Oracle Essentials [Electronic resources] : Oracle Database 10g, 3rd Edition نسخه متنی

Chapter 8. Oracle and Transaction Processing

The insatiable corporate appetite for ever larger and more
sophisticated transaction-processing systems has been one of the main
forces driving the evolution of computing technology. As we discussed
in the previous chapter, transactions form the foundation of business
computing systems. In fact, transaction processing
(TP) was the impetus for business computing as we know it today. The
batch-oriented automation of core business processes like accounting
and payroll drove the progress in mainframe computing through the
1970s and 1980s. Along the way, TP began the shift from batch to
users interacting directly with systems, and online transaction
processing (OLTP) was born. In the 1980s the computing infrastructure
shifted from large centralized mainframes with dumb terminals to
decentralized client/server computing with graphical user interfaces
(GUIs) running on PCs and accessing databases on other machines over
a network.

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 has
seen a return to centralization. One of the major focuses of Oracle
Database 10g is reduced management overhead, and
the concept of grid computing (discussed in Chapter 14) is, in part, aimed at correcting some of the
counterproductive effects of decentralized computing. Chapter 5 covers Oracle Database
10g management in much more detail. OLTP is one
of the areas addressed by the consolidation of data processing
represented by the grid.

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
systemsa topic of great importance to Oracle users.