Two compatibility modes are available for tenants: Oracle and MySQL. Instances pull relevant business data together in ways corresponding to their compatibility modes. The data organization mechanism is termed as schema in an Oracle tenant or database in a MySQL tenant. When you use the username, password, and IP address to connect to OceanBase Database , you must specify the OceanBase cluster name, tenant name, and the tenant mode or user to prove that you own the data. In an Oracle tenant, the username is the same as the schema name. In a MySQL tenant, the username can be different from the database name.
By default, an OceanBase cluster has a MySQL tenant named sys to store the metadata of the cluster. The sys tenant is used for cluster management and is frequently accessed by O&M engineers. We recommend that you do not create tables to store data in the sys tenant. All resources in an OceanBase cluster, except for the resources used by the sys tenant, are unallocated and reserved for the business tenants. You need to create a business tenant before using OceanBase.
Tenants are usually created by O&M engineers directly in the sys tenant or on the Create Instance page of OceanBase Cloud Platform (OCP). Note
A tenant is also known as an instance.