Using Oracle-Supplied Utilities - Administration

You can navigate to all Oracle-supplied tools from the home page.Figure 28-7 shows the first- and second-level navigation hierarchy forthe tools. In the following sections, we give you a brief overview ofthe tools and where we will cover these tools in more depth later inthis book.

Figure 28-7.  Oracle Database XE home page tool menu hierarchy

Administration

The following are the tools available when you click theAdministration icon:

Storage: Monitor the amount of disk storage your applicationsuse. You can have up to 4GB of user data, and up to 1GB of system data,for a total of 5GB. The system data does not include space allocated fortemporary and rollback storage.

Memory: Monitor main memory, similar to the Storage tool. Thesum of all memory structures allocated for Oracle cannot exceed 1GB.

Database Users: Search, create, modify, and drop useraccounts. Grant and revoke privileges and roles for user accounts.

Monitor: Monitor user and system connections as well asdisconnect users, system statistics, most frequently executed SQLstatements, and SQL statements that have been running for more than sixseconds (wall clock time).

About Database: View version information, system settings,language settings, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) environment settings,and system parameters. We provide an overview of system parametersearlier in this chapter in the section “Initialization Parameters.”

Object Browser

The Object Browser icon, as the name implies, makes it easy for youto view the characteristics of all types of database objects: tables,views, indexes, packages, procedures, functions, and so forth. Inaddition, you can create these objects on the same page.

SQL

From the SQL icon, you can run ad hoc queries, manage SQL scripts(more than one SQL command), and build queries with multiple tablesusing a graphical representation of the tables and their columns.

Utilities

The Utilities icon accounts for more than half of the tools availablein the Web interface. When you click this icon, you see four new icons:Data Load/Unload, Generate DDL, Object Reports, and Recycle Bin.

Data Load/Unload

It’s unlikely that you have a homogeneous environment where all of yourdata is stored in an Oracle database (and no other brand of database)and no one uses spreadsheets or text files. As a result, you need thecapability to import and export data in a variety of formats. On theData Load/Unload page, you can load data into the database from textfiles, spreadsheets, or XML documents. To transfer the data in yourdatabase to another site that, for example, can only accept text or XMLfiles for import, you can export one or more of your database tablesinto a number of text formats and XML. We cover importing and exportingOracle data in more depth in Chapter 39.

Generate DDL

You may have a need to create your tables in another database that isnot directly accessible from your database. You can use the Generate DDLicon to export the data-definition language (DDL) commands for one ormore object types in a selected schema. You can selectively include orexclude generating the commands to create tables, indexes, functions,views, synonyms, and so forth.

Object Reports

The Object Reports icon facilitates reporting on all types of databaseobjects: tables, PL/SQL components, security objects, and datadictionary views. We dive into views, both user views and datadictionary views, in Chapter 34. The reporting tools available don’tmerely list the columns and datatypes of tables; they give you an easyway to identify objects that may need your attention. For example, youcan retrieve a list of tables without primary keys and indexes. Tableswithout primary keys or indexes will most likely cause some kind ofperformance problem in your database, especially if the table is largeor your users access only a small subset of the rows in a table in theirqueries.

Recycle Bin

The database recycle bin operates much like the Recycle Bin on a Windowsor Linux desktop: the object is logically deleted but still residessomewhere on disk if there is enough disk space available to maintainsome of the deleted objects. The Recycle Bin icon provides you with thecapability to browse and restore dropped database objects or to emptythe recycle bin.

Application Builder

As the name implies, the Application Builder makes it easy for yourdevelopers to create Web-enabled applications that use the database forthe application’s data. Clicking the down arrow next to the ApplicationBuilder icon gives you access to three sample applications that covermost of the key features available with Application Builder. The entireOracle Database XE Web application environment is an Application Builderapplication.

Note The Application Builder icon shows up for all usersexcept forSYS andSYSTEM, even if the user has been granted system privileges.