Oracle Distributed Systems

Chapter 3. Configuration and Administration

The ease with which you can administer a distributed database environment is, to a large degree, a function of how well it is configured. With proper planning and implementation, your distributed database environment can attain a very high degree of location transparency, expandability, and security regardless of how many individual database instances comprise it. These objectives are not the only goals; systems must also be:

Maintainable

The DBA has the flexibility to move databases to different machines, change ORACLE_SIDs, apply patches, relocate tables, and so on, without requiring changes to application code or changes to client configurations. The inter-operability and interdependencies of the various databases must be readily understood.

Robust

The failure of one database instance does not render others inoperable.

Concurrent

Distributed transactions meet the ACID criteria (autonomous, consistent, isolated, durable).

In this chapter, we examine the DBA’s responsibilities and concerns for providing such an environment. In Chapter 5, we consider the application designer’s point of view.

Initialization Parameters

Oracle provides a number of initialization parameters (summarized in Table 3.1) that govern various aspects of your distributed environment. These parameters are specified in the INIT.ORA file, the location of which is platform-specific. This section describes how and when you should use these parameters.

Table 3-1. Initialization ...