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Can someone explian to me the purpose of doing (Su - Oracle) while working in a Unix environment? I know that with System, Sys, and Internal you can perform a lot of administrative duties within Oracle but why SU - Oracle or the Unix id Oracle is so important. Thanks.
In most unix installations, the user "oracle" owns the oracle software. If the database needs to get started, the "oracle" user id does it, not system or sys.
oracle is most likely an operating system user, while system and sys are database users. su oracle will log you into the oracle operating system user provided you know the password, so you can manage the database and related filesystems.
Oracle is an UNIX user
if you do su oracle you can still login as oracle but .profile wont be read therefore the environment variables wont be changed
if you do su - oracle .profile will be read