Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition

Larger Cover

Oracle Database 10g

By Rick Greenwald, Robert Stackowiak, Jonathan Stern

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Released: February 2004

Pages: 400

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.

Chapter 1 Introducing Oracle
1. The Evolution of the Relational Database
2. The Oracle Family
3. Summary of Oracle Features
4. Database Application Development Features
5. Database Connection Features
6. Distributed Database Features
7. Data Movement Features
8. Performance Features
9. Database Management Features
10. Oracle Developer Suite
11. Oracle Lite
Chapter 2 Oracle Architecture
1. Instances and Databases
2. The Components of a Database
3. The Components of an Instance
4. The Data Dictionary
Chapter 3 Installing and Running Oracle
1. Installing Oracle
2. Creating a Database
3. Configuring Oracle Net
4. Starting Up the Database
5. Shutting Down the Database
6. Accessing a Database
7. Oracle at Work
Chapter 4 Data Structures
1. Datatypes
2. Basic Data Structures
3. Additional Data Structures
4. Data Design
5. Constraints
6. Triggers
7. Query Optimization
8. Understanding the Execution Plan
9. SQL Tuning Advisor
10. Data Dictionary Tables
Chapter 5 Managing Oracle
1. Management and Enterprise Manager
2. Oracle Database 10g Self-Tuning and Management
3. Implementing Security
4. Fragmentation and Reorganization
5. Backup and Recovery
6. Working with Oracle Support
Chapter 6 Oracle Performance
1. Performance Tuning Basics
2. Oracle and Disk I/O Resources
3. Oracle and Parallelism
4. Oracle and Memory Resources
5. Oracle and CPU Resources
6. Database Resource Manager
7. Monitoring
8. Real Application Clusters and Performance
Chapter 7 Multiuser Concurrency
1. Basics of Concurrent Access
2. Oracle and Concurrent User Access
3. Oracle's Isolation Levels
4. Oracle Concurrency Features
5. How Oracle Handles Locking
6. Concurrent Access and Performance
7. Workspaces
Chapter 8 Oracle and Transaction Processing
1. OLTP Basics
2. Oracle's OLTP Heritage
3. Architectures for OLTP
4. Oracle Features for OLTP
5. High Availability
6. Oracle Advanced Queuing and Streams
7. Object Technologies and Distributed Components
Chapter 9 Oracle and Data Warehousing
1. Business Intelligence Basics
2. Data Warehouse Design
3. Query Optimization
4. Analytics, OLAP, and Data Mining in the Database
5. Managing the Data Warehouse
6. Other Data Warehouse Software
7. The Metadata Challenge
8. Best Practices
Chapter 10 Oracle and High Availability
1. What Is High Availability?
2. System Crashes
3. Protecting Against System Crashes
4. Recovering from Disasters
5. Complete Site Failure
6. Data Redundancy Solutions
Chapter 11 Oracle and Hardware Architecture
1. System Basics
2. Uniprocessor Systems
3. Symmetric Multiprocessing Systems
4. Clusters
5. Massively Parallel Processing Systems
6. Non-Uniform Memory Access Systems
7. Grid Computing
8. Disk Technology
9. Which Platform Deployment Solution?
Chapter 12 Distributed Databases and Distributed Data
1. Accessing Multiple Databases as a Single Entity
2. Two-Phase Commits
3. Moving Data Between Distributed Systems
4. Advanced Queuing
5. Oracle Streams
Chapter 13 Extending Oracle Datatypes
1. Object-Oriented Development
2. Extensibility Features and Options
3. Using the Extensibility Framework in Oracle
Chapter 14 Network Deployment Models
1. The Impact of the Internet
2. The Oracle Database and the Internet
3. Oracle Application Server
4. Grid Computing

Appendix A What's New in This Book for Oracle Database10g
1. Chapter 1, Introducing Oracle
2. Chapter 2, Oracle Architecture
3. Chapter 3, Installing and Running Oracle
4. Chapter 4, Data Structures
5. Chapter 5, Managing Oracle
6. Chapter 6, Oracle Performance
7. Chapter 7, Multiuser Concurrency
8. Chapter 8, Oracle and Transaction Processing
9. Chapter 9, Oracle and Data Warehousing
10. Chapter 10, Oracle and High Availability
11. Chapter 11, Oracle and Hardware Architecture
12. Chapter 12, Distributed Databases and Distributed Data
13. Chapter 13, Extending Oracle Datatypes
14. Chapter 14, Network Deployment Models
Appendix B Additional Resources
1. Web Sites
2. Books and Oracle Documentation
Colophon

Title:

Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition

By:

Rick Greenwald, Robert Stackowiak, Jonathan Stern

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print
Ebook

Print:

February 2004

Ebook:

February 2009

Pages:

400

Print ISBN:

978-0-596-00585-6

| ISBN 10:

0-596-00585-7

Ebook ISBN:

978-0-596-10416-0

| ISBN 10:

0-596-10416-2

Rick Greenwald

has been active in the world of computer software for nearly two decades, including stints with Data General, Cognos, and Gupta. He is currently an analyst with Oracle Corporation. He has been a principal author of ten books and countless articles on a variety of technical topics, and has spoken at conferences and training sessions across six continents. In addition to Oracle in a Nutshell, Rick's books include Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i, and Oracle8 (principal author with Robert Stackowiak and Jonathan Stern, O'Reilly & Associates, 2001), Oracle Power Objects Developer's Guide (principal author with Kasu Sista and Richard Finklestein, Oracle Press, 1995); Mastering Oracle Power Objects (principal author with Robert Hoskins, O'Reilly & Associates, 1996); Using Oracle Web Server (principal author with many others, Que Publishing, 1997); The Oracle WebDB Bible (principal author with Jim Milbery, IDG Books Worldwide, 1999); and Administering Exchange Server (principal author with Walter Glenn, Microsoft Press, 1999).

