Chapter 1. A Pragmatic Introduction to Oracle
In This Chapter
Getting familiar with Oracle
Implementing grid computing
Incorporating Oracle into everyday life
Oracle 11g is by far the most robust database software on the market today. It's also the leading database software used and sold all over the world. It has become an enterprise architecture standard for managing data, regardless of the data's size or complexity.
This chapter highlights the reasons to use Oracle 11g.
Introducing a New Kind of Database Management
Oracle is software that efficiently organizes data in a relational manner. Before Oracle, other database software ran on mainframes and used a hierarchical data model where data is stored in a tree-like structure as flat files — those crazy COBOL programmers!
The relational model is a concept where data is logically stored. These design elements are in the form of tables. Tables have columns, and the columns have attributes (character or number, for example). The tables are organized to store specific data. The tables relate to one another through primary keys.
For more clarity, Oracle, the company, was founded on the database software that transformed the industry into what it is today. Oracle, the company, owns many software products and applications that it has written or acquired, but the database software is still Oracle's core product.
Tip
This book focuses more on database administration rather than Oracle applications administration.
Note
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