What Is Oracle?
Oracle is our online customer database which makes it easy for individuals and groups to track the progress of their sample(s) and check their results via a password-protected website. Potential group members can also search and find your Surname Project via Oracle. We have called it Oracle so that it is not confused with the Ybase database.
I guess the first question is really, “What is a database”? A database is an organized collection of data. The data can be textual, like order or inventory data, or it can be pictures, programs or anything else that can be stored on a computer in binary form. A relational database stores the data in the form of tables and columns. A table is the category of data, like Employee, and the columns are information about the category, like name or address. Some databases have minimal feature sets and only store data, while others include programming languages, facilities and utilities to support enterprise-level applications like ERP and data warehousing. Oracle is the #1 database and has the most advanced feature set. Oracle is made up of a set of processes running in your operating system. These processes manage how data is stored and how it is accessed.
Oracle is the world’s leading supplier of software for information management, and the world’s second largest independent software company. The California-based company’s recent acquisition of PeopleSoft — JMU’s vendor for its Enterprise Resource Planning systems (student administration, finance, human resources) — should aid system integration in the future.
