Oracle Essentials, 4th Edition

Book description

Oracle is an enormous system, with myriad technologies, options, and releases. Most users--even experienced developers and database administrators--find it difficult to get a handle on the full scope of the Oracle database. And, as each new Oracle version is released, users find themselves under increasing pressure to learn about a whole range of new technologies. The latest challenge is Oracle Database 11g.

This book distills an enormous amount of information about Oracle into a compact, easy-to-read volume filled with focused text, illustrations, and helpful hints. It contains chapters on:

  • Oracle products, options, data structures, and overall architecture for Oracle Database 11g, as well as earlier releases (Oracle Database 10g, Oracle9i, and Oracle8i)


  • Installing, running, managing, monitoring, networking, and tuning Oracle, including Enterprise Manager (EM) and Oracle's self-tuning and management capabilities; and using Oracle security, auditing, and compliance (a new chapter in this edition)


  • Multiuser concurrency, data warehouses, distributed databases, online transaction processing (OLTP), high availability, and hardware architectures (e.g., SMP, clusters, NUMA, and grid computing)


  • Features beyond the Oracle database: Oracle Application Express, Fusion Middleware (including Oracle Application Server), and database SOA support as a Web services provider
The latest Oracle Database 11g features: query result set caching, Automatic Memory Management, the Real Application Testing, Advanced Compression, Total Recall, and Active Data Guard Option Options, changes to the OLAP Option (transparently accessed and managed as materialized views), the Flashback transaction command, transparent data encryption, the Support Workbench (and diagnosability infrastructure), and partitioning enhancements (including interval and new composite types)

For new Oracle users, DBAs, developers, and managers, Oracle Essentials provides an invaluable, all-in-one introduction to the full range of Oracle features and technologies, including the just-released Oracle Database 11g features. But even if you already have a library full of Oracle documentation, you'll find that this compact book is the one you turn to, again and again, as your one-stop, truly essential reference.

"Oracle Essentials gives a clear explanation of the key database concepts and architecture underlying the Oracle database. It's a great reference for anyone doing development or management of Oracle databases."

--Andrew Mendelsohn, Senior Vice President, Database Server Technologies, Oracle Corporation

