In this Section, let us take a look in to Oracle RDBMS Architecture.

The informa
tion that will be provided in this section covers the latest version of Oracle R
DBMS, which is Oracle 12c as of today, which is November 2015.
Let us begin by quickly discussing about Oracle Instance and Oracle Database. Th
is would help us to understand the architecture of an Oracle RDBMS system. Let u
s take a computer.
And let us get to the point. A computer has a Disk Device where the files are st
ored. It also has RAM, which is also called Memory. Let us take a close look.
Now we zoomed in to the Memory and Disk Storage.
Now let me invoke Microsoft Word. The executable file is Winword.exe and let us
say that it is in C:\Program of my computer. So, when I run it, what do I see. I
see an empty instance of Microsoft Word. It doesn t have any document file in it.
Right now this is just a structure that is present in the memory. Or, I can cal
l it as an instance of Microsoft Word.
Now, using FILE, Open, of that, let me open the document file called Plants.doc
x which is there in the c:\mydocuments of my Disk. Now what happens in the memor
y. The Microsoft Word instance has opened a document called Plants.docx. What y
ou see in the memory is the combination of an Instance and the Document file. I
mean, the instance has opened the document file.
Now, imagine that I have installed Oracle software in the folder c:\program\orac
le12c. And I start it. First of all, Oracle Software is not just a single file.
It is a set of files. Also there are some additional components needed to start
Oracle. We will talk about those later. Now, let us keep this simple. So, I jus
t start Oracle. What happens, it creates a plain Oracle instance in the memory.
There is no data yet.
It will be just a plain instance, much like the plain Microsoft Word instance, b
efore opening a document file.
And its size depends on the initial parameter settings, which I will discuss lat
er. It could be small like this.
Or it can be larger. Like this. It depends on the initial parameters.
Now assume that I already have a set of database files in my folder c:\mydocumen
ts\DemoDB\Files. Just like the document file called Plant.docx. Plant.docx is a
Microsoft word document and these files are Oracle database files. I will talk a
bout how I got or created those Oracle Database files later. For now, just assum
e that I have those files. Now, using the Oracle Instance, which is already runn
ing, I can open these database files. Let us assume these set of files belong to
a database called DEMODB.
When I open these files, this means that the Oracle Instance has opened the data
base files belonging to the database. And the database is available for use.
So we have a computer, which has a Disk and Memory. The disk contains the files.
Both software files and database files. Just like Microsoft Word s executable fil
e and the document file, we have Oracle Software here and Database files here. W
hen I run the Oracle software, it creates an Oracle instance in the memory. Just
like the empty Microsoft Word instance. Then using this plain Oracle instance,
I open a set of database files belonging to a database called DemoDB. Now, the d
atabase is up and running and is available for use.
This memory structure is called as an instance. The files in the disk are called
 database.
When we have an operational Oracle RDBMS system, that means we have at least an
instance online with a database opened by it.
End of Lesson