When it comes to business administration, usage of information technology is inevitable, which is not only limited to the administration of technical infrastructure but also to better manage the soft assets too like data. Data is considered to be the new fuel for growth to any business, and strategic business decision making is now largely done based on data analytics. For business leaders, it is essential to have a deeper understanding of data sourcing, storage, management, and analytics to succeed in a highly competitive market.
On thinking of modern-day database management systems for enterprise-level data management, Oracle is one of the most admired solutions, used by many. In this article, we are discussing some basic of Oracle database and administration for the business leadership to get an overview. To get in-depth into Oracle, we need first to understand database management systems.
Relational databases
As we had seen, all organizations, irrespective of size and functional area, produce a huge amount of data which must be stored properly to meet their requirements. Say, for example, a corporation should collect the records of the human sources and maintain it over time for effective management of its employees. A management information system can be used to process this data for better management of the organization.
Nowadays, most of the organizations use a structured database to automate the information systems. You can consider a database as a structured collection of information. The primary purpose of a relational database is to collect, store, manage, and retrieve the needed information for the use of any database applications.
DBMS (Database Management System)
A DBMS is a software application, which is used to store, control, organize, and retrieve data. A typical DBMS will have below primary elements:
- Kernel code
- Storage for DMS and memory capacities.
- Metadata repository; i.e., data dictionary.
- A standard query language to enable applications for data access.
Favorable circumstances of a DBMS
Utilizing a DBMS to store and oversee information accompanies points of interest, yet in addition overhead. One of the greatest focal points of utilizing a DBMS is that it lets end clients and application developers access and utilize similar information while overseeing information uprightness. Information is better ensured and kept up when it tends to be shared utilizing a DBMS as opposed to making new cycles of similar information put away in new records for each new application. The DBMS gives a focal store of information that can be gotten to by various clients in a controlled way.
Focal capacity and the executives of information inside the DBMS gives:
Information deliberation and autonomy
Information security
A locking component for simultaneous access
A proficient handler to adjust the necessities of different applications utilizing similar information
The capacity to quickly recoup from accidents and mistakes, including restartability and recoverability
Vigorous information respectability capacities
Logging and examining of movement
Basic access utilizing a standard application programming interface (Programming interface)
Uniform organization methodology for information
Another bit of leeway of a DBMS is that it very well may be utilized to force a sensible, organized association on the information. A DBMS conveys economy of scale for preparing a lot of information since it is improved for such tasks.
Altogether, a database application is a program which can interact with the database in order to add, delete, extract, or manipulate the stored data.
The relational database management system is a kind of database which confirms a relational model in data storage. The major aspects of a relational model are:
- Structures – Properly defined objects to store or retrieve data from a database.
- Operations – A set of well-defined actions which enable the applications for data manipulation and database structure.
- Integrity rules – These rules govern the operations on data structures.
As its name suggests, a relational database typically stores the data by setting it on the basis of some simple relations. You can count a relation as a set of tuples and tuple as a set of unordered attribute values. Data in relational databases are stored in a table, which is a two-dimensional representation of the relations in rows and columns. Rows are tuples and columns are attributes. The rows in a table have the same set of columns too. A relational database stores data in the relations, i.e., tables.
In a typical employee database of a company in the relational database, there could be information about the employees in various tables as employee table, department table, salary table etc.
Oracle database
Oracle Database is leading relational database management system, and there are many providers like RemoteDBA.comofferingadvanced database management solutions with Oracle DBMS. Utilizing a DBMS to store and oversee information accompanies points of interest, yet in addition overhead. This implements an object-oriented features approach with inheritance, user-defined types, and polymorphism. Oracle database is an extension of the conventional relational model to a more advanced object-relational model, which makes it possible to store higher-level complex business information too in a relational database.
Oracle is made to its current version with over 30 years of development. Back in 1977, three young technology enthusiasts as Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates established consultancy Software Development Laboratories as a software consultancy, which later became Relational Software Inc. It further got renamed as Oracle Systems Corporation in 1983.
In 1979 itself, RSI released the Oracle V2 as the first available commercial RDBMS, which was SQL-based. Later, Oracle V3 came out in 1983, which was the first RDBMS running on mainframe computers, minicomputers, and also personal computers. It was based on C and enabling portability to multiple platforms.
Then came Version 4 which featured multi-version read consistency. In Version 5 came out in 1985, there was support form client/server computing and also distributed DBMS. Version 6 came with enhancements as disk I/O, scalability, row locking, backup, and recovery. V6 also featured the primary version of PL/SQL language.
Oracle7 was released in the year 1992, which introduced PL/SQL triggers and stored procedures. Oracle 8 in 1997 was one o the pioneering object-relational database, which supported many new types of data too with partitioning support for larger tables. The later versions are:
- Oracle8i
- Oracle9i
- Oracle 10G
- Oracle 11G etc.
Oracle Database is designed by default to be a multiuser database. Oracle ensures that multiple users could work on it simultaneously without corrupting the data. Oracle DBMS also guarantees that all database operations like decreasing savings account, increasing checking account, and recording the transaction in transaction journal succeed or fail as a single unit. Say, for example, if any hardware failure prevents a particular statement from executing, then other statements also must be rolled back for consistency.
The database server is the major component in Oracle DB for information management. Usually a server manages a huge data effectively in a multiuser platform for concurrent access. The server also helps to prevent any unauthorized access to data and also provide efficient failure recovery. An Oracle DB server consists of a database and at least a single database instance. As the databases are connected closely, Oracle database refers to both instance and the database combined.
With its advanced features and high-end capacities, Oracle database management system has now become a reliable tool for the business database administrators to effectively manage data stores and make use of relevant data for analytical purposes. Witch changing and more challenging requirements in enterprise database management, Oracle is coming up with many customized and personalized solutions too for the business leaders to make use of it as a reliable tool in business decision making too.
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