Installing and running Oracle: creating databases, configuring Net8 (known as Oracle Net in Oracle9i), starting up and shutting down Oracle

  • Oracle data structures, datatypes, and ways of extending datatypes

  • Managing Oracle: security, the Oracle Enterprise Manager, fragmentation and reorganization, and backup and recovery

  • Oracle networking, monitoring, and 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

  • Oracle9i, Oracle8i, and the Web, including the latest Java, web, and XML technologies, interMedia, Oracle9i Application Server, and Oracle9i Portal

For new Oracle users, DBAs, developers, and managers, Oracle Essentials is an all-in-one introduction to the full range of Oracle features and technologies, including the just-released Oracle9i features. But even if you already have a library full of Oracle documentation, this compact book is the one you'll turn to, again and again, as your one-stop, truly essential reference.

Table of contents

  1. Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i & Oracle8, 2nd Edition
    1. Dedication
    2. Preface
      1. Goals of This Book
      2. Audience for This Book
      3. About the Second Edition (Oracle9i)
      4. Structure of This Book
      5. Conventions Used in This Book
      6. How to Contact Us
      7. Acknowledgments
    3. 1. Introducing Oracle
      1. The Evolution of the Relational Database
        1. Relational Basics
        2. How Oracle Grew
      2. The Oracle Family
        1. Oracle Standard Edition
        2. Oracle Enterprise Edition
        3. Oracle Personal Edition
        4. Oracle Lite
      3. Summary of Oracle Features
      4. Database Application Development Features
        1. Database Programming
          1. SQL
          2. PL/SQL
          3. Java features and options
          4. Large objects
          5. Object-oriented programming
          6. Third-generation languages (3GLs)
          7. Database drivers
          8. The Oracle Call Interface
          9. National Language Support
          10. Availability
        2. Database Extensibility
          1. Oracle interMedia
          2. Oracle Spatial
      5. Database Connection Features
        1. Database Networking
          1. Oracle Net/Net8
          2. Oracle Names
          3. Oracle Internet Directory
          4. Oracle Connection Manager
          5. Advanced Security Option
          6. Availability
        2. Oracle9i Application Server
          1. Availability
      6. Distributed Database Features
        1. Distributed Queries and Transactions
        2. Heterogeneous Services
        3. Availability
      7. Data Movement Features
        1. Basic Replication
        2. Advanced Replication
        3. Transportable Tablespaces
        4. Advanced Queuing
        5. Availability
      8. Performance Features
        1. Database Parallelization
          1. Availability
        2. Data Warehousing
          1. Bitmap indexes
          2. Star query optimization
          3. Materialized views
          4. Analytic functions
          5. Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services
          6. Availability
      9. Database Management Features
        1. Oracle Enterprise Manager
        2. Add-on Packs
          1. Standard Management Pack
          2. Diagnostics Pack
          3. Tuning Pack
          4. Change Management Pack
        3. Availability
        4. Backup and Recovery
          1. Recovery Manager
          2. Incremental backup and recovery
          3. Legato Storage Manager
          4. Availability
        5. Database Availability
          1. Partitioning option
          2. Oracle9i Data Guard
          3. Failover features and options
          4. Oracle Parallel Server/Real Application Clusters failover features
          5. Parallel Fail Safe/RACGuard
          6. Availability
      10. Oracle Internet Developer Suite
        1. Oracle Forms Developer
        2. Oracle Reports Developer
        3. Oracle JDeveloper
        4. Oracle Designer
        5. Oracle Discoverer Administration Edition
        6. Oracle9iAS Portal
        7. Availability
      11. Oracle Lite
    4. 2. Oracle Architecture
      1. Instances and Databases
      2. The Components of a Database
        1. Tablespaces
        2. Physical Files in an Oracle Database
        3. Control Files
          1. Control file parameters
          2. Multiple control files
