This module has concentrated on the new features of Net and Oracle8i as they relate to Net installation and configuration.
The main points of this module include:

1. Oracle8i made new Java-based OEM screens and had added a new look and feel to the GUI interfaces in contrast to Oracle 7
2. Oracle8i had introduced important new tnsnames.ora parameters, including ADDRESS_LIST, LOAD_BALANCE, FAILOVER, SOURCE_ROUTE, INSTANCE_NAME, and SERVICE_NAME.
3. Oracle8i now allows for failover functionality when using OPS of multiple listeners. With failover, Oracle automatically re-establishes lost client connections.
4. When you specify multiple addresses for a service name, the SOURCE_ROUTE parameter determines the order in which the addresses are searched.
5. Oracle is replacing the Server Manager (svrmgrl) with SQL*Plus. To issue SQL*Plus commands, you need to connect as sysdba.
6. Oracle has implemented connection load balancing for Oracle Shared Server. MTS has been discontinued since Oracle 9i.in a similar fashion to that used in OPS. The new load balancing feature uses the MTS and routes incoming connections to the least recently called dispatcher.

In a Real Application Clusters environment, multiple instances can be associated with a single database service. Clients can override Oracle's connection load balancing by specifying a particular instance by which to connect to the database. INSTANCE_NAME specifies the unique name of this instance. In a single-instance database system, the instance name is usually the same as the database name.