Pass1000!

Critical to the concept of Grid computing is virtualization. This means that at all levels there is a layer of abstraction between what is requested and what is provided. End users ask for an application service and let the Grid work out which clustered J2EE application server can best provide it. Application servers ask for a database service and let the Grid work out from which RAC node the data can best be served. Within the Grid there is a mapping of possible services to available service providers, and there are algorithms for assigning the workload and resources appropriately. The result is that end users have neither the need nor the capacity to know from where their computing resources are actually being provided. The analogy often drawn is with delivery of domestic electricity: it is supplied on demand, and the home owner has no way of telling which power station is currently supplying him.
The Grid is not exclusive to Oracle. At the physical level, some operating system and hardware vendors are providing Grid-like capabilities. These include the ability to partition servers into virtual machines and dynamically add or remove CPU(s) and RAM from the virtual machines according to demand. This is conceptually similar to Oracle’s approach of dynamically assigning application server and database server resources to logical services. There is no reason why the two approaches cannot be combined. Both are working toward the same goal and can work together. The result should be an environment where adequate resources are always available on demand, without facing the issues of excess capacity at some times and under-performance at others. It should also be possible to design a Grid environment with no single point of failure, thus achieving the goal of 100 percent uptime that is being demanded by many users.
The SQL application developer need not know how the Grid has been implemented. The SQL will be invoked from an application server and executed by an instance against a database: the Grid will take care of making sure that at any moment pools of application servers and instances sized appropriately for the current workload are available.

The increasing size and complexity of IT installations makes management a challenging task. This is hardly surprising: no one ever said that managing a powerful environment should necessarily be simple. However, management tools can make the task easier and the management staff more productive.
Oracle Enterprise Manager comes in three forms:
Database Control
Application Server Control
Grid Control
Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control is a graphical tool for managing one database, which may be a RAC clustered database. It consists of a Java process running on the database server machine. Administrators connect to Database Control from a browser, and Database Control then connects to the database server.
Database Control has facilities for real-time management and monitoring, running scheduled jobs, and reporting alert conditions interactively and through e-mail. Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control is a graphical tool for managing one application server instance or a group of instances. The grouping technology is dependent on the version. Up to Oracle Application Server 10g release 2, multiple application servers were managed as a “farm,” with a metadata repository (typically residing in an Oracle database) as the central management point. From release 3 onward, the technology is based on J2EE clustering, which is not proprietary to Oracle.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control globalizes the management environment. A management repository (residing in an Oracle database) and one or more management servers manage the complete environment: all the databases and application servers, wherever they may be. Grid Control can also manage the nodes, or machines, on which the servers run, as well as (through plug-ins) a wide range of third-party products. Each managed node runs an agent process, which is responsible for monitoring the managed target on the node: executing jobs against them and reporting status, activity levels, and alert conditions back to the management server(s).
Grid Control gives a holistic view of the environment and, if well configured, makes administration staff far more productive than they are without it. It becomes possible for one administrator to manage effectively hundreds of targets.

With the emergence of the Web as the standard communications platform for delivering applications to end users has come the need for application servers. An application server replaces the client-side software traditionally installed on enduser terminals; it runs applications centrally, presenting them to users in windows displayed locally in web browsers. The applications make use of data stored in one or more database servers.
The Oracle Application Server is a platform for developing, deploying, and managing web applications. A web application can be defined as any application with which users communicate with HTTP. Web applications usually run in at least three tiers: a database tier manages access to the data, the client tier (often implemented as a web browser) handles the local window management for communications with the users, and an application tier in the middle executes the program logic that generates the user interface and the SQL calls to the database.

