The Oracle Corporation also supplies interface tools to access data stored in an Oracle database. Two of these tools are known as SQL*Plus, a command line interface, and Developer/2000 (now called simply Developer), a collection of forms, reports and graphics interfaces.
The Oracle products suite includes the following tools and utilities:
Application Development Tools
- SQL*Plus - A command line tool used to manipulate tables and other database objects in an Oracle database.
- Developer/2000 and Developer A suite of application development tools including Forms, Reports and Graphics.
- Oracle*Forms - A screen based tool used to develop data entry forms and menus that access tables in an Oracle database.
- Oracle*Reports - A screen based tool used to develop reports that access tables in an Oracle database.
- Oracle*Graphics - A graphical tool used to develop charts and reports that access tables in an Oracle database.
- CASE*Designer and Oracle Designer/2000 - A graphical tool used to create and display models contained in the CASE*Dictionary.
Oracle is the largest selling SQL based RDBMS and on the whole, is in my opinion, the most commercially useful.
Major competitors to Oracle include:
- DB2 (IBM platforms only)
- Informix
- Ingres
- Sybase
- Interbase from Borland (Unix/MS-DOS)
- shql (free UNIX tool works like ingres isql)
- Varous xbase products
- Postgres (Stonebraker's other work - free but
- Unsupported except for the Net - which is about the same as commercial support anyway).
Probably the most famous bit of management information was to Croesus, (King of Lydia and known in the phrase "as rich as Croesus"), when he received the advice "If you attack the Persians, you will destroy a great empire". Well, he did attack, and lost his own empire. There's a moral to this story I think ...
