OracleOracle is the most widely used database in the world. It runs on virtually every kind of computer, from PCs and Macintoshes, to minicomputers and large mainframes. It functions virtually identically on all these machines, and is an object-relational database.
‘Relational’, in this sense, means literally that the data in the database are organized such that as the data is classified and grouped in independent tables it retains a relationship between tables.
Oracle was the first company to release a product that uses the English-based Structure Query Language (SQL), and has developed an extremely powerfully procedural language called ‘PL/SQL.
Oracle has an Enterprise Manager as a comprehensive system management framework that is built to internet standards. It provides a robust console, a rich set of tools, and the ability to detect, solve, and simplify the full range of problems that can arise in any managed environment. You can use Enterprise Manager to manage a wide range of targets in addition to Oracle databases: web servers, application servers, applications, Microsoft SQL Server, etc.
Enterprise Manager allows you to administer your environment from any location via a Web browser, and offers a variety of integrated applications that perform a wide range of management tasks.
Projects
The majority of the project that are summarized in this web site were built as front-ends to Oracle databases.Relational databases such as Oracle provide advantages in flexibility, scalability, and performance. Oracle is ideal in that it can work with extremely large volumes of data and can be finely tuned. It can be used for transactional systems (OLTP), data warehouses and ROLAP structures. Management reporting, decision support systems, and executive information systems are quite commonly made with Oracle as the relational systems.
W&P has a lot of experience in the database design area and we try to leverage this experience in our projects. The ideal situation is to perform an analysis of the business process and to build the database from scratch so that we can guarantee consistency and security of the data. This is of particular importance when bringing together data from various different sources.
We place focus on several characteristics such as flexibility of the design, a security concept for the data model, data structures that deliver optimal performance and documentation using standard tools for database analysis, design and development.
We always recommend the use of “Hard Security” because it is easier to implement, maintain and more effective. Basically this involves creating the security on the data access directly in the database through one of several methods: a) using views and database session parameters that are user dependent b) using Oracle’s inherent fine grained access control mechanisms c) a combination of the two previous methods. The advantage of doing so is that independent of what method an end user chooses to access the data, the access right are always enforced. The moment that any part of the security is placed in the application you have the situation that when a user accesses the data from another application or tool, the security concept is no longer enforced. Another clear advantage is that developing and maintaining the security concept in the database is considerably simpler than doing so in the application where a lot of development overhead is then created. In other words, by doing so, it doesn’t matter which reporting tool you use.
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Copyright: Williams & Partner, 2003
