newbie again... Completely puzzled

Bearing in mind that I'm on Unix, but .....

You don't appear to have created a database.

Access and DBase are desktop databases and not real databases at all. Oracle is probably the best client/server RDBMS there is, but it takes a lot to learn it and make it work. That's why we dbas exist :o)

However, under Database Admin which is under your Oracle programs on your start button, you should find Database Configuration Assistant - run it. I've just done this with Personal Oracle 817 on my PC and I have 3 options : Create a database is the obvious one here :o), the other two are Change database config and Delete a database.

Next up, select TYPICAL - you are just beginning withh Oracle and don't need any extra hassle !

Next, choose copy existing files from CD. This will create a small database with some users (scott/tiger) and data in them. You can play with these for a while.

Global database name is needed next, I just used ORCL for mine. This is sort of standard for a PC based 'personal' database. Call it fred if you want, but, if you build another in the future, give them different names !
The SID will be filled in for you.
Click Finish.
Slap in the CD and answer YES to continue. An info window pops up to tell you that the database will be created, the system & sys user's passwords will be shown. Click OK. You now get a progress window showing you how things are going. Wait ..... and don't panic if it 'hangs' around 85% initializing the database - this takes a bit of time. (15 mins on my P3 400 Mhz with 128M RAM) The info window appears again. Have you noted down the usernames & passwords yet ?
Click OK.

Now, this was added to my tnsnames.ora file by the database creation thingy :

ORCL.WORLD =
  (DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS_LIST =

      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = tpc001309)(PORT = 1521))     )
(CONNECT_DATA =

      (SERVICE_NAME = ORCL)
    )
  )

I suspect that starting DBA Studio again at this point will show it up. (File | add database to tree if you don't get prompted on startup.)  

You are in !
(At least, I was !)

Now then, because this is Oracle 8i, you'll have all sorts of stuff you maybe don't want at the moment, so get into control panel | services and do the following :

Scroll down the list till you find Oracle* in the names column.  Stop and change to manual startup everything except OracleServiceORCL and Oracle*TNSListener. Leave those two at automatic startup and started. They are alll you need to learn about Oracle.

And I'd rather use sqlplus to connect to a database rather than dba studio etc, as I haven't got all day to wait for it to load up and run. Although, coming from Access, you'll probably enjoy a GUI better.

Have fun, and welcome to the world of REAL databases :o)

Regards,
Norman.

PS. Oracle isn't slow - these apps are written in Java and Java sucks !

-----Original Message-----
From: writer_at_writemaster.com [mailto:writer_at_writemaster.com] Posted At: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 5:59 AM Posted To: misc
Conversation: newbie again... Completely puzzled Subject: newbie again... Completely puzzled

Okay, okay, I probably need to take a course or three on Oracle. Or even go to graduate school. On the other hand, I am a computer literate person, with some background in programming (C++, MFC, VB, Access), so you would think I could figure this out, but I am stumped. Maybe someone will be kind enough to answer a few basic questions, at least to get me oriented.
<SNIP> Received on Wed Nov 28 2001 - 07:43:15 CST