Oracle Products: An Overview

The Oracle products suite includes the following tools and utilities:

1 Application Development Tools

• SQL*Plus - A command line tool used to manipulate tables and other database objects in an Oracle database.
• Developer/2000 and Developer A suite of application development tools including Forms, Reports and Graphics.
  • Oracle*Forms - A screen based tool used to develop data entry forms and menus that access tables in an Oracle database.
  • Oracle*Reports - A screen based tool used to develop reports that access tables in an Oracle database.
  • Oracle*Graphics - A graphical tool used to develop charts and reports that access tables in an Oracle database.
• CASE*Designer and Oracle Designer/2000 - A graphical tool used to create and display models contained in the CASE*Dictionary.
• CASE*Dictionary - A repository for business rules, functional models and data models used for organizing and documenting an application development effort.
• CASE*Generator - A code generating tool that uses information stored in CASE*Dictionary to develop data entry forms, reports and graphics.
• Oracle*Book - A graphical tool used to develop on-line documentation with hypertext capabilities.
• SQL*TextRetrieval and Oracle Context - A suite of tools and API used to develop sophisticated text search and retrieval applications.
• Programmer/2000 - Including the Pro* precompilers - Libraries of routines and utilities that can be linked with ``C'', C++, FORTRAN, Java, ADA, COBOL or other host languages to allow access to Oracle databases.

2 Database Utilities

• Enterprise Manager - A GUI based collection of utilities for managing Oracle Databases.
• SQL*DBA and SVRMGR - A utility that allows the database administrator (DBA) to monitor database activity and to tune the database for optimal performance.
• Export/Import - Command line utilities that allow a user or the DBA to export data from an Oracle database into a machine readable file or to import data from a machine readable file into an Oracle database.
• SQL*Loader - A command line utility to load ASCII or binary data files into an Oracle database.
• Oracle*Terminal - A utility program used to customize the user interface and keyboard mappings for all Oracle tools. This utility allows all Oracle tools to have a similar ``look and feel'' across many different hardware and operating system platforms.

3 Connectivity and Middleware Products

• SQL*Net and Net8 - A communications driver that allows an Oracle tool running on a client machine to access Oracle data on a separate server machine.
• SQL*Connect and Oracle Gateways - A communications driver that allows an Oracle tool running on a client machine to access Non-Oracle data on a server machine such as data residing in a DB2 database or MS SQL Server database.
• ORACLE Server - Typically a part of the Oracle RDBMS running on a database server, this component receives requests from client machines and submits them to the Oracle RDBMS. The results are then passed back to the client machines.
• Oracle ODBC Drivers - Open DataBase Connectivity drivers for connecting software to Oracle databases using the ODBC standard.

4 Core Database Engine

• ORACLE RDBMS - The Oracle Relational Database Engine. Now called the Oracle Universal Server with several options in addition to managing relational data. These options are now called Cartridges:
  • Oracle Web Applications Server - A WWW Server (HTTP server) linked into the Oracle RDBMS. Allows web based applications using HTML forms and JAVA to access and manipulate data.
  • Spatial Data Cartridge- Allows storage of temporal and spatial data in the Oracle RDBMS. Useful for Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
  • Video Cartridge - Provides storage and real-time serving of streaming video.
  • ConText Cartridge - Provides storage and retrieval of text documents.
  • Messaging Option - A groupware architecture built on top of the RDBMS.
  • OLAP Option - Tools and database support for On-Line Analytical Processing.
  • Objects Option - Allows complex objects to be modeled and stored in the DBMS. Includes Object Oriented features such as encapsulation, inheritance, server and client side methods, etc.
• Integrated Data Dictionary - Stores and manages access to all of the tables owned by all users in a system.
• SQL - The language used to access and manipulate database data.
• PL/SQL - A procedural extension to the SQL language unique to the Oracle line of products.

5 Typical Development Environments

Developing applications using an Oracle database requires access to a copy of the Oracle RDBMS (or a central Oracle RDBMS server), and one or more of the development tools. Third party development tools such as PowerBuilder, Visual Basic or Java can also be used for applications development.

Stand-alone development in a single user environment can be accomplished using the Personal Oracle or Personal Oracle Lite RDBMS in conjunction with Oralce Developer or a third party development tool.

Muli-user development in a shared environment can be accomplished using an Oracle RDBMS server running on a server machine. Distributed client PCs can develop the applications using any of the tools mentioned above.

Regardless of the development environment, used, the Oracle SQL*Plus utility is a convenient and capable tool for manipulating data in an Oracle database. In the following section, the SQL*Plus tool is introduced.