This chapter moves deeper into the administration and management of Oracle Application Server 10g as we start to look at management of the infrastructure. The Application Server 10g  infrastructure is the heart of the Application Server 10g farm and is the central metadata repository for many critical application components. While many administrators limit their definition of the infrastructure to the metadata database (often referred to as the iasdb instance), the infrastructure consists of much more. In this chapter, we will examine the metadata repository (iasdb), the Single Sign-On (SSO) security framework, and the Oracle Application Server 10g Management Services:

• Repository The Application Server 10g metadata repository (the iasdb database) contains important configuration and usage information for all Application Server 10g components. In addition to iasdb, the Oracle LDAP server (Oracle Internet Directory, OID) provides nondatabase information for use by Application Server 10g components.

• Security Oracle SSO provides centralized security control across all Application Server 10g instances. This removes the need to manage each component independently and provides a simple, centralized security system.

• Management Services The Application Server 10g OEM console screens provide complete administrative facilities for all farms, clusters, instances, and components. Virtually every management task can now be done using the OEM console.

In Application Server 10g, you can use the enhanced Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) tool to administer the infrastructure components. As an Application Server 10g administrator, it is your job to become familiar with all of these components. Of course, your shop may not have some of the optional components, such as Single Sign-On, but it is imperative that you understand how these infrastructure tools communicate with each other to provide the administrative framework for Application Server 10g.

Let’s begin with an overview of the repository data structures.