Although we typically use the term "database" to refer to an RDBMS in general, in this chapter we're examining it in its most literal sense. We've made the distinction between an instance and a database and have seen the components of the instance that are the background processes and memory caches. In the most literal sense, the term "database" refers to the set of files that make up the Oracle RDBMS. Each type of file serves a different function within the infrastructure of the RDBMS.
Each component of the Oracle RDBMS is highly specialized, from processes that serve a certain function to caches that contain a certain type of data. However, there must be a central place, a "brain" of sorts, that stores information about the database at any given moment. In Oracle, that central storage file is called the control file. The control file contains a multitude of time-sensitive information dealing with the state of the database...