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Web applications can be developed with a number of technologies, predominant among which is Java. Applications written in Java should conform to the J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) standard, which defines how such applications should be packaged and deployed. J2EE and related standards are controlled by Sun Microsystems and accepted by virtually all software developers. Oracle Application Server is a J2EE-compliant application server. Oracle’s implementation of the standards allows for automatic load balancing and fault tolerance across multiple application servers on multiple machines though J2EE clustering. Clustering virtualizes the provision of the application service; users ask for an application that might be available from a number of locations, and the cluster works out from where any one session or request can best be serviced. If one location fails, others will take up the load, and more resources can be made available to an application as necessary.
The ability to separate the request for a service from the location of its provision and to add or remove J2EE servers from a cluster dynamically is a major part of the Oracle Application Server’s contribution to the Grid.
It is important to note that Oracle’s commitment to international standards is very strong. Applications running in the Oracle Application Server environment can connect to any database for which there are Java-compliant drivers; it is not necessary to use an Oracle database. Applications developed with the Oracle Application Server toolkits can be deployed to a third-party J2EE-compliant application server.
The simplest processing model of web applications is three tier: a client tier that manages the user interface; a middle tier that generates the interface and issues SQL statements to the data tier; and a data tier that manages the data itself. In the Oracle environment, the client tier will be a browser (such as Mozilla or Microsoft Internet Explorer) that handles local window management, controls the keyboard, and tracks mouse movements. The middle tier will be an Oracle Application Server running the software (probably written in Java) that generates the windows sent to the client tier for display and the SQL statements sent to the data tier for execution. The data tier will be an Oracle server: an instance and a database. In this three-tier environment, there are two types of sessions: end-user sessions from the client tier to the middle tier, and database sessions from the middle tier to the data tier. The end-user sessions will be established with HTTP. The database sessions are client-server sessions onsisting of a user process and a server process, as described in the previous section.
It is possible for an application to use a one-for-one mapping of end-user session to database session: each user, from their browser, will establish a session against the application server, and the application server will then establish a session against the database server on the user’s behalf. However, this model has been proven to be very inefficient when compared to the connection pooling model. With connection pooling, the application server establishes a relatively small number of persistent database sessions and makes them available on demand (queuing requests if necessary) to a relatively large number of end-user sessions against the application server. Figure 1-2 illustrates the three-tier architecture using connection pooling.
From the point of view of the database, it makes no difference whether a SQL statement comes from a client-side process such as SQL*Plus or Microsoft Access or from a pooled session to an application server. In the former case, the user process all happens on one machine; in the latter, the user process has been divided into two tiers: an applications tier that generates the user interface and a client tier that displays it.

An Oracle database is a set of files on disk. It exists until these files are deliberately deleted. There are no practical limits to the size and number of these files, and therefore no practical limits to the size of a database. Access to the database is through the Oracle instance. The instance is a set of processes and memory structures: it exists on the CPU(s) and in the memory of the server node, and this existence is temporary. An instance can be started and stopped. Users of the database establish sessions against the instance, and the instance then manages all access to the database. It is absolutely impossible in the Oracle environment for any user to have direct contact with the database. An Oracle instance with an Oracle database makes up an Oracle server.
The processing model implemented by the Oracle server is that of client-server processing, often referred to as two-tier. In the client-server model, the generation of the user interface and much of the application logic is separated from the management of the data. For an application developed using SQL (as all relational database applications will be), this means that the client tier generates the SQL commands, and the server tier executes them. This is the basic client-server split, with (as a general rule) a local area network between the two sides. The network communications protocol used between the user process and the server process is Oracle’s proprietary protocol, Oracle Net.
The client tier consists of two components: the users and the user processes. The server tier has three components: the server processes that execute the SQL, the instance, and the database itself. Each user interacts with a user process. Each user process interacts with a server process, usually across a local area network. The server processes interact with the instance, and the instance with the database. Figure 1-1 shows this relationship diagrammatically. A session is a user process in communication with a server process. There will usually be one user process per user and one server process per user process. The user and server processes that make up sessions are launched on demand by users and terminated when no longer required; this is the log-on and log-off cycle. The instance processes and memory structures are launched by the database administrator and persist until the administrator deliberately terminates them; this is the database start-up and shut-down cycle.
The user process can be any client-side software that is capable of connecting to an Oracle server process. Throughout this book, two user processes will be used extensively: SQL*Plus and SQL Developer. These are simple processes provided by Oracle for establishing sessions against an Oracle server and issuing ad hoc SQL. A widely used alternative is TOAD (the Tool for Application Developers) from Quest Software, though this is licensed software and before using it one must always ensure that the license is legal. End-user applications will need to be written with something more sophisticated than these tools, something capable of managing windows, menus, proper onscreen dialogs, and so on. Such an application could be written with the Oracle Developer Suite products; with Microsoft Access linked to the Oracle ODBC drivers; with any third-generation language (such as C or Java) for which Oracle has provided a library of function calls that will let it interact with the server; or with any number of Oracle-cotible third-party tools. What the user process actually is does not matter to the Oracle server at all. When an end user fills in a form and clicks a Submit button, the user process will be generating an INSERT statement (detailed in Chapter 11) and sending it to a server process for execution against the instance and the database. As far as the server is concerned, the INSERT statement might just as well have been typed into SQL*Plus as what is known as ad hoc SQL.

Oracle Server

Never forget that all communication with an Oracle server follows this clientserver model. The separation of user code from server code dates back to the earliest releases of the database and is unavoidable. Even if the user process is running on the same machine as the server (as is the case if, for example, one is running a database on one’s own laptop PC for development or training purposes),the client-server split is still enforced, and network protocols are still used for the communications between the two processes. Applications running in an application server environment (described in the next section) also follow the client-server model for their database access.
The simplest form of the database server is one instance connected to one database, but in a more complex environment one database can be opened by many instances. This is known as a RAC (Real Application Cluster). RAC can bring many potential benefits, which may include scalability, performance, and zero downtime. The ability to add dynamically more instances running on more nodes to a database is a major part of the database’s contribution to the Grid.