View Rick Greenwald's full profile page.
Robert Stackowiak

Oracle Power Objects Developer's Guide, principal author with Kasu Sista and Richard Finklestein (Oracle Press, 1995) Mastering Oracle Power Objects, principal author with Robert Hoskins (O'Reilly & Associates, 1996) Special Edition: Using Oracle Web Server, principal author with many others (Que Publishing, 1997) The Oracle WebDB Bible, principal author with Jim Milbery (IDG Books Worldwide, 1999) Administering Exchange Server, principal author with Walter Glenn (1999) Robert Stackowiak has worked for 20 years in IT industry related roles that have included software development, management of software development, systems engineering, sales and sales consulting, and business development. He currently is recognized worldwide as a field sales expert in data warehousing at Oracle, and previously was well recognized for his work at IBM's RISC System/6000 Division, Harris Computer Systems, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Bob has spoken at numerous computer related conferences and has conducted briefings with companies based around the world. His papers regarding data warehousing and computer and software technology have appeared in publications such as The Data Warehousing Institute's Journal of Data Warehousing, Informix Tech Notes, and AIXcellence Magazine.

View Robert Stackowiak's full profile page.
Jonathan Stern

Jonathan Stern has over 11 years of IT experience, including senior positions in consulting, systems architecture, and technical sales. He has in-depth experience with the Oracle RDBMS across all major open systems hardware and operating systems, covering tuning, scaling and parallelism, Parallel Server, high availability, data warehousing, OLTP, object-relational databases, N-tier architectures, and emerging trends such as Java and CORBA. He is the Central USA Technical Team Leader at Ariba, Inc., the leading vendor of electronic commerce solutions for strategic procurement. Previously, he led a team of highly experienced database specialists at Oracle Corporation providing technical depth and strategic assistance to Oracle's largest customers in the North Central USA. Jonathan has authored papers and presented at internal and external conferences on topics such as scaling with Oracle's dynamic parallelism and the role of reorganizing segments in an Oracle database.

View Jonathan Stern's full profile page.

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animals on the cover of Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 10g are cicadas. There are about 1,500 species of cicada. In general, cicadas are large insects with long thin wings that are perched above an inch-long abdomen. Their heads are also large and contain three eyes and a piercing and sucking mechanism with which to extrude sap from trees. Cicadas are known for their characteristic shrill buzz, which is actually the male?s mating song, one of the loudest known insect noises.

Cicadas emerge from the ground in the spring or summer, molt, then shed their skin in the form of a shell. They stay near trees and plants, where they live for 4 to 6 weeks with the sole purpose of mating. The adult insects then die, and their young hatch and burrow into the ground. They attach to tree roots and feed off the sap for 4 to 17 years, after which time they emerge and continue the mating cycle. Cicadas have one of the longest life spans of any insect; the most common species is the periodical cicada, which lives underground for 13 to 17 years. Reg Aubry was the production editor and proofreader for Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 10g. Genevieve d'Entremont, Marlowe Shaeffer, and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. John Bickelhaupt wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is an original 19th-century engraving from Cuvier's Animals. The cover layout was produced by Emma Colby with QuarkXPress 4.1 using the ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Julie Hawks to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read, using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Nicole Arigo.

Description

Table of Contents

Product Details

About the Author

Colophon

Recommended for You

Chapter 1 Introducing Oracle

The Evolution of the Relational Database

The Oracle Family

Summary of Oracle Features

Database Application Development Features

Database Connection Features

Distributed Database Features

Data Movement Features

Performance Features

Database Management Features

Oracle Developer Suite

Oracle Lite

Chapter 2 Oracle Architecture

Instances and Databases

The Components of a Database

The Components of an Instance

The Data Dictionary

Chapter 3 Installing and Running Oracle

Installing Oracle

Creating a Database

Configuring Oracle Net

Starting Up the Database

Shutting Down the Database

Accessing a Database

Oracle at Work

Chapter 4 Data Structures

Datatypes

Basic Data Structures

Additional Data Structures

Data Design

Constraints

Triggers

Query Optimization

Understanding the Execution Plan

SQL Tuning Advisor

Data Dictionary Tables

Chapter 5 Managing Oracle

Management and Enterprise Manager

Oracle Database 10g Self-Tuning and Management

Implementing Security

Fragmentation and Reorganization

Backup and Recovery

Working with Oracle Support

Chapter 6 Oracle Performance

Performance Tuning Basics

Oracle and Disk I/O Resources

Oracle and Parallelism

Oracle and Memory Resources

Oracle and CPU Resources

Database Resource Manager

Monitoring

Real Application Clusters and Performance

Chapter 7 Multiuser Concurrency

Basics of Concurrent Access

Oracle and Concurrent User Access

Oracle's Isolation Levels

Oracle Concurrency Features

How Oracle Handles Locking

Concurrent Access and Performance

Workspaces

Chapter 8 Oracle and Transaction Processing

OLTP Basics

Oracle's OLTP Heritage

Architectures for OLTP

Oracle Features for OLTP

High Availability

Oracle Advanced Queuing and Streams

Object Technologies and Distributed Components

Chapter 9 Oracle and Data Warehousing

Business Intelligence Basics

Data Warehouse Design

Query Optimization

Analytics, OLAP, and Data Mining in the Database

Managing the Data Warehouse

Other Data Warehouse Software

The Metadata Challenge

Best Practices

Chapter 10 Oracle and High Availability

What Is High Availability?

System Crashes