Preface

Oracle has been using the schema SCOTT with its two prominent tables EMP and DEPT tables for a long time. With advances in Oracle's technology, these tables have become inadequate to show even the most basic features of the Oracle database and other Oracle products. As a result, many other schemas have been created over the years to suit the needs of product documentation, courseware, and software development and application demos.

About the Sample Schemas

The new Oracle9i Sample Schemas serve the purpose of providing a common platform for examples in Oracle9i and future releases. It is not possible to convert all examples throughout our documentation to this new environment at one time, but all examples will be converted as material is updated.

The new Oracle9i Sample Schemas are a set of interlinked schemas. This set of schemas is aimed at providing a layered approach to complexity:

• A simple schema (Human Resources, HR) for introducing basic topics. An extension to this schema supports Oracle Internet Directory demos.

• A second schema (Order Entry, OE) for dealing with matters of intermediate complexity. A multitude of datatypes is available in this schema.

  The Online Catalog (OC) subschema is a collection of object-relational database objects built inside the OE schema.

• A schema dedicated to multimedia datatypes (Product Media, PM)

• A set of schemas gathered under the main schema name QS (Queued Shipping) to demonstrate Oracle Advanced Queuing capabilities.

• A schema designed to allow for demos with larger amounts of data (Sales History, SH). An extension to this schema provides support for advanced analytic processing.

What Are the Customer Benefits?

• Continuity of context. When encountering the same set of tables everywhere, users, students, and developers spend less time with the schema and more time understanding or explaining the technical concepts.

• Usability. Customers can use these schemas in the seed database to run examples that are shown in Oracle documentation and training materials. This first-hand access to examples will facilitate both conceptual understanding and application development.

• Quality. Through central maintenance and testing of both the creation scripts that build the Oracle9i Sample Schemas and the examples that run against the schemas, the quality of Oracle documentation and training materials will be enhanced.

What are the Oracle9i Sample Schemas Design Principles?

• Simplicity and Ease of Use. The HR and OE schemas should not become overly complex by the addition of features, but rather should provide a graduated path from the simple to intermediate levels of database use.

• Be fundamental. The base schemas and the extensions should bring to the foreground the functionality that customers typically use. Only the most commonly used database objects are built automatically in the schemas, and the entire set of schemas provides a foundation upon which one can expand to illustrate additional functionality.

• Extensibility. The Oracle9i Sample Schemas provide a logical and physical foundation for adding objects to demonstrate functionality beyond the fundamental scope.

• Relevance. The Oracle9i Sample Schemas are designed to be applicable to e-business and other significant industry trends (for example, XML). When this goal conflicts with the goal of simplicity, schema extensions are used to showcase the trends in focus.