It contains chapters on: Oracle products, options, data structures, and overall architecture for Oracle Database 11g, as well as earlier releases (Oracle Database 10g, Oracle9i, and Oracle8i) Installing, running, managing, monitoring, networking, and tuning Oracle, including Enterprise Manager (EM) and Oracle self-tuning and management capabilities, and using Oracle security, auditing, and compliance (a new chapter in this edition) multiuser concurrency, data warehouses, distributed databases, online transaction processing (OLTP), high availability, and hardware architecture (eg , SMP, clusters, NUMA, and grid computing) Features beyond the Oracle database: Oracle Application Express, Fusion Middleware (including Oracle Application Server), and database SOA support as a Web service provider latest Oracle Database 11g features: query result set caching, Automatic Memory Management, Real Application Testing, Advanced Compression, Total Recall, and Active Data Guard Option Options, changes to the OLAP Option (transparently accessed and managed as materialized views), Flashback transaction command, transparent data encryption, Support Workbench (and diagnosability infrastructure), and additional partition (including interval and new composite types) For new Oracle users, DBAs, developers, and managers, Oracle Essentials provides invaluable, all-in-one introduction to Oracle features and technologies, including Oracle Database 11g release only features. But even if you already have a library full of Oracle documentation, you will find that this compact book is that you turn back, again and again, as one-stop, truly essential reference. "Oracle Essentials provides an explanation of key concepts and database architecture underlying the Oracle database. This great reference for anyone doing development or management of Oracle databases." - Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Database Server Technologies, Oracle Corporation