Operating system

An operating system is the software that manages a computer system (schedule tasks and control the use of system resources). An operating system is made up of a kernel and various system utility programs.

Oracle supported operating systems

Here are some of the operating systems that Oracle supports:

• Linux
  • Oracle Enterprise Linux
  • Linux for System Z
  • Red Hat Linux
  • SUSE Linux
• Unix
  • Solaris (SUN)
  • AIX (IBM)
  • HP-UX (HP)
• OS/390 (IBM MVS)
• Windows (Microsoft)
• Mac OSX (Apple)
• OpenVMS

Operating system your database runs on

You can use the dbms_utility.port_string function to determine on what hardware platform, operating system and TWO TASK PROTOCOL version your Oracle database is running on. The specification for this function follows:

FUNCTION DBMS_UTILITY.PORT_STRING RETURN VARCHAR2;

Here are some examples:

SQL> SELECT dbms_utility.port_string FROM dual;
PORT_STRING
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linuxi386/Linux-2.0.34-8.1.0

SQL> VAR portstr VARCHAR2(100)
SQL> EXEC :portstr := dbms_utility.port_string;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> PRINT portstr
PORTSTR
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IBMPC/WIN_NT-8.1.0

In the above example the platform is IBMPC, the OS is WIN_NT and the Two Task protocol version is 8.1.0.

Some of the other possible port string values:

• VAX/VMS-7.1.0.0
• DEC Alpha OSF/1, r1.1-8.1.0
• SVR4-be-64bit-8.1.0
• SVR4-be-7.0.0
• x86_64/Linux-2.4.10-9.1.0
• Linuxi386/Linux-2.0.34-8.1.0
• IBMPC/WIN_NT64-9.1.0
• IBMPC/WIN_NT-8.1.0
• IBMPC/WIN_NT-7.3.3

Glossary of Terms
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