        4. Datafiles
          1. Datafile structure
          2. Extents and segments
        5. Redo Log Files
          1. Multiplexing redo log files
          2. How Oracle uses the redo logs
          3. Naming conventions for redo logs
          4. Archived redo logs
          5. ARCHIVELOG mode and automatic archiving
      3. The Components of an Instance
        1. Memory Structures for an Instance
          1. Database buffer cache
          2. Shared pool
          3. Redo log buffer
        2. Background Processes for an Instance
      4. The Data Dictionary
    5. 3. Installing and Running Oracle
      1. Installing Oracle
        1. Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA)
        2. Supporting Multiple Oracle Versions on a Machine
      2. Creating a Database
        1. Planning the Database
        2. The Value of Estimating
        3. Tools for Creating Databases
      3. Configuring Oracle Net/Net8
        1. Resolving Oracle Net Service Names
        2. Oracle Net Manager/Net8 Assistant
        3. Auto-Discovery and Agents
        4. Oracle Net Configuration Files
      4. Starting Up the Database
      5. Shutting Down the Database
      6. Accessing a Database
        1. Server Processes and Clients
          1. Server process
          2. Client process
        2. Application Servers and Web Servers as Clients
        3. Oracle Net and Establishing Network Connections
        4. The Shared Server/Multi-Threaded Server
        5. Session Memory for Shared Server Processes Versus Dedicated Server Processes
        6. Data Dictionary Information About the Multi-Threaded Server
      7. Oracle at Work
        1. Oracle and Transactions
        2. A Transaction, Step by Step
    6. 4. Data Structures
      1. Datatypes
        1. Character Datatypes
        2. Numeric Datatype
        3. Date Datatype
        4. Other Datatypes
        5. Type Conversion
        6. Concatenation and Comparisons
        7. NULLs
      2. Basic Data Structures
        1. Tables
        2. Views
        3. Indexes
          1. B*-tree indexes
          2. Reverse key indexes
          3. Bitmap indexes
          4. Function-based indexes
      3. Additional Data Structures
        1. Sequences
        2. Synonyms
        3. Clusters
        4. Hash Clusters
      4. Data Design
      5. Constraints
      6. Triggers
      7. Query Optimization
        1. Rule-Based Optimization
        2. Cost-Based Optimization
          1. Statistics
          2. Influencing the cost-based optimizer
        3. Choosing a Mode
          1. Why choose the cost-based optimizer?
          2. Why choose the rule-based optimizer?
        4. Saving the Optimization
      8. Understanding the Execution Plan
      9. Data Dictionary Tables
    7. 5. Managing Oracle
      1. Implementing Security
        1. Usernames, Privileges, Groups, and Roles
        2. Security Privileges
        3. Default Roles and Privileges
        4. The DBA Role
        5. Auditing Security
        6. View-Based Security
        7. Fine-Grained Access Control
        8. Security and Applications
        9. Distributed Database and Multi-Tier Security
        10. Advanced Security Option
      2. Management Through the Oracle Enterprise Manager
        1. Oracle Enterprise Manager Architecture
        2. Oracle Enterprise Manager Console
        3. Oracle Enterprise Manager Tools
      3. Options for Oracle Enterprise Manager
        1. Diagnostics Pack Option
        2. Tuning Pack Option
        3. Change Management Pack Option
        4. Standard Management Pack Option
        5. Management Pack Options for Oracle Applications and SAP
      4. Fragmentation and Reorganization
        1. Segments and Multiple Extents
        2. Free Space Fragmentation
        3. Index Fragmentation
      5. Backup and Recovery
        1. Types of Backup and Recovery Options
        2. Additional Backup Capabilities
      6. Working with Oracle Support
    8. 6. Oracle Performance
      1. Performance Tuning Basics
        1. Defining Performance Problems
        2. Oracle Server Performance
        3. Machine Resource Usage
        4. When All Else Fails
      2. Oracle and Disk I/O Resources
        1. I/O Planning Principles for an Oracle Database
        2. Using RAID Disk Array Technology
          1. Host-based software
          2. Dedicated storage subsystems
          3. Combined host-based and I/O subsystem volume management
