Starting and Stopping the Oracle Database

This section demonstrates how to start and stop the Oracle Database 10g XE server. The command-line utility, sqlplus, works the same for both the Linux and Microsoft Windows versions. The only difference is linked to account ownership of the database. As discussed in Chapter 10, the file system and ownership model in Microsoft Windows differs substantially from that of Linux. The differences evoke strong emotions from some people who prefer one over the other, but they simply present different opportunities and hurdles from varying perspectives.

The Oracle database management system can support multiple database instances. The ability to support multiple instances makes it necessary to assign each instance a unique System Identifier (SID). The generic database SID value is XE when installing the Oracle Database 10g XE server. The assignment of the SID is the same regardless of platform.