What is Product Files

The whole idea behind properly naming and placing the product files is to be able to implement
multiple versions of the Oracle server software simultaneously. This is necessary because when you
migrate between versions, it is normal to retain the older software versions until you switch over to
the new version. Different applications on the system may have different timeframes within which
they want to migrate to the new version. Consequently, in most cases, you’ll end up having to
support multiple versions of the Oracle server software simultaneously.
Oracle recommends that you keep each version of the software in a separate directory distinguished
by the naming convention /h/product/v, where h is the home directory, product indicates
that the software versions are under this directory, and v is the version of the product. For example,
I have a directory on my system called /u01/app/oracle/product/10.1.0.2.0 under which I save all
the Oracle server software subdirectories during installation. If I decide to install the 10.2.0 version,
I’ll do so under the directory /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0. You can see that this type of naming
convention makes it very easy to install and manage multiple versions of the Oracle software.