shutdown [SQL*Plus]

shutdown
shutdown abort
shutdown immediate
shutdown normal
shutdown transactional
shutdown transactional local

Shutting down an instance (and closing the database that is mounted on the instance) takes three steps:

1. Close the database.
2. Dismount the database.
3. Shut down the instance of the Oracle server.

Oracle automatically performs all three steps when an instance is shut down. See also the states of an instance.

In order to shutdown an instance, one needs to be connected as sysdba or as sysoper.

An instance is started with startup.

When a database is started after a shutdown abort, Oracle peforms crash recovery.

If there is a logoff trigger, it won't be executed.

yet to be finished :)

If there is a logoff trigger, it won't be executed.

shutdown normal is equivalent to shutdown

yet to be finished :)

On Windows, it can be specified how the instance is shut down when the service is stopped with the registry value ORA_%ORACLE_SID%_SHUTDOWN.

Oracle records shutdowns of the instance in the alert.log file.

See also startup.