1.1. The Oracle Product Family

Oracle Corporation is generally thought of as a database company—and for good reason. Oracle has been a leader in the development of reliable, scalable, and recoverable database technologies for more than 25 years. With the release of Oracle 10g, Oracle has further enhanced its reputation as an industry leader by producing a feature-rich, yet easy-to-manage database that can handle data from the busiest transactional systems to the largest data warehouses. However, Oracle Corporation also produces many other products that support a variety of datarelated business activities. Currently, Oracle's product family consists of the following products and services:

• Oracle Database 10g

• Oracle Application Server 10g

• Oracle Developer Suite

• Oracle Applications 11i

• Oracle Collaboration Suite

• Oracle Services

Each of these products or services is described in detail in the following sections.

1.1.1. Oracle 10g

Oracle 10g was released as version 10.1.0.2 in spring 2004. This release of Oracle's flagship database product introduces many new features, but the three primary thrusts are ease of management, enhanced scalability, and improved performance management.

The ease of management features include the automatic management of disk storage allocated to the database, proactive monitoring and self-tuning of the database's memory structures, preconfigured database alerts, and enhanced, web-based tools for monitoring and managing the entire Oracle architecture.

Scalability and performance improvements are largely based on Oracle's grid computing model. Grid computing is intended to allow businesses to move away from the idea of many individual servers, each of which is dedicated to a small number of applications. When configured in this manner, applications often either do not fully utilize the server's available hardware resources such as memory, CPU, and disk or fall short of these resources during peak usage. By comparison, databases running under Oracle's grid computing model can be spread across as few or as many servers as needed so as to make the most efficient use of each of the available hardware resources at all times. At the same time, Oracle 10g 's automated performance monitoring and tuning mechanisms dynamically adjust the database's allocation of these resources to improve performance.

There are five editions of Oracle 10g:

• Enterprise

• Standard

• Standard Edition One

• Personal

• Lite

Table 1.1 compares these versions.

1.1.2. Oracle Application Server 10g

Oracle's Application Server 10g is used to deploy web-based applications that, like the database, must be highly reliable and scalable to thousands of users. Like the database, Oracle Application Server 10g is also available in a number of versions, but all versions include full Java functionality and Oracle's HTTP server, with additional components such as portals, forms and reports servers, single sign-on capabilities, and wireless connectivity also available.

1.1.3. Oracle Developer Suite

Oracle's Developer Suite consists of several products that can be used to design, develop, and distribute web-based applications. These tools include the following:

• Oracle Designer for gathering business requirements and designing applications

• Oracle JDeveloper for creating Java-based applications

• Oracle Forms and Reports Developer for creating and deploying custom forms and reports

• Oracle Discoverer for developing and distributing ad hoc reporting capabilities against application data

• Oracle Warehouse Builder for designing and deploying data marts and warehouses.

Each of these tools is designed to integrate seamlessly with the Oracle database and application server products to provide a robust application development environment.

1.1.4. Oracle Applications 11i

Oracle's database, application server, and developer products make up the core infrastructure of the E-Business Suite of products collectively called Oracle Applications 11i. Oracle Applications 11i is composed of a number of modules that are used to manage the financial, personnel, manufacturing, order management, sales, service, and asset data of both businesses and public sector organizations.

1.1.5. Oracle Collaboration Suite

Oracle's Collaboration Suite offers a comprehensive system that integrates all of a business's communication technologies, from e-mail, voice mail, and faxes to wireless connectivity and web conferencing. Like Oracle Applications 11i, the Collaboration Suite also uses Oracle's database and application server technologies as the core technology infrastructure. This provides a scalable and reliable platform for true enterprise-wide collaboration.

1.1.6. Oracle Services

In addition to software development, Oracle also offers a variety of technical support and consulting services. Technical support is delivered primarily through Oracle's MetaLink website and is available to all customers with current maintenance agreements. In addition to this support, Oracle Services also offers consulting services to help customers select, install, and configure the Oracle technologies that best meet their needs.

Another service offered by Oracle is education. Oracle develops and delivers instructor-led and web-based training courses for all their products. These courses are taught at Oracle University sites and Oracle Approved Education Center locations throughout the world. Oracle Education is also responsible for coordinating all of Oracle's certification programs, including the Oracle Database 10g Oracle Certified Associate (OCA) and Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) certifications for which this book helps you prepare.