Oracle8 Design Tips

Dave Ensor is manager of Worldwide Solutions, PATROL R&D, with BMC Software where his roles are to assist customers in their use of both BMC's PATROL product and the Oracle Server, and to feed the results of his field work back into product planning. He has more than 30 years of IT experience and has been involved with the design and performance issues surrounding Oracle since 1987. For many years he led Oracle Worldwide's Performance Studies Group based in the UK, which provided consultancy support to both customer and internal projects with critical performance requirements. Dave is well known as a speaker on performance management and design; he presents his papers at user conferences and writes and delivers one-day seminars. He lives in the UK just outside London, but spends much of the year traveling to user sites and meetings. In his spare time he also travels, but in this case without his laptop and with his wife. He can be reached at dave_ensor@compuserve.com. Ian Stevenson is a freelance consultant specializing in database design and development. He has worked with database technology for 19 years, starting with early hierarchical models. He worked for Oracle (UK) for two years in post-sales support and Human Resources Development. This is where he formed his friendship with Dave Ensor. Ian has a first-class honors degree in mathematics from the University of Southampton and is a member of the British Computer Society. He is married to Brenda and has two children, Todd and Tara. He is a fanatic supporter of the Southampton football club. He can be contacted via ian@westmail.demon.co.uk.

Preface. 1. What's New in Oracle8? Oracle's Marketing Message Oracle8 Features Scalability Reliability Security More Manageable Data More Copies of Data More Ways to Represent Data Faster Access to Data Towards Object Orientation The Type System Object Views. 2. Methodologies for Oracle8 Oracle8 and Traditional Methods Oracle8 and OOAD Component-Based Development Bottom-Up or Top-Down Development. 3. Miscellaneous Oracle8 Enhancements INSTEAD OF Triggers How INSTEAD OF Triggers Work A Trigger Example The Role of INSTEAD OF Triggers PL/SQL Improvements 3GL Callouts Restrictions on 3GL Callouts Example of a 3GL Callout Deferred Constraint Checking ENFORCE Option Safeguarding Data DB_VERIFY Utility Recovery Manager Utility Using the Recovery Catalog Recovery Manager features. 4. Oracle8's "Big" Features What Is a Really Big Database? Partitioned Objects Partitioned Tables Declarative partitioning Selecting a partition strategy Date-based partitioning Using partitions explicitly Determining the partition key Partitioned Indexes Unusable index partitions Locally prefixed partitions Locally non-prefixed partitions Global partitions Index-Only Tables Reversed Key Indexes Unstructured Data and LOBs Long and Unstructured Data in Oracle7 Introducing LOBs Design Considerations BFILE or LOB Recoverability and consistency Multiple LOBs Using LOBs in cartridges Primary key indexes Piecewise operations Supporting Large Populations of Users Connection Sharing User Identification Bitmap Indexes Cooperative Indexing NOLOGGING Option APPEND Hint Direct-Path Inserts. 5. Objects Introducing ORDBMS Pick Your Analogy Carefully Arguments For and Against Decomposition The Role of the LOB Interfaces Client-side Cache The Type System Reference Pointers (REFs) Abstract Data Types (ADTs) Methods MAP function ORDER function Collections VARRAYs Nested Tables Which Collection Type? Object Views Looking Ahead. 6. Tool Support for Oracle8 Sedona Developer/2000 Designer/2000 Object Designer SQL*Plus PL/SQL C, C++, and OCI Approaches to Extracting the Data Reasons to Use OCI Java Other Tools Conclusion.