Chapter 1, introduces database administration and the typical tasks performed by a DBA, and presents a basic introduction to the Oracle architecture and options. It also provides an overview of configuration planning.

Chapter 2, summarizes the operations you will need to perform to install the Oracle product and start up the database.

Chapter 3, presents basic information about operating system and Oracle configuration, object sizing, and tuning.

Chapter 4, describes your options for backing up and recovering an Oracle database.

Chapter 5, discusses the Oracle network architecture, summarizes the characteristics of the major networking products, and provides configuration and troubleshooting information for the SQL*Net (Net8 for Oracle8) product.

Chapter 6, provides a brief discussion of two particularly important aspects of Oracle database administration: security and monitoring.

Chapter 7, describes how auditing works in the Oracle database and presents the statements and options you can use to enforce your organization’s auditing policy.

Chapter 8, describes the two Oracle optimizers (cost-based optimizer and rule-based optimizer), how they work on queries, and how you can affect their operation by specifying optimizer hints.

Chapter 9, describes the basic Oracle tools that a DBA will use most frequently: SQL*Plus, Oracle Server Manager, SQLDBA, Oracle Network Manager, SQL*Loader, and Oracle Enterprise Manager.