Oracle Concepts - Oracle on your computer Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

Oracle on your Computer

Oracle is optimized for your environment, and teams of experts make sure that Oracle takes advantage of every possible system components on your hardware including these:

1. System processors.
2. System Memory.
3. Your network.
4. Disk Storage.

Oracle uses all of these components to store your data, and to make it available to users who have a right to use the database. Each of these components can influence your Oracle database performance. Slow components can make for a slow database; fast components can make for a fast database.

Oracle is for professionals, not dilettantes and neophytes

At a high-level, Oracle is just a large computer program. When this “Oracle” program starts, and Oracle starts grabbing stuff from your computer:

* RAM memory – Oracle allocates a chunk of RAM memory, called the System Global Area, or SGA for short.

* Programs – Oracle launches about a dozen “slave” programs, called “background processes”.

* Disk – Oracle creates files on your disk drives for everything from the database transactions to the tables that you create and populate. From the moment you create a database, Oracle allocates .dbf files on your disk.

In sum, Oracle takes control over the computer, based on the “initialization parameters” that you provide. These parameters will be discussed in subsequent chapters.

Remember, even though Oracle is complex and has many components, it is still just a big computer program. Don’t get scared by big words or concepts; as you will soon see, anyone can use Oracle.

Note! This chapter will introduce a number of new terms. Because of the nature of Oracle, we will have to reference terms in this chapter that have not been completely introduced to you yet. Just hang tight; if you see a term you don’t understand, we will get to your question.

Oracle automation makes Oracle Simple

In order to make the world’s most robust and complex database easy to use for beginners, Oracle has added automation features to control the internal complexity for us.  Starting in Oracle 10g, Oracle has used artificial intelligence to automate many of the DBA tasks. 

Oracle has automated the computer hardware, performing almost all storage management, CPU and RAM management. 

Oracle also helps you tune your queries (in Structured Query Language or SQL) and has intelligent advisors.  The automated areas include automated memory management (AMM), automated storage management (ASM) and automatic database diagnostic management (ADDM).   To learn the details, we highly recommend the book “Easy Oracle Automation”, by Dr. Arun Kumar.  This is the next book in the Easy Oracle series, a great follow-up to our Oracle jumpstart.  The book is only $9.95, and you can order it by following this Google query "easy oracle automation book":

This is an excerpt from the bestselling "Easy Oracle Jumpstart" by Robert Freeman and Steve Karam (Oracle ACE and Oracle Certified Master).  It’s only $19.95 when you buy it directly from the publisher here.

If you like Oracle tuning, you may enjoy the new book "Oracle Tuning: The Definitive Reference", over 900 pages of BC's favorite tuning tips & scripts.  You can buy it direct from the publisher for 30%-off and get instant access to the code depot of Oracle tuning scripts.