Re: Basic Questions

On Fri, 19 May 2006 10:23:46 -0400, "Rhino" <no.offline.contact.please_at_nospam.com> wrote:

>1. Are the tools they are using still available for download somewhere? If
>so, where? And what are all the different things I need to download? I know
>nothing about the bundling of Oracle so I don't know if I need to download
>the database engine and each of the main tools as separate entities or
>whether the whole kit and kaboodle is all bundled together.
>

Developer 6.0, as a consequence of being desupported is no longer available from official channels.
I think the current product is called Internet Developer Suite, and can be downloaded from http://otn.oracle.com

This product comes without database.
I doubt whether 9i still can be downloaded, if it can, it can be downloaded from the same location.
Otherwise you'll need 10gR2. In both cases the Personal Edition should be sufficient.

>2. If I were to download the 10g XE package you recommend and get basic
>familiarity with the tools there, how hard would it be to use the older
>tools that this employer has? Are the current versions of the tools just
>incrementally improved or are they profoundly different?

The development tool included in XE is html db. I have hardly any experience with it, but it is completely different from the older products.
On the other hand sql*plus and it's younger newphew i*sqlplus have never changed, but they are just the console app. SQLDeveloper (probably not included, but downloadable at otn) is the GUI replacement for sql*plus.
>
>Oh, by the way, I want to install Oracle on a standalone Windows XP
>Professional workstation; I assume that has some bearing on what I should
>download.

Not really as Oracle has never supported XP Home and all Oracle products can live with 127.0.0.1 localhost.

--
Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA