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ORACLE On A Sun Workstation

ORACLE is a commercially available relational database management system designed to run on a large number of computers and operating systems. The program is based on the SQL data language, pronounced "sequel" -- an English-like data language. Through SQL commands, Oracle is used to enter, store and retrieve large amounts of information. It provides several interfacing products to its database. One product, SQL-FORMS, is used to interactively enter, remove and retrieve data in a customized screen-oriented menu form. Another product, SQL-REPORT, is a batch-oriented program that can extract and create weekly, monthly and yearly transaction reports.

The Agricultural Communication Department (ACS) at Purdue purchased Oracle version 5.1.22 to run on Shire, a Sun 3/160 diskless workstation in the Agricultural Engineering Department. ACS uses Oracle to maintain records of over 2800 agricultural publications, videos, and supplies printed and distributed by the School of Agriculture to the 92 county agents in the state of Indiana. The ACS database not only keeps track of the number of publications stored in the ACS Media Distribution Center (ACS- MDC), but also handles all the informational exchanges required to process orders and payments.

Paula Dillard and her staff at ACS-MDC are the main users of the Oracle database. They can make all their transactions using SQL-FORMS and SQL-REPORT from their office vt100 and z29 terminals. A Sun workstation monitor is not required.

The ACS Oracle database was developed by Robert Dyche, a contractual employee of ACS with over six years of Oracle experience. Mr. Dyche was responsible for setting up the structure of the database and developing the SQL-FORMS and SQL- REPORT interfaces. He still makes himself available for handling problems that occur from time to time.

Oracle sells their product on a per CPU basis and charges an annual software maintenance fee per product. It is an expensive software package. For more information about Oracle on a Sun workstation contact Stan Harlow (login: harlow).

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