        3. Flexibility Versus Manageabilityin Disk Array Configuration
        4. How Oracle I/O and Striped Arrays Interact
      3. Oracle and Parallelism
        1. Block-Range Parallelism
        2. Parallelism for Tables and Partitions of Tables
        3. What Can Be Parallelized?
        4. Controlling Oracle’s Parallel Resource Usage
          1. Setting the degree of parallelism
          2. Intra-operation parallelism
        5. Adaptive Parallelism
        6. Partition-Based Parallelism
          1. Parallelism for partitions and subpartitions of a table
          2. Fast full index scans for nonpartitioned tables
          3. Parallel insert for nonpartitioned and partitioned tables
      4. Oracle and Memory Resources
        1. How Oracle Uses the System Global Area
          1. The database buffer cache
          2. The shared pool
          3. The redo log buffer
        2. How Oracle Uses the Program Global Area
          1. Memory for SQL statements
          2. Memory for sorting within the PGA
      5. Oracle and CPU Resources
      6. Avoiding Performance Problemswith Oracle9i
      7. Real Application Clustersand Performance
    9. 7. Multiuser Concurrency
      1. Basics of Concurrent Access
        1. Transactions
        2. Locks
        3. Concurrency and Contention
        4. Integrity Problems
        5. Serialization
      2. Oracle and Concurrent User Access
      3. Oracle’s Isolation Levels
      4. Oracle Concurrency Features
      5. How Oracle Handles Locking
        1. A Simple Write Operation
        2. A Conflicting Write Operation
        3. A Read Operation
      6. Concurrent Access and Performance
      7. Workspaces
    10. 8. Oracle and Transaction Processing
      1. OLTP Basics
        1. What Is a Transaction?
        2. What Does OLTP Mean?
          1. General characteristics
          2. Online versus batch
        3. OLTP Versus Decision Support
      2. Oracle’s OLTP Heritage
      3. Architectures for OLTP
        1. Traditional Two-Tier Client/Server
        2. Stored Procedures
        3. Transaction Processing Monitors and Three-Tier Systems
        4. Application Servers and Web Servers
      4. Oracle Features for OLTP
        1. General Concurrency and Performance
        2. Scalability
          1. Multi-Threaded Server/shared server
          2. Database Resource Manager
        3. Real Application Clusters
      5. High Availability
      6. Oracle Advanced Queuing
        1. Advanced Queuing for System Interfaces
        2. Oracle and Publish-Subscribe Technology
      7. Object Technologies and Distributed Components
    11. 9. Oracle and Data Warehousing
      1. Data Warehousing Basics
        1. The Evolution of Data Warehousing
        2. The Architecture of Data Warehouses
        3. Data Marts
        4. Operational Data Stores
      2. Data Warehouse Design
      3. Query Optimization
        1. Summary Tables and Materialized Views
      4. OLAP in the Database
        1. Oracle Database Options and the Data Warehouse
          1. inter Media and Oracle Text
          2. Spatial option
      5. Managing the Data Warehouse
      6. Other Data Warehouse Software
        1. Extraction, Transformation, and Loading
        2. Reporting and Ad Hoc Query Tools (Oracle Reports and Oracle Discoverer)
        3. OLAP and Oracle Express, Discoverer4i, and JDeveloper
        4. Business Intelligence
        5. Data Mining
      7. The Metadata Challenge
      8. Best Practices
        1. Common Misconceptions
    12. 10. Oracle and High Availability
      1. What Is High Availability?
        1. Measuring and Planning Availability
        2. Causes of Unplanned Downtime
        3. System Availability Versus Component Availability
      2. System Crashes
        1. What Is Instance Recovery?
        2. Phases of Instance Recovery
          1. Rollforward
          2. Fast-start fault recovery and bounded recovery time
          3. Rollback
          4. Deferred rollback
          5. Fast-start rollback
      3. Protecting Against System Crashes
        1. Component Redundancy
          1. Disk redundancy
        2. Simple Hardware Failover
          1. Outage duration for hardware failover
          2. Failover and operating system platform
        3. Real Application Clusters
          1. Real Application Clusters and hardware failover
          2. Node failure and Real Application Clusters