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Table of contents

  1. Dedication
  2. Preface
    1. Goals of This Book
    2. Audience for This Book
    3. About the Fourth Edition (Oracle Database 11g)
    4. Structure of This Book
    5. Conventions Used in This Book
    6. How to Contact Us
    7. Using Code Examples
    8. Safari® Books Online
    9. Acknowledgments
  3. 1. Introducing Oracle
    1. The Evolution of the Relational Database
      1. Relational Basics
      2. How Oracle Grew
    2. The Oracle Database Family
    3. Summary of Oracle Database Features
    4. Database Application Development Features
      1. Database Programming
        1. SQL
        2. PL/SQL
        3. Java
        4. Oracle and web services
        5. Large objects
        6. Object-oriented programming
        7. Third-generation languages (3GLs)
        8. Database drivers
        9. The Oracle Call Interface
        10. National Language Support
      2. Database Extensibility
        1. Oracle Multimedia
        2. Oracle content management
        3. Oracle search capabilities
        4. Oracle Spatial Option
        5. XML DB
    5. Database Connection Features
      1. Database Networking
        1. Oracle Net
        2. Oracle Internet Directory
        3. Oracle Connection Manager
      2. Oracle Application Server
    6. Distributed Database Features
      1. Distributed Queries and Transactions
      2. Heterogeneous Services
    7. Data Movement Features
      1. Transportable Tablespaces
      2. Advanced Queuing and Oracle Streams
      3. Extraction, Transformation, and Loading
    8. Database Performance Features
      1. Database Parallelization
      2. Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
        1. Bitmap indexes
        2. Star query optimization
        3. Materialized views
        4. Analytic functions
        5. OLAP Option
        6. Data Mining Option
        7. Business intelligence tools
    9. Database Management Features
      1. Oracle Enterprise Manager
      2. Information Lifecycle Management and ILM Assistant
      3. Backup and Recovery
        1. Recovery Manager
        2. Incremental backup and recovery
        3. Oracle Secure Backup
      4. Database Availability
        1. Partitioning option
        2. Data Guard
        3. Fail Safe
        4. Oracle Real Application Clusters
        5. Data Guard and RAC
        6. Automated Storage Management
      5. Real Application Testing Option
    10. Database Security Features
      1. Advanced Security Option
      2. Label Security Option
      3. Database Vault Option
      4. Audit Vault Server
    11. Oracle Development Tools
      1. Oracle JDeveloper
      2. Oracle SQL Developer
      3. Oracle Forms Developer
      4. Oracle Reports Developer
      5. Oracle Designer
      6. Oracle Discoverer Administration Edition
      7. Oracle Portal
    12. Embedded Databases
      1. Oracle TimesTen
      2. Oracle Berkeley DB
      3. Oracle Lite
  4. 2. Oracle Architecture
    1. Databases and Instances
      1. Oracle Database Structure
        1. Tablespaces
        2. Files of a database
      2. Database Initialization
    2. Deploying Physical Components
      1. Control Files
      2. Datafiles
        1. Datafile structure
        2. Extents and segments
      3. 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. Instance Memory and Processes
      1. Memory Structures for an Instance
        1. Database buffer cache
        2. Shared pool
        3. Redo log buffer
        4. Other pools in the SGA
        5. Automatic PGA management
      2. Background Processes for an Instance
    4. The Data Dictionary
  5. 3. Installing and Running Oracle
    1. Installing Oracle
      1. Optimal Flexible Architecture
      2. Supporting Multiple Oracle Versions on a Machine
      3. Upgrading an Oracle Database
    2. Creating a Database
      1. Planning the Database
      2. The Value of Estimating
      3. Tools for Creating Databases
    3. Configuring Oracle Net
      1. Resolving Oracle Net Service Names
      2. Oracle Net Manager
      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
        1. Session memory for shared server processes versus dedicated server processes
        2. Data dictionary information about the shared server
    7. Oracle at Work
      1. Oracle and Transactions
      2. Flashback
      3. A Transaction, Step by Step
  6. 4. Oracle 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
        5. Invisible indexes
      4. Partitioning
    3. Additional Data Structures
      1. Sequences
      2. Synonyms
      3. Clusters
      4. Hash Clusters
    4. Extended Logic for Data
      1. Rules Manager
      2. The Expression Filter
    5. Data Design
    6. Constraints
    7. Triggers
    8. Query Optimization
      1. Rule-Based Optimization
      2. Cost-Based Optimization
        1. How statistics are used
