Re: Newbie to Oracle

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:31:36 +1000, The Raven interested us by writing:

> Hi,
> I'll try to keep this short and (bitter)sweet.
>
> I'm an experienced technical person with lots of hands on exposure to
> relational databases. I'm not an IT guru but have done reasonably well over
> the last few decades supporting small networks, databases, and cutting code
> in simple languages.
>
> <snip>
> Any advice or assistance welcomed.

1. Buy the O'Reilly book "Oracle Essentials" (http://oracle.oreilly.com) to get an overview of the product, the terminology and the value. After you've skimmed through that
2. Go to Oracle Technet - http://otn.oracle.com and get familiar with the following areas:

	Documentation - everything you might want to know, and much more
	Oracle BY Example - self directed tutorials, incl. install
	Downloads - free download of all Oracle's technology.

3) Start reading the Concepts Manual and the DB Administrator's Guide from the doc site. Skim what you don't understand, but be aware of the contents and be prepared to go back to them. These are your survival guides for all Oracle issues. All the other documentation simply expands on these two manuals. (But they are tough reading, thus recommendation #1)

4) Download the free software that is relevant to your case. This is the same as the version you get on CD - no features missing, no time bombs. You just don't have access to support and patches,

5) Get Support, including knowledge base (Metalink) but having at least one valid license. The least expensive database license is 'Personal Edition' which was originally created to license developers individually, thus giving an inexpensive access to support and media for them.

6) Realize that the license is a 'right to use the software in specific conditions'. Oracle has 3 different licenses: developer (the one you get with the download); trial (through Oracle sales, limited to 30 days, permits support); production (perpetual or term, permits support to be purchased).

7) Get the right licenses for your needs. Standard One is very inexpensive, gives a lot of functionality, limited to 2 CPUs; Standard has same functionality as Standard One but limited to a total of 4 CPUs (which may be on multiple machines, so it also includes Oracle's RAC - DB cluster); Enterprise is the most capable, but if you don't understand it, it can seem very expensive as you could end up reinventing or purchasing a lot of duplicate functionalty.

8) Check resources like http://orafaq.com for more advice, and for info - how to post here and which newsgroups to use.

HTH
/Hans

-- 
Hans Forbrich                           
Canada-wide Oracle training and consulting
mailto: Fuzzy.GreyBeard_at_gmail.com   
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