Oracle Database 12c Architecture & Internals Part 1 Overview & The Systems Infrastructure

Information technology professionals are curious by nature, they want to know what is "behind the scenes" of any technology that they might use. This is no less true with Oracle database professionals. This textbook provides both a high-level overview and then an increasingly detailed inside look at the features, structures and mechanisms that make the Oracle 12c database what it is. Its intent is to deepen and broaden your understanding of technology that you will use or may already be using.


In this first module, we begin with a discussion of the broad systems infrastructure where one finds Oracle database installations, and we outline how the database and its host system fits in with other systems in a multi-tiered architecture, including web servers, application servers and engineered systems such as the Oracle Exadata database computing platform.


We present this information in a form that goes beyond a discussion of theoretical concepts. In many cases the Enterprise Manager interface is used to explore the components under consideration. Therefore one of the secondary objectives of this textbook is to acquaint you with the built-in Enterprise Manager Database Express interface and sometimes with its EM Cloud Control (CC) companion. In particular our focus is to discover the capabilities of the Enterprise Manager Database Express interface newly introduced with the Oracle 12 database release.


The architecture of different Oracle database installations are not all uniform, as there is considerable flexibility regarding the way a particular installation is configured. Such configuration options exist largely in the form of database parameter settings. So this textbook will devote considerable time to identifying these parameters and how these settings can be used to configure a database installation to suit local requirements.


The information contained within this textbook is critical to the success of most Oracle technology professionals, whether they are database administrators, security specialists, tuning experts or cloud computing administrators.