Few, if any, concepts are as important to the proper administration of an Oracle database as the concept of networking. Connectivity—the ability to make connections between clients and databases, as well as between databases—has been a key component of Oracle for over a decade. While some of the terminology and technology has changed, the need for a clear understanding of networking and how it functions with the Oracle framework is at least as critical today as it was when client/server was a brand new buzzword.

This chapter discusses networking and how it relates to Oracle. It also shows you the tools Oracle provides for managing its networking components and lays out the networking capabilities of the modern Oracle database.