Oracle Essentials

Rick Greenwald has been active in the world of computer software for over two decades, including stints with Data General, Cognos, and Gupta. He is currently Director of Product Management with Oracle Corporation, responsible for the Oracle Database Cloud. He has been a principal author of 19 books and countless articles on a variety of technical topics, and has spoken at conferences and training sessions across six continents. Rick's titles include 4 editions of Oracle Essentials (principal author with Robert Stackowiak and Jonathan Stern, O'Reilly Media, Inc), a number of books on Application Express and its predecessors, and books on data warehousing, Oracle programming and Exadata.

Robert Stackowiak has more than 25 years of experience in data warehousing and business intelligence architecture, software development, new database and systems product introduction, and technical sales and sales consulting. During the writing of this edition of Oracle Essentials, he is Vice President of Big Data and Analytics Architecture in Oracle's Enterprise Solutions Group. He has spoken on related Oracle topics at a wide variety of conferences including Gartner Group's BI Summit, TDWI, ComputerWorld's BI & Analytics Perspectives, Oracle OpenWorld, and numerous IOUG events. Among the other books he co-authored are the following: Achieving Extreme Performance with Oracle Exadata (McGraw-Hill Oracle Press), Professional Oracle Programming (WROX), and Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Solutions (Wiley). He can be followed on Twitter @rstackow

Jonathan Stern used more than 13 years of experience in contributing to the original edition of this book. His background included senior positions in consulting, systems architecture, and technical sales at Oracle and other companies. He demonstrated in-depth knowledge of the Oracle Database across major open systems hardware and operating systems. His expertise included Database tuning, scaling, parallelism, clustering, and high availability for transaction processing systems and data warehousing implementations. Some of the fundamentals of Oracle that he originally contributed to the first edition live on in this edition of Oracle Essentials though much has changed in the Oracle Database since Jonathan passed on. Each edition of this book is a reminder of the talent and attention to detail that he possessed.

Chapter 1 Introducing Oracle
The Evolution of the Relational Database
The Oracle Database Family
Summary of Oracle Database Features
Database Application Development Features
Database Connection Features
The Role of Oracle Fusion Middleware
Distributed Database Features
Data Movement Features
Database Performance Features
Managing the Oracle Database
Database Security Features
Oracle Database Development Tools
Other Oracle Databases
Chapter 2 Oracle Architecture
Databases and Instances
Deploying Physical Components
Instance Memory and Processes
Configuration, Engineered Systems, and the Cloud
The Data Dictionary
Chapter 3 Installing and Running Oracle
Installing Oracle
Creating a Database
Oracle Net Services and Oracle Net
Starting Up the Database
Shutting Down the Database
Accessing a Database
Oracle in the Cloud
Oracle at Work
Chapter 4 Oracle Data Structures
Datatypes
Basic Data Structures
Additional Data Structures
Extended Logic for Data
Data Design
Constraints
Triggers
Query Optimization
SQL Translation
Understanding the Execution Plan
SQL Advisors
Data Dictionary Tables
Chapter 5 Managing Oracle
Manageability Features
Oracle Enterprise Manager
Backup and Recovery
Working with Oracle Support
Chapter 6 Oracle Security, Auditing, and Compliance
Security
Auditing
Compliance
Chapter 7 Oracle Performance
Oracle and Resource Usage
Oracle and Parallelism
Oracle and Memory Resources
Oracle and CPU Resources
Performance Tuning Basics
Chapter 8 Oracle 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 9 Oracle and Transaction Processing
OLTP Basics
Oracle’s OLTP Heritage
Architectures for OLTP
Oracle Features for OLTP
High Availability
Chapter 10 Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
Data Warehousing Basics
Data Warehouse Design
Query Optimization
Dimensional Data and Hierarchies in the Database
Analytics and Statistics in the Database
Other Datatypes and Big Data
Loading Data into the Data Warehouse
Managing the Data Warehouse
Business Intelligence Tools
The Metadata Challenge
Putting It All Together
Chapter 11 Oracle and High Availability
What Is High Availability?
The System Stack and Availability
Protecting Against System Failure
Site and Computer Server Failover
Recovering from Failures and Data Corruption
Planned Downtime
Chapter 12 Oracle and Hardware Architecture
System Basics
Oracle’s Engineered Systems
Choosing and Defining the Right Platform
Chapter 13 Oracle Distributed Databases and Distributed Data
Accessing Distributed Databases
Replication and Data Transport
Chapter 14 Oracle Extended Datatypes
Object-Oriented Development
Extensibility Features and Options
The Extensibility Architecture Framework
Chapter 15 Oracle and the Cloud
Cloud Definitions
Oracle Database in the Cloud
Oracle Database Cloud Service
Implementing Provider Clouds

Appendix What’s New in This Book for Oracle Database 12c
Chapter 1: Introducing Oracle
Chapter 2: Oracle Architecture
Chapter 3: Installing and Running Oracle
Chapter 4: Data Structures
Chapter 5: Managing Oracle
Chapter 6: Oracle Security, Auditing, and Compliance
Chapter 7: Oracle Performance
Chapter 8: Oracle Multiuser Concurrency
Chapter 9: Oracle and Transaction Processing
Chapter 10: Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
Chapter 11: Oracle and High Availability
Chapter 12: Oracle and Hardware Architecture
Chapter 13: Oracle Distributed Databases and Distributed Data
Chapter 14: Oracle Extended Datatypes
Chapter 15: Oracle and the Cloud
Appendix Additional Resources
Web Sites
Books and Oracle Documentation
Colophon