Database Reference
In-Depth Information
DBCA and OEM are complimentary products; the former is particularly useful for
database creation and initial configuration; the latter is extremely helpful during database
administration and monitoring.
16.2.7 Oracle Warehouse Builder
The Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) is comprised of a number of components that
facilitate the construction and management of a data warehouse environment. You will
learn more about data warehousing in chapter 24. For now, you may consider a data
warehouse as a database consisting of read-only information obtained by extracting,
aggregating, and possibly reformatting data from multiple source databases. With OWB,
you can construct a simple data warehouse for a set of departmental databases, as well as
a complex data warehouse for an entire enterprise or group of enterprises.
16.3 Shortcomings of Oracle
Oracle, despite its apparent monopoly on the industry, has a few significant
shortcomings, primarily in the area of its user interface:
SQL Environment: The standard SQL environment provided through SQL *Plus
is unfortunately not graphical, but command-based. This means that the developer
has to memorize SQL syntax rules in order to be productive. Out of recognition of this
shortcoming, Oracle provides three complimentary alternatives to SQL *Plus — DBCA,
OEM, and Oracle SQL Developer (OSQLD).
Oracle Forms Developer: In earlier versions of Oracle Forms Developer (OFD), the
user interface needed improvement. Direct manipulation was not always provided in an
elegant manner. Case in point: when an object was created on a form:
The user had to access the Property Palette in order to change
certain attributes about the object. The problem was, changes
made on the Property Palette were not always obvious to the user
(e.g. color scheme selection).
The user had to constantly switch among Object Navigator, Layout
Editor and Property Palette. Although the three perspectives were
automatically connected, the process of constant switching was
counter-productive.
Form Builder was not as easy to learn as equivalent components
in other products.
At the time of writing, these problems were not thoroughly checked in OFD 11G.
However, it is hoped that they have been corrected in this new version. Moreover, the
introduction of Oracle JDeveloper (OJD) in Oracle 10G, as an alternative to earlier
versions of OFD, has effectively circumvented these problems, since such problems do
not exist in OJD.
PL/SQL Support: Like SQL support, Oracle's support of its own PL/SQL is somewhat
lacking: no GUI or interactive command prompt. The developer has to memorize PL/SQL
command syntax, and there are no context sensitive prompts to help.
 
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