Several versions of Oracle are available; an appropriate version should be procured and installed only after a thorough assessment of organizational data management needs. Commercial server versions like 9i, 10g and so on are enterprise level products used by very large organizations. An Oracle client alone may be installed in situations where an individual or organization simply wants to connect to a database on a remote Oracle server.

The XE or Express edition is a handy free version (both server and client are available). XE uses the same codebase as the commercial versions but is limited in that only one instance may be running at any time and there is an upper bound on the size of the database. Learners and small organizations may find XE sufficient for their needs. The Database Home Page, rather than the OEM Console is the main GUI of the XE version. The Oracle universal installer takes users through installation of commercial versions. XE installation is performed by the Windows installer. In either case, installation is fairly simple.

In This Chapter:

Commercial Versions

How to install commercial versions of Oracle

The Oracle Enterprise Manager

A tool that helps users manage and monitor Oracle

Oracle - Working With Databases

Monitoring databases and automating tasks with the OEM console

Important Configuration Files

The important configurantion files and parameters used in Oracle