        2. Influencing the cost-based optimizer
      3. Specifying an Optimizer Mode
        1. Newer database releases and the cost-based optimizer
      4. Saving the Optimization
      5. Comparing Optimizations
      6. Performance and Optimization
    9. Understanding the Execution Plan
    10. SQL Advisors
    11. Data Dictionary Tables
  7. 5. Managing Oracle
    1. Manageability Features
      1. Database Advisors
      2. Automatic Storage Management
    2. Oracle Enterprise Manager
      1. Enterprise Manager Architecture
      2. Oracle Enterprise Manager Consoles
      3. EM2Go
    3. Fragmentation and Reorganization
      1. Resolving Fragmentation
    4. Backup and Recovery
      1. Types of Backup and Recovery Options
      2. Oracle Secure Backup
      3. Information Lifecycle Management
    5. Working with Oracle Support
      1. Reporting Problems
      2. Automated Patching
  8. 6. Oracle Security, Auditing, and Compliance
    1. Security
      1. Usernames, Privileges, Groups, and Roles
      2. Identity Management
      3. Security Privileges
      4. Special Roles: DBA, SYSDBA, and SYSOPER
      5. Policies
      6. Restricting Data Access
        1. View-based security
        2. Fine-grained access control
      7. Label Security Option
      8. Security and Application Roles and Privileges
      9. Distributed Database and Multitier Security
        1. Distributed security management
        2. Multitier security
      10. Advanced Security Option
      11. Encryption
      12. Secure Backup
    2. Auditing
    3. Compliance
      1. Oracle Database Vault Option
      2. Oracle Audit Vault Server
      3. Flashback Data Archive
  9. 7. Oracle Performance
    1. Performance Tuning Basics
      1. Defining Performance and Performance Problems
      2. Oracle Server Performance
      3. AWR, ADDM, and Enterprise Manager
      4. Machine Resource Usage
      5. When All Else Fails
      6. A Final Note on Performance Basics
    2. Oracle and Disk I/O Resources
      1. I/O Planning Principles for an Oracle Database
      2. Using RAID Disk Array Technology
        1. Volume managers
        2. Dedicated storage subsystems
        3. Combined host-based and I/O subsystem volume management
      3. Flexibility, Manageability, and Disk Arrays
      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?
        1. Degree of parallelism
        2. Self-tuning adaptive parallelism
      4. 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. Automatic sizing for the SGA
        2. The database buffer cache
        3. The shared pool
        4. The redo log buffer
        5. Query results caching
      2. How Oracle Uses the Program Global Area
        1. Memory for SQL statements
        2. Memory for sorting within the PGA
      3. TimesTen
    5. Oracle and CPU Resources
    6. Database Resource Manager
  10. 8. Oracle 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
      1. Workspace Implementation
      2. Workspace Operations
      3. Workspace Enhancements
  11. 9. 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 Business Intelligence
    2. Oracle’s OLTP Heritage
    3. Architectures for OLTP
      1. Traditional Two-Tier Client/Server
      2. Stored Procedures
      3. Three-Tier Systems
      4. Application Servers and Web Servers
      5. The Grid
    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 Streams and Advanced Queuing
      1. Streams for System Interfaces
      2. Oracle and Publish-Subscribe Technology
    7. Object Technologies and Distributed Components
  12. 10. Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
    1. Business Intelligence Basics
      1. The Evolution of Business Intelligence
      2. A Topology for Business Intelligence
      3. Data Marts
      4. Operational Data Store and Enterprise Warehouse
      5. OLTP Systems and Business Intelligence
    2. Data Warehouse Design
    3. Query Optimization
      1. Bitmap Indexes and Parallelism
      2. Summary Tables
      3. Materialized Views
    4. Analytics, OLAP, and Data Mining in the Database
      1. Analytic and Statistical Functions
      2. MODEL Clause in SELECT
      3. OLAP and Data Mining Capabilities
      4. Database Extensibility and the Data Warehouse
        1. Multimedia
        2. Spatial Option
        3. XML
    5. Managing the Data Warehouse
    6. Other Software for the Data Warehouse
      1. Extraction, Transformation, and Loading
      2. Reporting and Ad Hoc Query Tools
      3. OLAP and OLAP Applications Building
      4. Data Mining
      5. Business Intelligence Applications
    7. The Metadata Challenge
    8. Best Practices
      1. Common Misconceptions
      2. Effective Strategy
  13. 11. 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 Failure
      1. What Is Instance Recovery?
      2. Phases of Instance Recovery
        1. Rollforward
        2. Fast-start fault recovery and bounded recovery time
