Now that we've looked at the concepts behind an Oracle installation and acquired our installation media, either DVD-ROM or a ZIP file, it's time to examine some of the prerequisites our system will need to meet prior to installation. We'll look at both hardware and software requirements as we prepare our installation.
The hardware requirements for an Oracle system boil down to the three basic resources used by any software application: CPU, memory, and disk space. It might be surprising that, although Oracle Database Server is the pre-eminent RDBMS in the world, its minimum hardware requirements aren't as vast as one might think. Of course, we must take into account that the minimum requirements won't support a large-scale production environment, but a minimum installation is sufficient for learning purposes and executing the examples in this book. Although the hardware installation requirements are...