There is a family of products that makes up the Oracle server technologies:
The Oracle Database
The Oracle Application Server
The Oracle Enterprise Manager
Various application development tools and languages
These products each have a position in the Oracle product set. The database is the repository for data and the engine that manages access to it. The Oracle Application Server runs software on behalf of end users: it generates the user interface in the form of windows displayed in users’ browsers and submits calls for data retrieval and modification to the database for execution. The Oracle Enterprise Manager is a comprehensive administration tool for monitoring, managing, and tuning the Oracle processes and also (through plug-ins) third-party products. Lastly, there are tools and languages for developing applications; either applications that
run on end users’ machines in the client-server model, or applications that run centrally on application servers.
The combination of the server technologies and the development tools make up a platform for application development and delivery that enables the Grid. The Grid is an approach to the delivery of IT services that maximizes the cost efficiency of the whole environment by delivering computing power from a pool of available resources to wherever it is needed, on demand.

The Oracle server technologies product set is more than a database. There is also the Oracle Application Server and the Oracle Enterprise Manager. Taken together, these are the server technologies that make up the Grid. Grid computing is an emerging environment for managing the complete IT environment and providing resources to users on demand.
The relational paradigm for database information management was first formalized in the late ‘60s and has been continually refined since. A paradigm is a set of standards agreed upon by all those involved that specifies how problems should be understood and addressed. There are other paradigms within the data processing world. The Oracle database is an implementation of a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that conforms to the relational paradigm, but it then goes beyond it to include some aspects of other paradigms such as hierarchical and object-oriented models.
Structured Query Language (SQL, pronounced “sequel”) is an international standard for managing data stored in relational databases. Oracle Database 11g offers an implementation of SQL that is generally compliant with the current standard, which is SQL-2003. Full details of the compliancy are in Appendix B of the SQL Language Reference, which is part of the Oracle Database Documentation Library. As a rule, compliancy can be assumed.
Throughout this book, two tools are used extensively for exercises: SQL*Plus and SQL Developer. These are tools that developers use every day in their work. The exercises and many of the examples are based on two emonstration sets of data, known as the HR and OE schemas. There are instructions on how to launch the tools and create the demonstration schemas, though you may need assistance from your local database administrator to get started.
This chapter consists of summarized descriptions of the Oracle Server Technologies; the concepts behind the relational paradigm and normalizing of data into relational structures; the SQL language; the client tools; and the demonstration schemas.

How to Prepare for OCA Oracle Database 11g 1Z0-051 Exam,Study and practice! Go through each chapter of the Exam 1Z0-051’s book, doing all the exercises and trying out further experiments. Make use of other resources if anything is still not clear: the Oracle Documentation Library (a free download from Oracle Corporation’s website) is essential reading. If you have the opportunity to attend an Oracle University course or have access to the Oracle University Self-paced Online courses, these may also be of value.
The example questions at the end of each chapter and on the Exam 1Z0-051 software are not copies of real OCA questions (because that would be fraudulent), but they are realistic examples of the types of question and the format of questions with which you will be faced. They cover all the examined material. The day before you sit the exam, it makes sense to go through them all, looking up any for which you do not know the answer.
This Exam 1Z0-051’s book is not intended to be just an exam crammer: it is intended to teach you how to develop applications with SQL. If you know how to do that, you will pass the exam. Do not memorize answers to questions—learn the techniques, principles, and syntax that will let you work out the answers to any question.
OCA Oracle Database 11g: SQL Fundamentals I Exam Guide (Exam 1Z0-051)

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1. Which  three statements correctly describe  the  feature of an OracleAS Cluster  (Web Cache) and  its members? (Choose three.)
A. The Web cache members communicate for invalidation and detection of new members within the Web cache cluster.
B. The cluster owns the cache contents and requests for the contents from the cluster members when the contents are requested.
C. The cluster uses the absolute capacity of each cache instance to distribute the cached content among the cache cluster members.
D. The Web cache cluster transfers the ownership of the cached content to another available member in an event of a member failure.
E. The cluster may store  the popular objects, known as on-demand content,  in  the cache of more  than one cluster member causing fewer requests being sent to the application Web server.�
Answer: ADE�
2. You are using a file-based repository for the OracleAS Cluster. Which statement is true regarding the participating instances?
A. The instances must be in the same node.
B. The instances should belong to different platforms.
C. The instances should be associated with OracleAS Metadata Repository.
D. The instances should not belong to the same OracleAS Farm as the cluster.
E. The instances should not be associated an OracleAS Farm which uses Database-based Repository.
Answer: E�
3. Which two statements correctly describe features of an OracleAS Cold Failover Cluster (Infrastructure) environment? (Choose two.)
A. The virtual IP address is associated with the active node.
B. Cluster nodes share a single storage device.
C. The OracleAS software is installed on all cluster nodes.
D. The OracleAS components run on all cluster nodes.
Answer: AB