Course Overview

This Oracle Database 12c: Architecture & Internals course begins with a discussion of the broad systems infrastructure where one finds Oracle database installations, and we outline how the database fits with other systems in a multi-tiered architecture, including web servers, application servers, and engineered systems such as the Oracle Exadata database computing platform. We then explore the intricacies of a single database installation, including memory, process, and storage structures. Periodically we delve into the internals of the database, probing into such areas as internal locking mechanisms, kernel module calls, and database failures.

This course initially presents the Oracle database architecture from the perspective of a traditional, single-tenant database configuration as it exists within an on-premise systems infrastructure. We then draw comparisons between such a traditional environment and the new Oracle 12c multi-tenant architecture, used in both traditional and cloud-based computing models.

We present this information in a form that goes beyond a discussion of theoretical concepts. In many cases the Enterprise Manager interface is used to explore the components under consideration. Therefore, one of the secondary objectives of this textbook is to acquaint you with the built-in Enterprise Manager Database Express interface and sometimes with its EM Cloud Control (CC) companion. In particular, our focus is to discover the capabilities of the Enterprise Manager Database Express interface newly introduced with the Oracle 12 database release.

The architecture of different Oracle database installations is not all uniform, as there is considerable flexibility regarding the way a particular installation is configured. Such configuration options exist largely in the form of database parameter settings. So this course will devote considerable time to identifying these parameters and how these settings can be used to configure a database installation to suit local requirements.

The information contained within this course is critical to the success of most Oracle technology professionals, whether they are database administrators, security specialists, tuning experts, or cloud computing administrators.