Oracle Design: The Definitive Guide

by Ian Stevenson, Ian Stevenson

Oracle Design looks thoroughly at the field of Oracle relational database design. The design of both databases and applications is an often neglected area of Oracle, but one that has an enormous impact on the ultimate power and performance of a system. If the initial design is poor, then the most powerful hardware, the most sophisticated software tools, and the most highly tuned data and programs won't make your system run smoothly and efficiently. Indeed, applications that have been designed poorly will never be able to perform well, regardless of the tuning and retrofitting performed later on. There are three main areas of Oracle This book examines all aspects of database and code design. Part I examines the project life cycle and where design fits in that cycle; it shows a sample case study, identifies the areas of Oracle7 that are of particular interest to designers, takes a look ahead at Oracle8, and provides an in-depth discussion of data modeling (e.g., entities, relationships, attributes, entity models, function hierarchies). Part II describes design issues for the database itself -- denormalization, data types, keys, indexes, temporal data, import/export, backup, recovery, security, and more. Part III explores design issues for specific architectures and environments -- client/server, distributed database, data warehouses, and parallel processing. Part IV describes design issues for the code that accesses the database -- metrics and prototypes, locking, the toolset, design of screens, reports, batch programs, etc. Part V contains summary appendixes. The table of contents Part Getting Started with Design Part Designing the Database Part Designing for Specific Architectures Part Designing the Code Modules Part Appendixes

548 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

About the author

Ian Pretyman Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born U.S. psychiatrist. He worked for the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years, as chair of the department of psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death.

As founder and director of the university's Division of Perceptual Studies, which investigates the paranormal, Stevenson became known internationally for his research into reincarnation, the idea that emotions, memories, and even physical injuries in the form of birthmarks, can be transferred from one life to another. He traveled extensively over a period of forty years, investigating three thousand cases of children around the world who claimed to remember past lives. His position was that certain phobias, philias, unusual abilities and illnesses could not be fully explained by heredity or the environment. He believed that reincarnation provided a third type of explanation.