Oracle, anyone?

[Izu]

Despite studying MS SQL in my DB class, our professor gave us papers on Oracle (mainly - some got MySQL). I've never studied Oracle, never used it, never read anything about it, so... I'm in need of help with getting information about my paper. I have to answer to these questions within my paper:

1.   Design of databases. How does one develop a useful database? What kinds of information go into the database? How is the information structured? What assumptions are made about types or values of data items? How do data items connect?
2.   Database programming. How does one express queries and other operations on the database? How does one use other capabilities of a DBMS, such as transactions or constraints, in an application? How is database programming combined with conventional programming?
3.   Database system implementation. How does one build a DBMS, including such matters as query processing, transaction processing and organizing storage for efficient access?

So... help me with searching about them, please? There is just about no information in my native (Bulgarian), so I gotta find the information in English and then translate it...

Thanks in advance <3

[Vekseid]

Is there some reason Oracle is singled out, there? Oracle is still a SQL database.

For 1) Look up Normalization. For a modern touch, you might want to contrast relational databases with key-value store databases that are all the rage lately.

For 2) You will want to look up ACID and constraints in general - Postgres and Oracle support something called Domains, which your professor might be hinting for you to look up.

For 3) - ACID again, for transactions. Most SQL databases use B-Trees for storage, but hashmaps are also used for various purposes. Query planning isn't something I've looked much into myself, but that's where you would start looking.

[Izu]

My guess is because almost no one has studied Oracle and he didn't want to give us something we've studied and know.

Okay, thanks. I will look up those. And I have to make sure I don't write about things that he has told us about... or if he had told us about it I'll have to specifically write about it about Oracle - ACID, contrast between relational db and key-value store db...

[Izu]

Can anyone tell me if the paper is alright, being structured as it follows:

I start with Oracle Components Overview - Logical Storage Structures, Tablespaces, Segments, Extents, DB Blocks, Schemas, then Physical Storage Structures, Datafiles, Redo Log Files, Control files, Oracle Memory Structures, System Global Area, the different Buffers, Writers.

Then I talk about the Basic Data Structures - Tables, Views, Indexes, B-Trees, Reverse key indexes, Bitmap indexes, Function-based indexes.

Then is the Oracle Datatype, then Designing a Database - defying entities, relationships between the entities, normalization and the 3normal forms, then I talk about the different statements and the ways to create, modify and work with the databases using SQL. Then I talk about all the different types of constraints and the transactions.


It's a rather summarizing topic... and I'm not sure if I haven't put something that is not necessary or that I might have missed something...

[Oniya]

That looks like a logical progression to me.

[Izu]

*blinks* Is that good?

[Oniya]

Well, it sounds like your paper is supposed to give sort of a basic overview of Oracle.  If I was structuring a class, I'd probably go in that order (Components -> Structures -> How to use those structures).

[Izu]

*nods* That's what I was thinking and tried to do. I'm just not sure whether I haven't missed anything. In MS SQL we studied about Query Processor and how it works, but I couldn't find anything about an Oracle equivalent.