What you need to know about Oracle Database Architecture and Features
By Rick Greenwald, Robert Stackowiak and Jonathan Stern
ISBN: 0596005857
Pages: 375
Publisher: O’Reilly
Topic: Oracle DBA
Rating: 
– (3 out of 5)
Oracle Essentials – Oracle Database 10g – 3rd Edition
What you need to know about Oracle Database Archicture and Features
This book concentrates on the Oracle architecture itself and the key database concepts and is not a programming book in any way. The content of the book covers all versions of Oracle including Oracle 8i, 9i and 10g. So if you are looking for a book that gives you an overall in depth look at Oracle, then this book is for you.
Components of the database are discussed, along with how to install Oracle, managing Oracle, Multiuser concurrency, Transaction Processing, data warehousing, distributed databases and Oracle Hardware Architecture.
The chapters that really stand out for me are the chapters on Oracle Performance which covers areas such as how to get the most out of your Oracle system and discussions on RAID technology. This chapter also covers how Oracle uses the SGA, Shared Pool and the Program Global Area.
The second chapter I enjoyed was on Oracle High Availability, which is very important when a lot of databases now have to run 24/7. This chapter includes details on protecting against system crashes and the use of Real Application Clusters.
Oracle Essentials also covers the new features of Oracle 10g such as the new flashback query features, SQL tuning advisor, segment advisor, big files, theAutomatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM), Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and the Automated Workload Respository (AWR).
Overall a very interesting read, which provides a good thorough grounding of the overview and architecture of Oracle.