Re: a couple of simple questions

the oracle database (either the enterprise edition, the standard edition or personal edition) will allow you to create a database, tables, views, queries, etc.

for forms and reports, you may want to check out the Oracle Developer/2000 product, although there are plenty of other non-oracle tools that will do the job just as well, if not better.

Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) is the tool that allows you to monitor and administer the database. There are other 3rd party tools that can do the job.

Make sure you review the terms of the license agreements for each of the products. You'll find that some of the products are available for you to use for educational purposes, with no support available from Oracle.

You'll also want to review the MININUM hardware and os requirements for each of the Oracle products, they can be pretty hefty (e.g. minimum of 128MB of RAM for Oracle database server)

The cheapest alternative is downloading from technet (technet.oracle.com). You can start with that, but if you're really serious about learning and keeping up with the latest, the annual subscription to one of the technet tracks is a pretty good deal.

"Paul Murphy" <paulm_at_dreamscape.com> wrote in message news:sgd1dbuncdo52_at_corp.supernews.com...
> Hello. First, let me thank in advance everyone who points me
 in the right
> direction. I'm new to databases (less than a month) and I've
 only used
> Microsoft Access (pretty straightforward as far as creating
 tables and
> forms). I decided that if I like databases, I might be
 interested in
> learning about Oracle. Before trying to download 300 megs over
 a 56k modem
> or spending $40 on a cd pack, I have to make sure I'm not
 being
> overambitious or premature in starting from scratch with
 Oracle, rather than
> learning database theory and SQL in beginner-friendly Access.
>
> Here's a few questions. You'll notice I'm asking them mostly
 because there
> seems to be dozens of individual Oracle products to manage the
 database,
> rather than what I'm used to...one big Access control panel to
 control
> everything:
>
> 1. Which product, if any, from Oracle would allow a beginner
 to start a
> database from scratch, creating tables, forms, reports,
 queries, etc...to
> learn the basics of databases?
>
> 2. Is there a main management program (similar to Access)
 where you can
> basically perform all the functions needed to create and run
 the database?
>
> 3. If the answer to question one is yes, is there a free (or
 cheap) version
> that I could run on a single machine just for educational
 purposes?
>
> Thanks for the advice! -Paul
>
>
>
>
Received on Fri Apr 28 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT