When you look at an Oracle database system, you may be surprised by what you do not find included.
Oracle's basic database system has no design tools, no form-building tools, and no report-building tool. What you do get, however, is arguably the best database engine in the industry.
For sheer computing power, Oracle is the Cadillac of database systems and can support thousands of concurrent users, terabytes of data, and millions of transactions per second.
Oracle’s components are divided into two groups:
- Server components: Server components run in the central computer that stores your data and handles transactions from other components.
- Client components: These can be run in the same computer as the server components or (more typically) can be run on remote computers that are connected to the server computer via a network.
Use your mouse to view information about the components that make up the Oracle database.
In addition to these core components, there are dozens of add-on components for sale from Oracle. For example, the Oracle Developer package includes a graphical user interface (GUI) for designing reports, graphs, and data entry forms.
You can also use Open Database Communication (
ODBC) or Java Database Communication (
JDBC) to connect the Oracle database to third-party software, such as Microsoft Access.
- (ODBC) Open Database Connectivity: A set of standards that define communication protocol and syntax to be used when interacting with any relational database.
- (JDBC) Java Database Connectivity: A set of standards defining a standard protocol and syntax in Java applications or applets to interact with any relational database.
The next lesson shows you how to see what users, tables, object tables, and other objects are stored in your Oracle database.