11/29/2010 THE ORACLE 10g ARCHITECTURE

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THE ORACLE 10g ARCHITECTURE

June 15th, 2008 by uCertify Leave a reply

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With the advent of so many big enterprises, the need to create a more sophisticated DBMS has also increased. For appointment as a DBA, a high level of
skill and expertise is required. The major tasks that should be performed by a DBA are as follows:

Judging what server hardware will be required to run the Oracle 10g database software
Installing and configuring the Oracle 10g database software on the server hardware
Creating a database and managing tables and other database objects
Creating and managing database users
Configuring backup and recovery processes for the database
Monitoring and tuning the database performance

Now, the point is how a DBA can perform the above-mentioned tasks. To perform all these tasks in an efficient manner, a DBA must be very well versed
with the underlying Oracle architecture.

The Oracle server architecture

The Oracle server architecture is basically categorized as follows:

Logical layer
Physical layer

The logical layer comprises one or more tablespaces and the database schema. The database schema consists of tables, clusters, indexes, views,
procedures, triggers [http://www.ucertify.com/article/triggers.html] , sequences, and so on. The database schema is a collection of schema objects.

The relationship between segments, extents, and data blocks

The hierarchy of Oracle disk-space management is as follows:

Tablespaces: These are at the highest level of Oracle disk-space management.

Segments
Extents
Data blocks: These are at the lowest level of Oracle disk-space management.

The figure below depicts the relationship between segments, extents, and data blocks:

The physical layer comprises the following files:

The control file: Though it is the smallest file (1MB-5MB) of the database, it is the most crucial and critical file. The criticality of this file is ascribed to
the fact that if it is damaged then the database recovery operation becomes tedious. It contains the requisite information to start the database. The
names and locations of all the control files of the database can be obtained from the V$CONTROLFILE dynamic performance view.
Data files: These hold data that is stored in tables of a database. They are usually the largest files in the database, ranging in size from MB, GB, to TB.
Redo Log files: These files contain information that helps in recovery in the event of system failure. It contains information stored in the Redo Log
Buffer. The information in the Redo Log Buffer is written into Redo Log files by the LGWR background process. The Redo Log files are generally

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multiplexed and copied for recovery purposes. Sets of redo Log files are known as Redo Log groups. Each database has minimum of two Redo Log
groups. Redo Log groups are used in a circular fashion.

The figure below depicts the use of Redo Log files in circular fashion:

The figure above shows three Redo Log groups. Each group consists of two members. The first member of each Redo Log group is stored in directory D1
and the second member is stored in directory D2.

Note:

1. The V$LOGFILE dynamic performance view is used to obtain information about the names and locations of the Redo Log groups and their members.
2. LGWR writes every three seconds to a Redo Log group in the case of the following events:
Whenever a user commits a transaction
Whenever the Redo Log Buffer is one-third (1/3) full

The Oracle memory structure

The most basic components of Oracle memory are:

SGA- It stands for System Global Area. SGA is allocated whenever an Oracle instance starts and gets de-allocated when the Oracle instance is
shutdown.

Components of SGA:

The Database Buffer Cache

The Redo Log Buffer
The Shared Pool

PGA- It stands for Program Global Area. It is a region in memory that contains data and control information for a single process. This can be either a
server or a background process. A PGA is allocated whenever an Oracle database user connects to a database and a session is created for him/her.

Oracle processes

There are two categories of processes that run with an Oracle database. They are mentioned below:

User processes
System processes

The following figure illustrates the relationship between user processes, server processes, PGA, and session:

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The first interaction with the Oracle-based application comes from the user computer that creates a user process. The user process then communicates
with the server process on the host computer. Here, PGA is used to store session specific information.

Oracle background processes

Oracle has a large number of background processes. The background processes are categorized into:

Required Oracle background processes

Optional Oracle background processes

Some of the background processes are:

1. DBWR It writes data blocks from SGA to data files.

2. LGWR It writes data from the Log Buffer to the redo log.
3. CKPT It timestamps all the data files and the control files whenever a checkpoint occurs.
4. PMON It stands for process monitor. It keeps track of database processes. It also cleans up the process that has died pre-maturely. The result is
that all the cache and the resources are freed up. It also restarts those dispatcher processes that might have failed.
Some of the main functions of background processes are:

Communication among Oracle instances

Performing computer maintenance
Writing the dirty blocks to disk

5. SMON It stands for system monitor. It performs instance recovery at instance startup.

The following figure depicts the Oracle Architecture in detail:

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The figure above shows various components of SGA, Oracle background processes, and their interactions with control files, data files, Redo Log files, and
archived redo logs.

The Oracle instance

The Oracle instance consists of SGA and all the Oracle background processes. To manage the size of SGA, two initialization parameter files known as
PFILE and SPFILE are used. There are a total of 250-initialization parameters. PFILE holds 30 of those 250 initialization parameters. Oracle does not
recommend modifying the rest of the 220 initialization parameters.

This article has described the various facts involved in order to understand the underlying Oracle architecture. After reviewing this article, the database user
is now well equipped to understand several components of Oracle architecture.

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17 comments Add your comment

KK No v em ber 24, 2009 at 1:09 pm

Good Article. simple and cryspy but it has got maximum information

bose January 8, 2010 at 10:36 am

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Its a very useful notes.. thank u very much..

Sridhar April 19, 2010 at 12:56 am

Nice one .

Gopal Tandon July 12, 2010 at 12:21 am

Nice & easy for starter and refreshing

vineeth July 19, 2010 at 1:17 am

some what brief description is to be given about this

here the concepts of the oracle database architechture are redolog files,temp table space,undo table space,user data table space,control files..
if not then what are this for and why this are used

vineeth July 19, 2010 at 1:19 am

also in the architechture of oracle data base

the two default files are used namely system.dbf,and sysaux.dbf

give the brief description of the default files

rajini July 21, 2010 at 1:10 am

This is a very good article for understanding oracle architecture.

Thanks for publishing this.

Smile,
Rajini

ASR July 27, 2010 at 1:26 am

simple and nice artical..

shiyas July 29, 2010 at 2:39 am

Its very good presentation..very usefull for learners

Babu Augus t 2, 2010 at 11:56 pm

excellent.Thank Q very much

Babu Augus t 2, 2010 at 11:57 pm

can u provide information about RM AN backup

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Jayanth Augus t 10, 2010 at 3:49 am

PM ON does not write dirty blocks to disk. It cleans up the resources when ever the session gets killed/closed. DBWR is responsible to write the blocks into the disk from
Buffer Cache.

Ram ( Oracle DBA ) Augus t 11, 2010 at 12:52 pm

Ver good document !! and essy to understand.

Anka Babu Augus t 12, 2010 at 2:39 pm

Very nice and can you give me the example with query,i mean how it works internally

Hemant Augus t 13, 2010 at 6:46 am

Nice article.

Rajender Reddy Augus t 16, 2010 at 8:43 am

Good One.

jenish Augus t 30, 2010 at 2:15 am

nice man just rocking

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