          3. Parallel Fail Safe/RACGuard
        4. Oracle Transparent Application Failover
          1. How TAF works
          2. TAF and various Oracle configurations
      4. Recovering from Disasters
        1. Developing a Backup and Recovery Strategy
        2. Taking Oracle Backups
        3. Using Backups to Recover
        4. Read-Only Tablespaces
        5. Point-in-Time Recovery
        6. Recovery Manager
      5. Complete Site Failure
        1. Oracle Data Guard: Standby Databasefor Redundancy
          1. Logical standby database
          2. Oracle9i Data Guard management
        2. Possible Causes of Lost Data with a Physical Standby Database
          1. Copying archived redo logs to a standby site
          2. Unarchived redo information and the role of geo-mirroring
      6. Data Redundancy Solutions
        1. Data Replication—Synchronous and Asynchronous
        2. Old-Fashioned Data Redundancy—Export/Import and Unload/Reload
    13. 11. Oracle and Hardware Architecture
      1. System Basics
      2. Uniprocessor Systems
      3. Symmetric Multiprocessing Systems
      4. Clusters
      5. Massively Parallel Processing Systems
      6. Nonuniform Memory Access Systems
      7. Disk Technology
        1. Disk Controllers
        2. RAID Disk Arrays
      8. Which Hardware Solution?
        1. Approaches to Choosing Hardware Architectures
    14. 12. Distributed Databases and Distributed Data
      1. Accessing Multiple Databases as a Single Entity
        1. Distributed Data Access Across Multiple Oracle Databases
        2. Access to and from Non-Oracle Databases
      2. Two-Phase Commits
        1. Transaction Processing Monitors
      3. Moving Data Between Distributed Systems
        1. Advanced Replication
          1. Managing advanced replication
        2. Transportable Tablespaces
      4. Advanced Queuing
        1. Queue Creation and Management
        2. Publish-and-Subscribe Capabilities
    15. 13. Extending Oracle Datatypes
      1. Object-Oriented Development
        1. Object-Relational Features
          1. Objects in Oracle
          2. Other extensibility features
        2. Java’s Role
        3. Enterprise JavaBeans
      2. Extensibility Features and Options
        1. Oracle Time Series
        2. Oracle inter Media and Oracle Text
        3. Oracle Spatial
      3. Using the Extensibility Framework in Oracle
    16. 14. Oracle and the Web
      1. The Internet Computing Platform
        1. The Topology of the Internet Computing Platform
        2. Internet Standards
      2. Oracle as an Internet Server
        1. Listener
        2. Java in the Server
          1. PL/SQL and Java
          2. JDBC and SQLJ: Java’s 3GL interfaces
        3. Extended Media Types
      3. XML
      4. Dynamic Services
      5. Oracle Internet Application Server
        1. iAS Architecture
        2. The Oracle HTTP Server
        3. The JDK JVM
        4. The PL/SQL Engine
        5. The Oracle JVM
        6. Product and Language Servers
        7. Oracle9i Database Cache
        8. Oracle9i Web Cache
        9. System Services
        10. Clickstream Intelligence
        11. iFS
        12. Load-Balancing and Reliability
      6. Oracle9iAS Portal
        1. Application Components
        2. How Application Components Operate
        3. Content Collections
        4. Portal Management
        5. How a Portal Page Operates
        6. Administrative Options
    17. A. What’s New in This Book for Oracle9i
      1. Chapter 1
      2. Chapter 2
      3. Chapter 3
      4. Chapter 4
      5. Chapter 5
      6. Chapter 6
      7. Chapter 7
      8. Chapter 8
      9. Chapter 9
      10. Chapter 10
      11. Chapter 11
      12. Chapter 12
      13. Chapter 13
      14. Chapter 14
    18. B. Additional Resources
      1. Web Sites
      2. Books and Oracle Documentation
        1. Chapter 1
        2. Chapter 2
        3. Chapter 3
        4. Chapter 4
        5. Chapter 5
        6. Chapter 6
        7. Chapter 7
        8. Chapter 8
        9. Chapter 9
        10. Chapter 10
        11. Chapter 11
        12. Chapter 12
        13. Chapter 13
        14. Chapter 14
    19. Index
    20. Colophon

Product information

  • Title: Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i and Oracle8, Second Edition
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: June 2001
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9780596001797