Design of the 64-bit option for the Oracle7 relational database management system

Like most database management systems, the Oracle7 database server uses memory to cache data in disk files and improve the performance. In general, larger memory caches result in better performance. Until recently, the practical limit on the amount of memory the Oracle7 server could use was well under 3 gigabytes on most 32-bit system platforms. Digital Equipment Corporation's combination of the 64-bit Alpha system and the DIGITAL UNIX operating system differentiates itself from the rest of the computer industry by being the first standards-compliant UNIX implementation to support linear 64-bit memory addressing and 64-bit application programming interfaces, allowing high-performance applications to directly access memory in excess of 4 gigabytes. The Oracle7 database server is the first commercial database product in the industry to exploit the performance potential of the very large memory configurations provided by DIGITAL. This paper explores aspects of the design and implementation of the Oracle 64 Bit Option.