Now in its second edition, this best-selling book by Tom Kyte of "Ask Tom" fame continues to bring you some of the best thinking on how to apply Oracle Database to produce scalable applications that perform well and deliver correct results. Tom has a simple philosophy: you can treat Oracle as a black box and just stick data into it or you can understand how it works and exploit it as a powerful computing environment. If you choose the latter, then you'll find that there are few information management problems that you cannot solve quickly and elegantly. This fully revised second edition covers the developments up to Oracle Database 11g. Each feature is taught in a proof-by-example manner, not only discussing what it is, but also how it works, how to implement software using it, and the common pitfalls associated with it. Don't treat Oracle Database as a black-box. Get this book. Get under the hood. Turbo-charge your career.* Fully revised to cover Oracle Database 11g * Proof-by-example approach: Let the evidence be your guide * Dives deeply into Oracle Databases's most powerful features What you'll learn * Develop an evidence-based approach to problem solving * Manage transactions in highly concurrent environments * Speed access to data through table and index design * Manage files and memory structures for performance and reliability * Scale up through partitioning and parallel processing * Load and unload data to interface with external systems * Think for yourself; don't take Tom's word for it! Who this book is for This book is aimed at Oracle Database administrators, at PL/SQL and Java developers writing code to be deployed inside the database, and at developers of external applications who use Oracle Database as a data store. It is the go-to book for those wishing to create efficient and scalable applications.Table of Contents * Developing Successful Oracle Applications * Architecture Overview * Files * Memory Structures * Oracle Processes * Locking and Latching * Concurrency and Multi-versioning * Transactions * Redo and Undo * Database Tables * Indexes * Datatypes * Partitioning * Parallel Execution * Data Loading and Unloading * Data Encryption