Memory Structures

Hi,

I would like to know why memory structures in Oracle such as the buffer cache, redo log buffer, etc. are called structures, rather than memory areas? Are there are smaller components they are composed of? If they are nothing but chunks of memory, why do we call them structures? I think it still makes sense to talk of physical structures, such as files since they are collections of disk blocks. But I would really appreciate if you explained why we refer to memory structures as such. Thanks.

Karim

well look in the dictionary for a term of what structure means, but anyway it doesnt really matter - call them what you want

Why are the arrangements of bytes on a magnetic medium "structures", but arrnagements of bytes on a memory chip "areas"?

I'll guess...

Structures may refer to the physical structure found in 'core memory' - a carry over from antiquity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_memory

Areas ? who knows.... Maybe because a chip is masked off and an 'area' has a specific function like cache, cpu, memory, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_storage
http://www.kingston.com/tools/umg/default.asp