On January 17, 1995, Oracle Corporation announced the release of Personal Oracle, a Windows-based version of the most popular relational database in the world--;Oracle7. At that time Oracle decided to distribute a trial version of Personal Oracle to its potential customers by making Personal Oracle available for downloading via Oracle Corporation's Web site (http://www.oracle.com). The company has since expanded this concept with a "try and buy" option that allows existing and potential customers to experiment with trial versions of many Oracle products.
In 1970 the Communications of the ACM published a paper entitled "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks." Authored by Dr. E. F. Codd, a member of the IBM San Jose Research Laboratory, the paper provided a theoretical and mathematical foundation for the concept of a relational database. It is difficult to point to another single article in the field of computer science that has had as great an influence on vendors, practitioners, and users as Codd's contribution.
In his paper, Codd describes the elements of a relational database: relations, attributes, domains, and the relational operators. Codd's paper described a data storage system that possessed three characteristics that were sorely needed at that time:
Some time passed before a commercial product actually implemented some of the relational database features that Codd described. Today many vendors sell relational database management systems (RDBMS); some of the more well-known vendors are Oracle, Sybase, IBM, Informix, Microsoft, and Computer Associates. Of these vendors, Oracle has emerged as the leader. The Oracle RDBMS engine has been ported to more platforms than any other database product. Because of Oracle's multiplatform support, many application software vendors have chosen Oracle as their database platform. And now, Oracle Corporation has ported the same RDBMS engine to the desktop environment with its release of Personal Oracle.
NoteToday's relational databases implement a number of extremely useful features that Codd did not mention in his original article. However, as of this writing, no commercially available database is a full implementation of Codd's rules for relational databases.
As the world's leading vendor of relational database software, Oracle Corporation supports its flagship product, the Oracle RDBMS, on more than 90 platforms. The release of Personal Oracle for Windows extends Oracle's reach to the most popular desktop operating system--;Microsoft Windows.
The Oracle RDBMS is available in the following three configurations:
On November 8, 1995, Oracle Corporation announced the release of Personal Oracle7 for Windows 95--;the first relational database for that operating system. Compared to Personal Oracle7 for Windows 3.11, version 7.2.2 of Personal Oracle for Windows 95 has several significant improvements such as the Navigator, an intuitive graphical tool for managing the objects in a Personal Oracle database and remote Oracle databases. This book covers version 7.2.2 for Windows 95 as well as version 7.1.4 for Windows 3.11.
Personal Oracle provides almost all the same features that Oracle7 Server provides on larger platforms. As a result, you can use Personal Oracle to build a working database application that you can later port to a multiuser version of the Oracle7 Server. You can use Personal Oracle to build all the tables, indexes, views, sequences, and other database objects that would exist in a production-quality database application. Also, you can use Personal Oracle in conjunction with application development tools such as Microsoft's Visual Basic, Powersoft's PowerBuilder, and Oracle's Developer/2000.
To use Personal Oracle, you will need a 486 or Pentium PC with at least 16MB of memory.
As you'd expect, Personal Oracle works with Oracle application development tools such as Oracle Developer/2000 and Oracle Power Objects. Developer/2000 includes these tools:
You can also use Personal Oracle with other popular application development tools such as Visual Basic and PowerBuilder. Appendix B "Using Personal Oracle7 and Oracle Developer/2000," Appendix C "Using Personal Oracle7 and PowerBuilder 5.0," Appendix D, "Using Personal Oracle7 and Visual Basic," and Appendix E, "Using Personal Oracle7 and Oracle Power Objects," demonstrate the use of Personal Oracle with these popular development products.
You communicate with Personal Oracle through Oracle's version of the Structured Query Language (SQL, usually pronounced sequel). SQL is a nonprocedural language; unlike C or COBOL in which you must describe exactly how to access and manipulate data, SQL specifies what to do. Internally, Oracle determines how to perform the request. SQL exists as an ANSI standard as well as an industry standard. Oracle's implementation of SQL adheres to Level 2 of the ANSI X3.135-1989/ISO 9075-1989 standard with full implementation of the Integrity Enhancement Feature. Oracle (as well as other database vendors) provides many extensions to ANSI SQL.
In addition, Oracle's implementation of SQL adheres to the U.S. government standard as described in the Federal Information Processing Standard Publication (FIPS PUB) 127, entitled Database Language SQL.
This book is designed to serve readers who fit the following profiles:
When you are finished reading this book, you'll be familiar with the following languages, tools, and issues:
This opening chapter makes the following points: