Part 1
Oracle8 Server

In This Part

•  Oracle8

•  Oracle Database Architecture

•  Oracle8 Network Computing

•  Oracle8 Servers and Options

Chapter 1
Oracle8

by Joe Greene

In This Chapter

•  The Latest Oracle

•  Major Improvements

•  The Oracle8 Product Family

•  Fitting Oracle8 into an Application Environment

When Oracle changes the first number in its product designations, it signifies a major change in the functionality of that product. Oracle has produced the 7.x family of database management system products for several years now. Each of the incremental revisions (7.0, 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3) has shown a significant increase in the functionality of the product. For example, parallel query processing started with version 7.1 of the product, and version 7.3 started to introduce some products, such as a video server, that are part of Oracle’s vision of the universal server.

With that in mind, there must be some significant changes in the Oracle8 product. What is surprising is the fact that these changes have taken the form of additions to the existing Oracle architecture as opposed to a complete revision of that architecture. I was impressed by this fact and also a little relieved. Take some of the object-oriented constructs that were introduced into Oracle8. When I had to learn object-oriented programming, the first challenge was dealing with the fact that everything had a new name (the correct object-oriented term). There are a number of pure object-oriented databases out there that have strong differences from the relational databases with which I was comfortable. An Oracle version 7 database could be upgraded to Oracle8 without any software or database object revisions. My investment in terms of experience is safe. I will list the new features a little later in this chapter.

Of course, in addition to the functional changes, the marketing arm of Oracle has introduced a number of naming and bundling changes. They did not have these details worked out when the product was first released, but have since come out with the new names and bundles. An entire chapter (Chapter 4, “Oracle8 Servers and Options”) is devoted to this subject. I have found that even the best techie can become perplexed when it comes time to deal with marketing and sales arrangements.

The Latest Oracle

As I mentioned in the last section, Oracle8 is a significant upgrade to the Oracle database management system. There are some interesting themes to consider when evaluating this new product before directly addressing the technology discussion:

•  There was a significant beta test period for this product. Oracle has always performed beta testing, but this time they invited a much wider group of users to test out the product. This testing included some of the smaller shops, and I think that it has helped cover a diverse set of environments and also users who are not just the straight, large data centers.

•  This was the first significant release of the Oracle database management system that included Windows NT as a tier one development platform. For those not familiar with this term, the tier one platforms are the eight or ten computer environments that are the first to receive new ports of the Oracle software. These are generally the most important (sell the most) environments for the Oracle software. They also tend to have the best support, the fewest bugs, and the latest releases. This is an important strategic direction for those places where NT is a significant factor.

•  There was a significant amount of preparation and training for business partners and even customers on this new product. This may not seem important to some developers and end users. For those that rely on outside consultants, however, it means that these consultants will not have to learn while doing. Instead, consultants have had advanced preparation and copies of the software so they can be productive when the product is released. The utility of a piece of software is a combination of its inherent functionality and the ability of people to use it; therefore this preparation makes the transition to Oracle8 much easier.

•  This was the first release where the Web and network computer environment were a primary emphasis for the system. True, these concepts were around in 7.3 and even earlier versions of the database. However, because Oracle has put much of its time and resources over the last several years into developing Internet-related technology, Oracle8 was optimized to provide support for these environments. This emphasis comes at a time when the core enabling technologies (HTML, Web browsers, and Java) are reaching maturity and practical use in the business world.

•  Oracle put significant effort into helping developers build applications for this environment. Microsoft has always worked to get information about its development tools and operating systems into the hands of developers. This has helped Microsoft’s operating systems as other companies develop applications that users want and Microsoft has not thought of or had the time to develop. Oracle8 has been promoted to developers, especially Web-application developers, who want to take advantage of the cartridge architecture and other development options.