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    What Is An Oracle Database

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    Aditya Jain
    There are two main components of an Oracle database - the instance and the database. The instance consists of memory structures and background processes, while the database refers to disk resources. The memory structures include the system global area (SGA) and program global area (PGA). The SGA contains components like the buffer cache, shared pool, and redo log buffer. The database is divided into logical structures like tablespaces, segments, extents and data blocks as well as physical structures including datafiles, redo log files and control files that are stored on disk.

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    What Is An Oracle Database

    Uploaded by

    Aditya Jain
    46 views5 pages
    There are two main components of an Oracle database - the instance and the database. The instance consists of memory structures and background processes, while the database refers to disk resources. The memory structures include the system global area (SGA) and program global area (PGA). The SGA contains components like the buffer cache, shared pool, and redo log buffer. The database is divided into logical structures like tablespaces, segments, extents and data blocks as well as physical structures including datafiles, redo log files and control files that are stored on disk.

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    What is an Oracle Database

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    There are two main components of an Oracle database - the instance and the database. The instance consists of memory structures and background processes, while the database refers to disk resources. The memory structures include the system global area (SGA) and program global area (PGA). The SGA contains components like the buffer cache, shared pool, and redo log buffer. The database is divided into logical structures like tablespaces, segments, extents and data blocks as well as physical structures including datafiles, redo log files and control files that are stored on disk.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    46 views5 pages

    What Is An Oracle Database

    Uploaded by

    Aditya Jain
    There are two main components of an Oracle database - the instance and the database. The instance consists of memory structures and background processes, while the database refers to disk resources. The memory structures include the system global area (SGA) and program global area (PGA). The SGA contains components like the buffer cache, shared pool, and redo log buffer. The database is divided into logical structures like tablespaces, segments, extents and data blocks as well as physical structures including datafiles, redo log files and control files that are stored on disk.

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    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
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    What is An Oracle Database?

    Basically, there are two main components of Oracle database instance and database itself. An instance consists of some memory structures and the background processes, whereas a database refers to the disk resources. Figure 1 will show you the relationship.

    Figure 1. Two main components of Oracle database

    Instance
    As we cover above, the memory structures and background processes contitute an instance. The memory structure itself consists of System Global Area (SGA), Program Global Area (PGA), and an optional area Software Area Code. In the other hand, the mandatory background processes are Database Writer (DBWn), Log Writer (LGWR), Checkpoint (CKPT), System Monitor (SMON), and Process Monitor (PMON). And another optional background processes are Archiver (ARCn), Recoverer (RECO), etc. Figure 2 will illustrate the relationship for those components on an instance.

    Figure 2. The instance components

    System Global Area


    SGA is the primary memory structures. When Oracle DBAs talk about memory, they usually mean the SGA. This area is broken into a few of part memory Buffer Cache, Shared Pool, Redo Log Buffer, Large Pool, and Java Pool. Buffer Cache Buffer cache is used to stores the copies of data block that retrieved from datafiles. That is, when user retrieves data from database, the data will be stored in buffer cache. Its size can be manipulated via DB_CACHE_SIZE parameter in init.ora initialization parameter file. Shared Pool Shared pool is broken into two small part memories Library Cache and Dictionary Cache. The library cache is used to stores information about the commonly used SQL and PL/SQL statements; and is managed by a Least Recently Used (LRU) algorithm. It is also enables the sharing those statemens among users. In the other hand, dictionary cache is used to stores information about object definitions in the database, such as columns, tables, indexes, users, privileges, etc. The shared pool size can be set via SHARED_POOL_SIZE parameter in init.ora initialization parameter file. Redo Log Buffer Each DML statement (insert, update, and delete) executed by users will generates the redo entry. What is a redo entry? It is an information about all data changes made by users. That redo entry is stored in redo log buffer before it is written into the redo log files. To manipulate the size of redo log buffer, you can use the LOG_BUFFER parameter in init.ora initialization parameter file. Large Pool Large pool is an optional area of memory in the SGA. It is used to relieves the burden place on the shared pool. It is also used for I/O processes. The large pool size can be set by LARGE_POOL_SIZE parameter in init.ora initialization parameter file. Java Pool As its name, Java pool is used to services parsing of the Java commands. Its size can be set by JAVA_POOL_SIZE parameter in init.ora initialization parameter file.

    Program Global Area


    Although the result of SQL statemen parsing is stored in library cache, but the value of binding variable will be stored in PGA. Why? Because it must be private or not be shared among users. The PGA is also used for sort area.

    Software Area Code


    Software area code is a location in memory where the Oracle application software resides.

    Oracle Background Processes


    Oracle background processes is the processes behind the scene that work together with the memories. DBWn Database writer (DBWn) process is used to write data from buffer cache into the datafiles. Historically, the database writer is named DBWR. But since some of Oracle version allows us to

    have more than one database writer, the name is changed to DBWn, where n value is a number 0 to 9. LGWR Log writer (LGWR) process is similar to DBWn. It writes the redo entries from redo log buffer into the redo log files. CKPT Checkpoint (CKPT) is a process to give a signal to DBWn to writes data in the buffer cache into datafiles. It will also updates datafiles and control files header when log file switch occurs. SMON System Monitor (SMON) process is used to recover the system crach or instance failure by applying the entries in the redo log files to the datafiles. PMON Process Monitor (PMON) process is used to clean up work after failed processes by rolling back the transactions and releasing other resources.

    Database
    The database refers to disk resources, and is broken into two main structures Logical structures and Physical structures.

    Logical Structures
    Oracle database is divided into smaller logical units to manage, store, and retrieve data effeciently. The logical units are tablespace, segment, extent, and data block. Figure 3 will illustrate the relationships between those units.

    Figure 3. The relationships between the Oracle logical structures Tablespace A Tablespace is a grouping logical database objects. A database must have one or more tablespaces. In the Figure 3, we have three tablespaces SYSTEM tablespace, Tablespace 1, and Tablespace 2. Tablespace is composed by one or more datafiles. Segment A Tablespace is further broken into segments. A segment is used to stores same type of objects. That is, every table in the database will store into a specific segment (named Data Segment) and every index in the database will also store in its own segment (named Index Segment). The other segment types are Temporary Segment and Rollback Segment. Extent A segment is further broken into extents. An extent consists of one or more data block. When the database object is enlarged, an extent will be allocated. Unlike a tablespace or a segment, an extent cannot be named. Data Block A data block is the smallest unit of storage in the Oracle database. The data block size is a specific number of bytes within tablespace and it has the same number of bytes.

    Physical Structures

    The physical structures are structures of an Oracle database (in this case the disk files) that are not directly manipulated by users. The physical structure consists of datafiles, redo log files, and control files. Datafiles A datafile is a file that correspondens with a tablespace. One datafile can be used by one tablespace, but one tablespace can has more than one datafiles. Redo Log Files Redo log files are the files that store the redo entries generated by DML statements. It can be used for recovery processes. Control Files Control files are used to store information about physical structure of database, such as datafiles size and location, redo log files location, etc.

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