This tutorial is designed to teach the reader the basics of using and administrating an Oracle database in 21 days. The book focuses on using concrete examples to explain why things should be done in a certain way. The key topics presented week-by-week: week one - overview of the Oracle8 architecture; network computing architecture (NCA); installing oracle; planning the database; how to administer users, and how to manage processes. Week Two deals with administering logs, control files, datafiles, and tablespaces; controlling rolback segments; building tables and views; using indexes and clusters; and security. Week Three focuses on effective backup techniques; recovering the database; administering Oracle replication; tuning and optimizing the database; administering the Oracle Web server; and advanced Oracle options. Oracle8 is Oracle's new object-oriented RDBMS to be released during the Summer of 1997. The book primarily targets database administrators and developers at the beginning level.