This document summarizes Oracle's parallel execution capabilities and provides an overview of key concepts. It discusses why parallel execution is used (for improved performance on large tasks), when it should be used, and Oracle's parallel execution features including parallel query, parallel DML, parallel DDL, and procedural parallelism. New features in Oracle 11g like automatic degree of parallelism, parallel statement queue, and DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE are also covered. References for further reading on Oracle parallel execution and architecture are provided.