Understanding oracle SCN

SAP AG (Often just called SAP) is a company which has a product called SAP ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Since Oracle also makes ERP software they are indeed competitors. In fact they are the top two ERP vendors.

SAP can be used with quite a few different database systems, but according to one source I found Oracle is dominant comprising around 80% of SAP systems. Oracle recently won a law suit against SAP for intellectual-property theft. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20029601-92.html#ixzz1CWy7UiKR)

Here is some SAP on Oracle documentation.

It does seem like a strange scenario for a product to depend so heavily on a competitors product, but it is not unheard of. To some extent this pattern exists for Oracle with their database product running on Microsoft Windows servers.

First of all, I should thank you for all other steps that you mentioned above. As an addition to your points, I have this one which I've been using so far.

Solaris and Linux

$ pgrep  -lf _pmon_
12586 ora_pmon_ee10204

ORACLE_SID is ee10204

$ pwdx 12586
12586: /u01/oracle/10.2.0.4/ee1/dbs

ORACLE_HOME is /u01/oracle/10.2.0.4/ee1

HPUX

$ ps -ef | grep pmon
ora1024 25611     1  0  Mar 21  ?         0:24 ora_pmon_itanic10

ORACLE_SID is itanic10

$ pfiles 25611 | grep  bin
25611:                  /opt/ora1024/app/db_1/bin/oracle

ORACLE_HOME is /opt/ora1024/app/db_1

AIX

$ ps -ef | grep pmon
ora1024   262314        1   0   Mar 23      -  0:12 ora_pmon_mercury

ORACLE_SID is mercury

$ ls -l /proc/262314/cwd
lr-x------   2 ora1024  dba  0 Mar 23 19:31 cwd -> /data/opt/app/product/10.2.0.4/db_1/dbs/

ORACLE_HOME is /data/opt/app/product/10.2.0.4/db_1

Personally, I haven't seen any environment that tries to confuses the person who will maintain the system. Most of the time, I've always seen the normal /u01/app/oracle for the ORACLE_BASE.