This note is intended to provide students with an overall picture on what main products are used for a typical database system deployed for Internet applications. This will help us better understand the scope of this course as well as plan for more study for our future needs.

Oracle develops and deploys a full line of internet-enabled enterprise software across its entire product line: database, server, enterprise business applications, and application development and decision support tools. As more and more companies transform themselves into e-businesses, Oracle's Internet-enabled solutions provide a way to expand market opportunities, improve business process efficiencies, and attract and retain customers. Oracle database product (Oracle8i, for example) is only one of the products needed for a successful enterprise application.

The core technology of Oracle Corp. includes three major parts: database, application server and development tools:

1. Database Server:

The database server is the backbone of the information technology infrastructure in any organization. It generally resides in the back-end high performance computer server or a cluster of servers. That is why many database systems run on UNIX or mainframe. Reliability, performance and security are the most important requirements for any database server.

Database server technology is the main focus of this course. The most current version of Oracle's database is actually Oracle9i, which was first announced in October 2000. Due to the complexity of a database system and possible service interruption in the upgrading process, companies with mission-critical application needs generally wait until the version matures some time before they fully implement a new version. The principles and core technology remain pretty much the same for Oracle database regardless versions.

In Oracle database (Oracle9i or Oracle8i), there are three typical editions:

Standard Edition (Oracle9i Standard and Oracle8i): It includes a fully integrated set of management tools, full distribution, replication, and web features. From single-server environments for small business to highly distributed branch environment, the standard edition provides all the facilities necessary to build business-critical applications.

Enterprise Edition (Oracle9i/Oracle8i EE): It provides efficient, reliable, secure data management for high-end applications such as high volume on-line transaction processing (OLTP) environments, query-intensive data warehousing, and demanding Internet applications. The enterprise edition includes tools and functionality to meet the availability and scalability requirements for mission-critical applications.

Personal Edition (Oracle9i/Oracle8i Personal Edition): It supports single user development and deployment that require full compatibility with Oracle standard edition or enterprise edition.

All three editions provides a common set of application development features, including SQL (structeured querry language) object-relational capabilities and PL/SQL and JAVA programmatic interfaces for writing stored procedures and triggers. Applications written for any edition will run with the other.

This course focuses on enterprise edition of Oracle database management system. For a minimum requirement, you will have to be able to run personal edition.

2. Application Server:

Oracle application server is a middle-tier technology that enhances the traditional Web-server to provide access to database data and thereby deliver dynamic content to Web clients. The application server generally resides on NT/2000 servers that is between the backend UNIX and Web users. The current edition of Oracle application servers is Oracle 9iAS. It supports Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports and many other Web application tools.

3. Application Tools:

Oracle provides a whole array of application tools for various applications and development on Internet. Typical tools include: