What is Oracle –

Definition: Oracle is a powerful relational database management system that

offers a large feature set. Along with Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle is widely
regarded as one of the two most popular full-featured database systems on the
market today.

Oracle (in ancient Greece, someone in touch with the deities; from Latin,
oraculum or divine announcement) says it is the world's leading supplier of
software for information management but it is best known for its sophisticated
relational database products (notably Oracle9i), which are used in Fortune 1000
corporations and by many of the largest Web sites. Oracle's relational database
was the world's first to support the Structured Query Language (SQL), now an
industry standard. When CEO Lawrence J. Ellison and a few associates formed
Oracle in 1977, they were out to prove wrong the prevailing theory that relational
databases could not be commercially viable. As proof of their success, they
parlayed an initial $2,000 investment in the company into an annual revenue
exceeding $9.7 billion.

A database is an organized collection of data. The data can be textual, like order
or inventory data, or it can be pictures, programs or anything else that can be
stored on a computer in binary form.

A relational database stores the data in the form of tables and columns. A table is
the category of data, like Employee, and the columns are information about the
category, like name or address.

Some databases have minimal feature sets and only store data, while others
include programming languages, facilities and utilities to support enterprise-level
applications like ERP and data warehousing. Oracle is the #1 database and has
the most advanced feature set.

Oracle is made up of a set of processes running in your operating system. These

processes manage how data is stored and how it is accessed. I will cover these
processes in detail in the future; but for now we just need to understand that
Oracle is a program that is running in the background, maintaining your data for
you and figuring out where it should go on your hard drive.

In almost all relational databases, data is accessed through SQL, or Structured

Query Language, and Oracle is no exception. SQL allows you to SELECT your
data, INSERT new records, UPDATE existing records and DELETE records you
want to get rid of. SQL can be embedded in other languages or you can run
scripts of SQL directly against the database.
Current Version of Oracle –

How to determine whether your pc has the current version of Oracle

Click on start then My Computer

Then double click on Local Disk (C:)

Note the name of the directory that starts with orawin

If your orawin directory name ends with 10g, you have the current version of
oracle installed on your pc and Desktop Finance should work fine. STOP HERE.

If your orawin directory name ends with 8i, you likely have a pc that is more than
3 years old and you should contact your LTS computing consultant for assistance
in upgrading your version of oracle from 8i to 10g. With oracle 10g, your ODBC
errors should go away, and response time of reports should improve.

If your orawin directory name ends with 9i, you should also consider contacting
your LTS computing consultant for assistance in upgrading your version of oracle
to 10g, but at a minimum, you may need to change the ODBC driver associated
with the prod database. Follow these steps… After you close My Computer,
click on start, then on Control Panel and then on Administrative Tools (see
below)
Next, click on Data Sources (ODBC)

the following window should open…

Note the Driver associated with the Name prod. If it is not Oracle in
FORMS6_HOME like above, you need to do the following to delete it and create
a new version…
Click on the name prod so that it is highlighted and then click on the Remove
button on the right .

In the ODBC Administrator message box click on Yes. When you return to the
ODBC Data Source Administrator form click on Add to create a new version of
the data source.

Then scroll down and select the Name Oracle in FORMS6_HOME and click on
Finish.
This will open the window below. Simply type the word “prod” into the first three
rows as shown below. If you are the only one that uses your pc, you can also
enter your user ID in the fourth row or you can leave it blank. Click on OK.
The Name prod should appear as shown below. Finally click on OK to exit and
save the new data source.
Advantage of Current Version –

Oracle has many advantages and features that makes it popular and thereby
makes it as the world's largest enterprise software company. Oracle comes with
new versions with new features implemented in new version while the features of
earlier versions still being maintained. One important aspect is Oracle databases
tend to be backwards compatible. Also when Oracle releases a new version,
their documentation contains a list of all the features new to that version thus
makes it user friendly for one to learn the new features.

Oracle takes a lead role because of some of the following reasons:

Oracle is used for almost all large application and one of the main applications in
which oracle takes its major presence is banking. In fact ten of the world’s top 10
banks run Oracle applications this is because oracle offers a powerful
combination of technology and comprehensive, pre-integrated business
applications, including key functionality built specifically for banks.

