Preface

This guide is for people who administer the operation of an Oracle database system. Referred to as database administrators (DBAs), they are responsible for creating Oracle databases, ensuring their smooth operation, and monitoring their use.

This preface contains these topics:

• Audience

• Organization

• Related Documentation

• Conventions

• Documentation Accessibility

  Note: The Oracle9i Database Administrator's Guide contains information that describes the features and functionality of the Oracle9i [Standard Edition], Oracle9i Enterprise Edition, and Oracle9i Personal Edition products. These products have the same basic features. However, several advanced features are available only with the Oracle9i Enterprise Edition or Oracle9i Personal Edition, and some of these are optional. For example, to create partitioned tables and indexes, you must have the Oracle9i Enterprise Edition or Oracle9i Personal Edition. For information about the differences between the various editions of Oracle9i and the features and options that are available to you, please refer to Oracle9i Database New Features.

Audience

Readers of this guide are assumed to be familiar with relational database concepts. They are also assumed to be familiar with the operating system environment under which they are running Oracle.

Readers Interested in Installation and Migration Information

Administrators frequently participate in installing the Oracle server software and migrating existing Oracle databases to newer formats (for example, version 8 databases to Oracle9i format). This guide is not an installation or migration manual.

If your primary interest is installation, see your operating system specific Oracle installation guide.

If your primary interest is database or application migration, see the Oracle9i Database Migration manual.

Readers Interested in Application Design Information

In addition to administrators, experienced users of Oracle and advanced database application designers might also find information in this guide useful.

However, database application developers should also see the Oracle9i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals and the documentation for the tool or language product they are using to develop Oracle database applications.

Organization

This document contains:

Part I: Basic Database Administration

Chapter 1, "The Oracle Database Administrator"

This chapter serves as a general introduction to typical tasks performed by database administrators, such as installing software and planning a database.

Chapter 2, "Creating an Oracle Database"

This chapter discusses considerations for creating a database and takes you through the steps of creating one. Consult this chapter when in the database planning and creation stage.

Chapter 3, "Using Oracle-Managed Files"

This chapter describes how you can direct the Oracle database server to create and manage your:

• Datafiles

• Tempfiles

• Online redo log files

• Control files

Chapter 4, "Starting Up and Shutting Down"

Consult this chapter when you wish to start up a database, alter its availability, or shut it down. Parameter files related to starting up and shutting down are also described here.

Part II: Oracle Server Processes and Storage Structure

Chapter 5, "Managing Oracle Processes"

This chapter helps you to identify different Oracle processes, such as dedicated server processes and shared server processes. Consult this chapter when configuring, modifying, tracking and managing processes.

Chapter 6, "Managing Control Files"

This chapter describes all aspects of managing control files: naming, creating, troubleshooting, and dropping control files.

Chapter 7, "Managing the Online Redo Log"

This chapter describes all aspects of managing the online redo log: planning, creating, renaming, dropping, or clearing online redo log files.

Chapter 8, "Managing Archived Redo Logs"

Consult this chapter for information about archive modes and tuning archiving.

Chapter 9, "Using LogMiner to Analyze Redo Log Files"

This chapter describes the use of LogMiner to analyze redo log files.

Chapter 10, "Managing Job Queues"

Consult this chapter before working with job queues. All aspects of submitting, removing, altering, and fixing job queues are described.

Chapter 11, "Managing Tablespaces"

This chapter provides guidelines to follow as you manage tablespaces, and describes how to create, manage, alter, drop and move data between tablespaces.

Chapter 12, "Managing Datafiles"

This chapter provides guidelines to follow as you manage datafiles, and describes how to create, change, alter, rename and view information about datafiles.

Chapter 13, "Managing Undo Space"

Consult this chapter to learn how to manage undo space, either by using an undo tablespace or rollback segments.

Part III: Schema Objects

Chapter 14, "Managing Space for Schema Objects"

Consult this chapter for descriptions of common tasks, such as setting storage parameters, deallocating space and managing space.

Chapter 15, "Managing Tables"

Consult this chapter for general table management guidelines, as well as information about creating, altering, maintaining and dropping tables.

Chapter 16, "Managing Indexes"

Consult this chapter for general guidelines about indexes, including creating, altering, monitoring and dropping indexes.

Chapter 17, "Managing Partitioned Tables and Indexes"

Consult this chapter to learn about partitioned tables and indexes and how to create and manage them.

Chapter 18, "Managing Clusters"

Consult this chapter for general guidelines to follow when creating, altering, or dropping clusters.

Chapter 19, "Managing Hash Clusters"

Consult this chapter for general guidelines to follow when creating, altering, or dropping hash clusters.

