Use this page to uniquely identify your Oracle Database. You identify your database using a global database name, and a System Identifier (or SID).
An Oracle database is uniquely identified by a Global Database Name. The global database name is the full name of the database that uniquely identifies it from any other database. The global database name is of the following form:
<database_name>.<database_domain>
For example, here is a typical global database name:
test.us.example.com
The database name portion (in this example,
test) is a simple name for your database. The database domain portion (in this case,
us.example.com
) specifies the domain
in which the database is located. When possible, Oracle recommends that your
database domain should mirror your network domain.
The database name portion of the global database name can be no more than 8 characters, and can contain only contain only alphabetic and numeric characters.
The domain portion of the global database name can be no more than 128 characters and can contain only alphabetic and numeric characters, as well as the period (.) character.
The System Identifier (SID) identifies a specific instance of the Oracle Database software. For any database, there is at least one instance referencing the database. The SID can be any name that is not already used for another instance on this computer.
Note: In order to Change database configuration or Delete a database, you must define the SID (ORACLE_SID) environment variable in the shell from which Database Configuration Assistant is launched. If no SID is set, you cannot change database configuration settings or delete the database. If an incorrect SID is set, you can select these options in Database Configuration Assistant, but these options will not work.
Keep in mind the following platform-specific notes:
For Windows: Enter the system identifier (SID) for the database, or accept the default SID. A SID is a unique identifier for an Oracle database instance that can be up to eight alphanumeric characters in length. Each database instance corresponds to a SID, and a series of database files. For example, when you create a database with a SID of XXX, you also create the database instance and its database files (the initialization parameter file, control file, redo log files, and data files).
For UNIX or Linux: Enter the system identifier (SID) for the database. A SID is a unique name of up to eight characters in length for an Oracle database instance. Each database instance corresponds to a SID, and a series of database files. For example, when you create a database with a SID of XYZ, you also create the database instance and its database files (the initialization parameter file, control file, redo log files, and data files), with names based on XYZ.
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