This is a collection of documentation that should be most helpful to those working on this project.

The Magic Document

There isn't really any magic, but this simple document does list all the fields in NetDB, their logical and application cardinalities, and access checkpoints.

For the most part, this is a table-for-table, column-for-column port. However, almost all the column names have changed because their Hungarian-notation format is virtually unreadable in the Oracle monocase environment. (We expect to make the same changes to variable names in the stored procedures). Lowercase versions of existing columns were dropped in favor of indexes on lower(column). Table and column names in conflict with Oracle reserved words had to be changed. IP address storage has changed to something that can accommodate IPv6 addresses. A few other changes were made in the name of consistency and to atone for sins of the past. Here's a complete mapping of Sybase tables to Oracle tables.

In the Sybase version of NetDB IP addresses are stored as integers and stored procedures manipulate them directly - and-ing an IP address and a netmask for example. In the Oracle version of NetDB IP addresses are stored in an internal normalized format. In order to allow this internal format to evolve, stored procedures must not directly manipulate these values. Instead, stored procedures should use the functions and types provided by the IP package.

Tables in the Oracle version of NetDB use two columns for IP addresses - one for the internal normalized version, and one for the familiar text version (suitable for printing). Columns containing the text version are identified by a '_txt' suffix. For example, the broadcast address of an IP address space is stored in columns named broadcast and broadcast_txt. The normalized version is for comparisons and sorting; the text version is for display purposes.

NetDB has established programming guidelines and SQL coding conventions for this port. We also have test data for unit and regression tests.