Chapter 20, "Managing Views, Sequences, and Synonyms"

This chapter describes all aspects of managing views, sequences and synonyms.

Chapter 21, "General Management of Schema Objects"

This chapter covers more varied aspects of schema management. The operations described in this chapter are not unique to any one type of schema objects. Consult this chapter for information about analyzing objects, truncation of tables and clusters, database triggers, integrity constraints, and object dependencies.

Chapter 22, "Detecting and Repairing Data Block Corruption"

This chapter describes methods for detecting and repairing data block corruption.

Part IV: Database Security

Chapter 23, "Establishing Security Policies"

This chapter describes all aspects of database security, including system, data and user security policies, as well as specific tasks associated with password management.

Chapter 24, "Managing Users and Resources"

This chapter describes session and user licensing, user authentication, and provides specific examples of tasks associated with managing users and resources.

Chapter 25, "Managing User Privileges and Roles"

This chapter contains information about all aspects of managing user privileges and roles. Consult this chapter to find out how to grant and revoke privileges and roles.

Chapter 26, "Auditing Database Use"

This chapter describes how to create, manage and view audit information.

Part V: Database Resource Management

Chapter 27, "Using the Database Resource Manager"

This chapter describes how to use the Database Resource Manager to allocate resources.

Part VI: Distributed Database Management

Chapter 28, "Distributed Database Concepts"

This chapter describes the basic concepts and terminology of Oracle's distributed database architecture.

Chapter 29, "Managing a Distributed Database"

This chapter describes how to manage and maintain a distributed database system.

Chapter 30, "Developing Applications for a Distributed Database System"

This chapter describes considerations important when developing an application to run in a distributed database system.

Chapter 31, "Distributed Transactions Concepts"

This chapter describes what distributed transactions are and how Oracle maintains their integrity.

Chapter 32, "Managing Distributed Transactions"

This chapter describes how to manage and troubleshoot distributed transactions.

Related Documentation

For more information, see these Oracle resources:

• Oracle9i Database Concepts

  Chapter 1 of Oracle9i Database Concepts contains an overview of the concepts and terminology related to Oracle and provides a foundation for the more detailed information in this guide. This chapter is a starting point to become familiar with the Oracle database server, and is recommended reading before starting Oracle9i Database Administrator's Guide. The remainder of Oracle9i Database Concepts explains the Oracle architecture and features, and how they operate in more detail.

• Oracle9i Backup and Recovery Concepts

  This book introduces you to the concepts of backup and recovery.

• Oracle9i User-Managed Backup and Recovery Guide

  This guide contains details of backup and recovery and enables you back up, copy, restore, and recover datafiles, control files, and archived redo logs.

• Oracle9i Recovery Manager User's Guide and Reference

  This guide contains information for using Recovery Manager (RMAN). RMAN is an Oracle tool that manages and automates backup and recovery operations.

• Oracle9i Database Performance Methods

  This book exposes important considerations in setting up a database system and can help you understand tuning your database. It is mainly conceptual, defining terms, architecture, and design principles, and then outlines proactive and reactive tuning methods.

• Oracle9i Database Performance Guide and Reference

  This book can be used as a reference guide for tuning your Oracle database system.

• Oracle9i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals

  Many of the tasks done by DBAs are shared by application developers. In some cases, descriptions of tasks seemed better located in an application level book, and in those cases, this fundamentals book is the primary reference.

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Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

Conventions in Code Examples

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle9i Database Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width font)	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a NUMBER column. You can back up the database by using the BACKUP command. Query the TABLE_NAME column in the USER_TABLES data dictionary view. Use the DBMS_STATS.GENERATE_STATS procedure.
lowercase monospace (fixed-width font)	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter sqlplus to open SQL*Plus. The password is specified in the orapwd file. Back up the datafiles and control files in the /disk1/oracle/dbs directory. The department_id, department_name, and location_id columns are in the hr.departments table. Set the QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED initialization parameter to true. Connect as oe user. The JRepUtil class implements these methods.
lowercase monospace (fixed-width font) italic	Lowercase monospace italic font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the parallel_clause. Run Uold_release.SQL where old_release refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	{ENABLE | DISABLE}
|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	{ENABLE | DISABLE} [COMPRESS | NOCOMPRESS]
...	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery; SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	acctbal NUMBER(11,2); acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;
Italics	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password DB_NAME = database_name
UPPERCASE	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES; DROP TABLE hr.employees;
lowercase	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; sqlplus hr/hr CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;

Documentation Accessibility

Oracle's goal is to make our products, services, and supporting documentation accessible to the disabled community with good usability. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.