Some similar databases like Sybase, SQL-Server one have facilities for using
loops, conditions, arrays and so on in a program and also facilities like cursors
and temp tables but all this would be used in a convoluted fashion which are very
slow and resource consuming operations. The operations are not implemented
as in Oracle which is efficient enough.

Also with the features available in oracle with the earlier versions in market the
oracle company keeps upgrading and releasing new products into market, new
versions releases which serves better than the earlier versions and thus the
performance is improved much in later versions and thereby retaining the market
growth and thus proves greater satisfaction to the customers using this
technology. Thus the advantage of a higher version is that one would have more
features and better capabilities.

For instance oracle 8i version has many new features which helped users
namely like with oracle 8i one could run Java in the database, had features like
new features on partitioning to support large database and so on. With the next
version 9i oracle had these facilities maintained and had more new facilities
added to it namely like new features added to help the DBA to handle change
database configuration and so on.

Oracle is a database that responds very well with excellent performance in

demanding environments. Oracle is a major database which along with its added
features passes the ACID test, which is important in insuring the integrity of data.
This is very important because data is the heart of any system in organization. A
reliable and adequate database system has the following properties:
Atomicity:
That is Results of a transaction's execution are either all committed or all rolled
back.

Consistency:
The database is transformed from one valid state to another valid state. Illegal
transactions aren't allowed and, if an integrity constraint can't be satisfied then
the transaction is rolled back.

Isolation:
The results of a transaction are invisible to other transactions until the transaction
is complete thus increasing the security on data.

Durability:
Once committed (completed), the results of a transaction are permanent and
survive future system and media failures and thus ensuring maintenance and
protection of data.

All the above are well maintained by Oracle database.

The latest version oracle 10g has many features and one new feature is the
introduction of recycle bin. This option when enabled could be used by users just
like Windows recycle bin or Mac Trash. Dropped tables go "into" the recycle bin,
and can be restored from the recycle bin.

One of the main advantage of oracle over other databases is in its recent version
oracle has the concept of Flashback technology. That is we all know that data is
the heart of any application or organization and thus this requires careful
maintenance. But sometimes application outage can occur and mostly DBA claim
the reasons for this as hardware failure and apart from this the reason would be
human errors like accidental deletion of valuable data, deleting the wrong data,
or dropping the wrong table. So it is very essential to take care of such situation
and this is done in oracle's latest technology called flash introduced in its latest
version. By Flash technology it helps in recovery by working just on the changed
data. Thus Flashback provides an

 Efficient recovery from human errors

 Faster database recovery
 Helps in simplifying the management and administration processes

SQL Server & Oracle difference –

 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 provides a data platform with many advantages and
business benefits including better security, performance and scalability,
developer productivity, and Business Intelligence tools (BI) – all at a lower total
cost of ownership.

At A Glance

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 advantages over Oracle 11g

 Better Performance and Scalability: SQL Data Services, Filtered Indexes,

Advanced Sparse Columns, Column Prefix Compression
 Better Security: Module Signing using Certificate, and integrated updates
and patching
 Better Business Intelligence (BI) tools: Optimized cube designers, on-
demand processing and instance-based rendering, optimized integration with
the 2007 Microsoft Office system
Learn More
 Leaping forward: SQL Server 2008 compared to Oracle 11g
 SQL Server 2008 reduces cost and delivers more value

SQL Oracle
Server 11g
Performance and Scalability
More Secure (Less Vulnerable)
Developer Productivity
Business Intelligence*
Microsoft Office Integration*
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

*Oracle provides only partial functionalities in these areas and requires

additional licensing costs.

Performance and Scalability

SQL Server scales to some of the world’s largest workloads

 SQL Server already powers the world’s largest customers in every
industry.
 SQL Server is designed to meet industry benchmarks and scales to
meet the most demanding needs of the largest enterprises.
 Customers running SQL Server 2008 report excellent experiences with
the latest scalability enhancements
 ISV Partners in all industries trust the SQL Server platform to run the
most demanding applications. More ISVs support SQL Server than Oracle
database.
 SQL Server is recognized as Best Seller and Top Growth Best Seller by
CRN Magazine.
 Customers such as Unilever, Citi, Barclays Capital, and Mediterranean
Shipping support their most mission-critical applications on SQL Server,
including large ISVs such as Siemens and RedPrairie.