Some Special Remarks for CERA Installation

What is Special about the Oracle-Dialect ?

As at PIK CERA is installed on an Oracle RDBMS, there is some dialect in the SQL given on these pages.
The main points are:

create/drop SEQUENCE ...

An Oracle sequence is an integer storage that is increased by one every time its called by "<Sequence_Name>.NEXTVAL". The current value is referred to by "<SequenceName>.CURRVAL". CERA SQL at PIK uses sequences to make sure, that new records in entity tables and LOVs get a new _id.

create/drop SYNONYM ...

Setting Oracle synonyms means to define aliases for objects (=tables, sequences etc.).

SYSDATE

The Oracle function SYSDATE returns the system date (and time).

create table...TABLESPACE...

The TABLESPACE keyword tells Oracle to put the table or the index of it to a previously defined disk area. Putting the table's data and its index on different disks can result in better performance and is recommended for tables with high numbers of records.
However, the present CERA-2.5 installation scripts do not use the tablespace keyword. If you intend to store big amounts of data in CERA you should think about setting tablespaces.

What is Special about the PIK's CERA Installation ?

To comply with CERA standard, PIK has installed all CERA tables (as of 1998 Dec 31). However, not all of them are filled in the institute. This has no effect on the CERA table structure and its SQL, but at some points on the Oracle Forms surfaces and on the loading layer structure and its SQL.
The main differences are:

Loading CERA Core

1. ENTRIes cannot refer to each other (table ENTRY_CONNECT). References between entries can be entered using the updateMDB form.
2. Every ENTRY can only refer to one project record. Further projects can be entered using the updateMDB form.
3. No ENTRY_TYPE can be entered, as all records at PIK are of type "normal", i.e. they are not distinguished.

CERA Module DATA_ORGANIZATION

... has been completely installed, but is not used. So PARAMETER.data_org_id is set to zero in all cases (as of 1999 Apr 15).

CERA Module DATA_ACCESS

... has been completely installed, but table REC_STRUCTURE is not used. So DATA_ACCESS.rec_structure_id is set to zero in all cases (as of 1999 Apr 15).
Some of the OracleForms make use of the fact, that the STORAGE information at PIK usually refers to host/directory/file/comment on STORAGE1/2/3/4.

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Last change: Thu Mar 29 10:57:24 NFT 2001