The client/server revolution provided a much better user interface and reduced the
cost of hardware and software, but it also introduced additional complexity in systems
development, management, and deployment. After a decade of use, system
administrators were being slowly overwhelmed by the task of managing thousands of
client machines and dozens of servers, so the latter half of the 1990s saw a return to
centralization, including the grid (introduced in Chapter 1). Throughout all of these
shifts, Oracle databases have continued to use their inherent architecture and constant
enhancements to service the ever-growing load of transactions.
This chapter looks at all of the features of the Oracle database that contribute to its
ability to handle large transaction loads. Although many of the specific features covered
in this chapter are touched upon in other chapters of this book, this chapter
examines all of these features in light of their use in large OLTP systems.
OLTP Basics
Before we discuss how Oracle specifically handles OLTP, we??™ll start by presenting a
common definition of online transaction processing.
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