Oracle Net Services
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General Information
Oracle Net Services provides enterprise wide connectivity solutions in distributed, heterogeneous computing environments. Additionally, it eases the complexities of network configuration and management, maximizes performance, and improves network security and diagnostic capabilities in the following areas:
- Connectivity
- Manageability
- Performance and Scalability
- Network Security
- Diagnosability
Connectivity
Oracle Net, a component of Oracle Net Services, enables a network session from a client application to an Oracle database server. Once a network session is established, Oracle Net acts as the data courier for both the client application and the database server. It is responsible for establishing and maintaining the connection between the client application and database server, as well as exchanging messages between them. Oracle Net is able to perform these jobs because it is located on each computer in the network.
Manageability
Oracle Net Services offers a number of manageability features that enable you to easily configure and manage networking components. These features are described in the following three areas:
Location Transparency: A client uses this service name to identify the database it needs to access. The information about the database service and its location in the network is transparent to the client because the information needed for a connection is stored in a repository. To achieve this goal, several naming methods are available today: Oracle Net Directory naming, Local naming (TNSNAMES.ORA), Host naming, and External naming.
Centralized Configuration and Management: To manage large networking environments, administrators have to be able to easily access a centralized repository to specify and modify the network configuration. For this reason, the Oracle Net Services configuration can be stored in an LDAP-compliant directory server such as Oracle Internet Directory.
Quick Installation and Configuration: Oracle Net Services installs quickly and easily. Networking components for the Oracle database server and clients are preconfigured for most environments. Information about an Oracle database service is resolved in one or more naming methods. As a result, clients and servers are ready to immediately connect when installed.
Performance and Scalability
Oracle Net provides scalability features that enable user to maximize system resources and improve performance. Feature such as shared server, which offers both connection pooling and session multiplexing (using Oracle Connection Manager), can increases the scalability of applications and the number of clients that can be simultaneously connected to the database. The shared server architecture also enables existing applications to scale up without making any changes to the application itself.
Another major performance improvement is using high speed interconnect technologies, such as InfiniBand, which can significantly improve network performance.
Network Security
Granting and denying access to a database is crucial for a secure network environment. Oracle Net Services enables database access control using features of firewall access control and protocol access contro.
Diagnosability
Oracle Net Services provides detailed information about the source and context of problems as they arise. This information is generated and stored in log and trace files. The process of logging and tracing error information will help you to diagnose and resolve network problems. Trace Assistant, a diagnostic and performance analysis tool, is provided with Oracle Net Services.
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