This is a good time to pause a bit and talk about the Oracle Home directory. When you install Oracle software, you end up with a large directory structure that contains all the executables and other files that make Oracle work. All these directories sit under one top-level directory referred to as the Oracle Home directory. Here's a diagram showing some of the directories that you might find in a typical installation. Move your mouse over the diagram to learn about each directory:

If you are running the UNIX operating system, you will have an environment variable named ORACLE_HOME that points to the top-level Oracle directory. You can make that directory your current working directory by issuing the following command:

cd $ORACLE_HOME

If you are running Oracle8 software under Windows, and if you accepted all the defaults when first installing Oracle, your home directory will be one of the following:

If you currently have access to Oracle8, take a moment now to be sure that you can find your Oracle Home directory.