The verdict: Oracle's documentation is not made with the user in mind. Chapter 4 of "2 Day DBA" refers to "Oracle Net Services Administrator's Guide", which is, of course, an empty page, that refers to the OTN documentation site. There i can click "Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1)" which leads to a very long list of different documents for different operating systems. When i was downloading the database, i was asked twice which operating system i am using, but here i see them all at once. Searching for "Oracle Net Services Administrator's Guide" on that page yields one result for Oracle7 Server!!!
The first link in the list is "Link to Oracle Gateways 10g Release 1 (10.1) Documentation". What is Gateways? I was looking for the database documentation. After the Gateways thing there are two links for 9i documentation. The next link is actually the one i need, but by now i'm already climbing up the walls, because the long list of documents that follows grabs all the attention. This organization is simply abysmal.
If this was the only time i felt so lost in Oracle's docs, i'd say that i'm the stupid, but it's all too (in)consistent. These documents have wealth of information, but it's frustratingly hard to find, their modularity is unclear and inconsistent and each part of the website has a very different search and indexing system. Maybe there are help systems and guides to using the documentation, but they were hidden well. I have behind me over seven years of experience of reading VMS, Windows and Linux documentation. Come to think of it, when i will comprehend it (and i will!), it's the perfect way to job security.
Getting back to the content: The title page of the full (?) Oracle Database Online Documentation looks quite like the one installed on my computer, but with more docs. I was happy and immediately tried to find "Net Services". But don't make me laugh -- it wasn't there in the contents. However, i did see something promising called "Master Glossary". I love glossaries! Now i'll finally find what TNS means. Clicking on TNS opens a tiny new browser window in which definitions of "tick" and "Thin JDBC Driver" are visible. I had to scroll a little to find TNS, which apparently means Transparent Network Substrate1. In the parenthesis there was written Net Services Administrator's Guide, but it was not hyperlinked. That gave me hope, and i tried searching for it from that documentation title page. It finally found the right document, albeit the search results page looked rather strange (too strange to describe here, but very nonstandard).
Currently i'm listening to music that is not to be found on Amazon -- a live performance by Algir on channel 24. The sound on TV is horrible. And no, i'm not listening to any TNS.
1 Substrate, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary means: an underlying support; FOUNDATION; substance that is a permanent subject of qualities or phenomena; the material of which something is made and from which it derives its special qualities.
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