        3. Rollback improvements
    3. Protecting Against System Failure
      1. Component Redundancy
        1. Disk redundancy
      2. Automatic Storage Management
      3. Simple Hardware Failover
        1. Outage duration for hardware failover
        2. Failover and operating system platform
      4. Real Application Clusters
        1. Real Application Clusters and hardware failover
        2. Node failure and Real Application Clusters
        3. Parallel Fail Safe/RACGuard
      5. Oracle Transparent Application Failover
        1. How TAF works
        2. TAF and various Oracle configurations
    4. Recovering from Failures
      1. Developing a Backup-and-Recovery Strategy
      2. Taking Oracle Backups
      3. Using Backups to Recover
      4. Recovery Manager
      5. Read-Only Tablespaces
      6. Point-in-Time Recovery
      7. Flashback
    5. Complete Site Failure
      1. Oracle Data Guard: Standby Database for Redundancy
        1. Logical standby database
        2. Oracle 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
    7. Rolling Upgrades
  14. 12. Oracle and Hardware Architecture
    1. System Basics
    2. Uniprocessor Systems
    3. Symmetric Multiprocessing Systems
    4. Clusters
    5. Non-Uniform Memory Access Systems
    6. Grid Computing
    7. Disk and Storage Technology
      1. Disk Deployment Strategies
    8. Which Platform Deployment Solution?
      1. Platform Comparison
      2. Approaches to Choosing Platforms
  15. 13. Oracle 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
      3. Two-Phase Commits
      4. Transaction Processing Monitors
    2. Moving Data Between Distributed Systems
      1. Advanced Replication
        1. Managing Advanced Replication
      2. Advanced Queuing
        1. Queue creation and management
        2. Publish-and-subscribe capabilities
      3. Oracle Streams
      4. Streams and Grid Computing
      5. Transportable Tablespaces
  16. 14. Oracle Extended Datatypes
    1. Object-Oriented Development
      1. Object-Relational Features
        1. Objects in Oracle
        2. Other extensibility features
      2. Java’s Role and Web Services
      3. Enterprise JavaBeans
    2. Extensibility Features and Options
      1. Oracle Multimedia and Oracle Text
      2. Oracle Content Management
      3. Oracle Ultra Search
      4. Oracle Spatial Option
    3. Using the Extensibility Framework in Oracle
  17. 15. Beyond the Oracle Database
    1. Application Express
    2. Oracle Fusion Middleware
      1. Oracle Application Server Editions
      2. Oracle Application Server Installation
      3. Oracle Application Server Components
        1. HTTP Server
        2. Containers for J2EE (OC4J)
        3. TopLink
        4. Development tools
        5. Development servers
        6. Portal
        7. Wireless
        8. Security
        9. Business intelligence
        10. Integration
      4. Oracle Application Server System Services
        1. Management
        2. Caching
        3. Clustering and load balancing
        4. RFID handling in Oracle Sensor Edge Server
    3. Oracle SOA Suite
      1. Oracle BPEL Process Manager
      2. Business Activity Monitoring
      3. Business Rules
      4. Enterprise Service Bus
      5. Web Services Manager
      6. Oracle JDeveloper
      7. Adapters
      8. Oracle Service Registry
  18. A. What’s New in This Book for Oracle Database 11g
    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 Security, Auditing, and Compliance
    7. Chapter 7: Oracle Performance
    8. Chapter 8: Oracle Multiuser Concurrency
    9. Chapter 9: Oracle and Transaction Processing
    10. Chapter 10: Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
    11. Chapter 11: Oracle and High Availability
    12. Chapter 12: Oracle and Hardware Architecture
    13. Chapter 13: Oracle Distributed Databases and Distributed Data
    14. Chapter 14: Oracle Extended Datatypes
    15. Chapter 15: Beyond the Oracle Database
  19. B. Additional Resources
    1. Web Sites
    2. Books and Oracle Documentation
      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 Security, Auditing, and Compliance
      7. Chapter 7: Oracle Performance
      8. Chapter 8: Oracle Multiuser Concurrency
      9. Chapter 9: Oracle and Transaction Processing
      10. Chapter 10: Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
      11. Chapter 11: Oracle and High Availability
      12. Chapter 12: Oracle and Hardware Architecture
      13. Chapter 13: Oracle Distributed Databases and Distributed Data
      14. Chapter 14: Oracle Extended Datatypes
      15. Chapter 15: Beyond the Oracle Database
  20. Index
  21. About the Authors
  22. Colophon
  23. Copyright

Product information

  • Title: Oracle Essentials, 4th Edition
  • Author(s): Rick Greenwald, Robert Stackowiak, Jonathan Stern
  • Release date: November 2007
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9780596514549