Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i and Oracle8, Second Edition

The Oracle Family

Oracle9i Database Server describes the most recent major version of the Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) family of products that share common source code. Leveraging predecessors including the Oracle8 release that surfaced in 1997, the family includes:

• Personal Oracle, a database for single users that’s often used to develop code for implementation on other Oracle multiuser databases

• Oracle Standard Edition, which was named Workgroup Server in its first iteration as part of the Oracle7 family and is often simply referred to as Oracle Server

• Oracle Enterprise Edition, which includes additional functionality

In 1998, Oracle announced Oracle8i, which is sometimes referred to as Version 8.1 of the Oracle8 database. The "i " was added to denote added functionality supporting Internet deployment in the new version. Oracle9i followed, with Application Server available in 2000 and Database Server in 2001. The terms “Oracle,” “Oracle8,” “Oracle8i,” and “Oracle9i" may appear to be used somewhat interchangeably in this book, since Oracle9i includes all the features of previous versions. When we describe a new feature that was first made available specifically for Oracle8i or Oracle9i we’ve tried to note that fact to avoid confusion, recognizing that many of you may have old releases of Oracle. We typically use the simple term “Oracle” when describing features that are common to all these releases.

Oracle has focused development around a single source ...