Re: What is Oracle?

GaryRW (garyrw_at_aol.com) wrote:
> I have recently seen mention of Oracle Tools, Forms, and CASE. In
> non technical terms, what is Oracle? On which platform does Oracle
> run?

Oracle is

• the name of the company
• the common name of the Relational Database Mgmt system (RDBMS)
• the name given to Oracle Tools, Forms, CASE by many users

Oracle (the company) was one of the first (if not the first) to provide a commercial implementation of the Relational model which is currently also found in IBM's DB2, Ask/Ingres' Ingres, Sybase's Sybase, Microsoft's SQL Server, as well as many others.

Oracle (the RDBMS) is a database server which takes client requests (usually in SQL form) and performs database operations. At one time, it was purported to run on 'every operating system in the known universe', however, in fact it runs nicely under virtually every flavor of Unix. It also supposedly runs under many other operating systems - IBM MVS, OS/2, VAX, NT, amongst others, although I have not used those variations.

Oracle (the tools, etc) are clients that run on a wider variety of OSs including Windows, and usually home in on Oracle (the RDBMS). The term 'tools' is frequently used to mean: a report generator, a windowing menu handler, a windowing forms generator, a text searcher, a graphics manipulator. Oracle (the company) has a definite meaning for the term Oracle Tools, from a marketing perspective, but that meaning tends to change with time & I don't know the current definition. Many of the tools are identified by the use of 'SQL*' or 'ORACLE*' in their official name, such as 'SQL*Forms'.

Oracle Case is a form of Oracle tool that is?/was built using other Oracle tools and is used to design systems that usually using other Oracle products. In my experience, Oracle*CASE is a reasonably good CASE product which, coupled with other Oracle Case related products can automatically generate systems, including the data dictionary and the clients using (some of) Oracle Tools.

If the above is confusing, that may be due to the fact that Oracle (the company) has had a tendancy to repackage their products in a wide variety of ways, and (in the past) was prone to rebundling tools & RDBMS in various combinations without warning.

In spite of past marketing issues, and in spite of the $$$ associated with all Oracle (the company)'s products (which are a major shock to people coming from the PC world), I personally find that Oracle (the RDBMS) and Oracle (the tools) are reasonably good products and find that investing time in learning same is worth it.

Hope this helps answer your question.

/Hans Received on Wed Jun 22 1994 - 18:48:38 CEST