Preface

Oracle used the schema SCOTT with its two prominent tables EMP and DEPT for many years. With advances in Oracle Database technology, these tables have become inadequate to show even the most basic features of Oracle Database and other Oracle products. As a result, many other schemas have been created over the years to suit the needs of product documentation, courseware, software development, and application demos.

This preface contains these topics:

• Intended Audience

• Documentation Accessibility

• Customer Benefits of Sample Schemas

• About Sample Schemas

• Oracle Database Sample Schemas Design Principles

• Structure

• Related Documents

• Conventions

Intended Audience

Sample Schemas is for all users of the seed database, which is installed when you install the Oracle Database.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Customer Benefits of Sample Schemas

Benefits of Sample Schemas are as follows:

• Continuity of context. When encountering the same set of tables everywhere, users, students, and developers can spend less time becoming familiar with the schema and more time understanding or explaining the technical concepts.

• Usability. Customers can use these schemas in the seed database to run examples that are shown in Oracle documentation and training materials. This first-hand access to examples facilitates both conceptual understanding and application development.

• Quality. Through central maintenance and testing of both the creation scripts that build Sample Schemas and the examples that run against the schemas, the quality of Oracle documentation and training materials is enhanced.

About Sample Schemas

The Oracle Database Sample Schemas provide a common platform for examples in each release of the Oracle Database. All Oracle Database documentation and training materials are being converted to Sample Schemas environment as those materials are updated.

The Oracle Database Sample Schemas are a set of interlinked schemas. This set of schemas provides a layered approach to complexity:

• A simple schema Human Resources (HR) is useful for introducing basic topics. An extension to this schema supports Oracle Internet Directory demos.

• A second schema Order Entry (OE) is useful for dealing with matters of intermediate complexity. Many data types are available in this schema, including nonscalar data types.

• The Online Catalog (OC) subschema is a collection of object-relational database objects built inside the OE schema.

• The Product Media (PM) schema is dedicated to multimedia data types.

• A set of schemas gathered under the main schema name Information Exchange (IX ) can demonstrate Oracle Advanced Queuing capabilities.

• The Sales History (SH) schema is designed to allow for demos with large amounts of data. An extension to this schema provides support for advanced analytic processing.

Oracle Database Sample Schemas Design Principles

Sample Schemas have been created and enhanced with the following design principles in mind:

• Simplicity and ease of use. The HR and OE schemas are intentionally simple. They will not become overly complex by the addition of features. Rather, they are intended to provide a graduated path from the simple to intermediate levels of database use.

• Relevance for typical users. The base schemas and the extensions bring to the foreground the functionality that customers typically use. Only the most commonly used database objects are built automatically in the schemas. The entire set of schemas provides a foundation upon which one can expand to illustrate additional functionality.

• Extensibility. Sample Schemas provide a logical and physical foundation for adding objects to demonstrate functionality beyond the fundamental scope.

• Relevance. Sample Schemas are designed to be applicable to e-business and other significant industry trends (for example, XML). When this goal conflicts with the goal of simplicity, schema extensions are used to showcase the trends in focus.

Structure

This document contains the following chapters:

Chapter 1, "Installation"

This chapter describes how to install the Oracle Database Sample Schemas.

Chapter 2, "Rationale"

This chapter describes the fictitious company on which Sample Schemas are based.

Chapter 3, "Diagrams"

This chapter contains diagrams of Sample Schemas.

Chapter 4, "Sample Schema Scripts and Object Descriptions"

This chapter lists the Sample Schema creation scripts and describes the Sample Schema objects.

Related Documents

Printed documentation is available for sale in the Oracle Store at

http://oraclestore.oracle.com/

To download free release notes, installation documentation, white papers, or other collateral, please visit the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). You must register online before using OTN registration is free and can be done at

http://www.oracle.com/technology/membership/index.html

If you already have a username and password for OTN, then you can go directly to the documentation section of the OTN Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/index.html

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

• Conventions in Text

• Conventions in Code Examples

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

[ ]

DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])

{ }

{ENABLE | DISABLE}

|

{ENABLE | DISABLE}
[COMPRESS | NOCOMPRESS]

...

CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery;

SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;

.
 .
 .

SQL> SELECT NAME FROM V$DATAFILE;
NAME
------------------------------------
/fsl/dbs/tbs_01.dbf
/fs1/dbs/tbs_02.dbf
.
.
.
/fsl/dbs/tbs_09.dbf
9 rows selected.

acctbal NUMBER(11,2);
acct    CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;

Italics

CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password
DB_NAME = database_name

UPPERCASE

SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;
DROP TABLE hr.employees;

lowercase

SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;
sqlplus hr/hr
CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;