Oracle Essentials, 5th Edition

Chapter 15. Oracle and the Cloud

In the first four editions of this book, this final chapter was something of a catch-all. We spent the previous 14 chapters outlining and hopefully illuminating the principles and processes that worked together to produce the Oracle database. This chapter would cover a number of things that did not fit into the overall structure of the book, but were still important enough that most Oracle practitioners would want and need to understand them.

With this edition, we can finally pull most of these separate parts together as we describe the Oracle database in the cloud. This chapter will cover some important, and frequently misunderstood, basics about the different varieties of cloud computing, describe the various options for using the Oracle database in the cloud, and look at the Oracle Database Cloud and your options for building your own Oracle Database Cloud in more depth.

Cloud Definitions

No doubt about it, at the time of this writing, the cloud is mentioned everywhere—it’s the hottest IT-related buzzword since the realization of the Internet. But there is a curious phenomenon associated with many people’s view of the cloud—they somehow think that there is a unitary class of products and offerings that are all, more or less, comparable.

Of course, this view does not add much clarity to any consideration of the cloud; after all, what does the Apple iCloud storage have in common with http://www.Salesforce.com’s CRM solution? Before we can talk about ...