Re: Oracle on Linux Anyone?

Date sent:      	Wed, 14 Jun 2000 23:54:18 -0800
To:             	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
Send reply to:  	ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com
From:           	guy ruth hammond <grh_at_agency.com>
Subject:        	Re: Oracle on Linux Anyone?



> > excerpt: Support was another factor in

> >                 choosing Linux, Google said. The

> >                 company has Linux expertise

> >                 in-house, and values the ability to

> >                 look at the source code to correct

> >                 problems, rather than having to

> >                 rely on a vendor. 

??????

Isn't having one of the most popular search engines running on *4000* servers "real world"?

It seemed to me that the article is fairly explicit in stating that google's OS adventures are oriented toward having strong "in house" R&D.

They never said that it was an example of a good platform for "traditional" database applications purchased/supported from outside.

the whole article is at:

http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20000530S0004

(linked from: http://www.google.com/press.html )

The following article identifies google's lead network engineer as a former ***research neurosurgeon*** at Stanford U.:

http://www.linux.com/jobs/newsitem.phtml?sid=72&aid=8848

I guess if you are used to doing brain surgery, taking apart an operating system and putting it back together on thousands of machines isn't that big of a deal!

Some general background info on the "state of the art" in search technology:

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v405/n6783/full/405112a0_fs.html -
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/k53/clever.html

Google authors' academic paper (links to .pdf file, etc):

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu/pub/1998-8

HTML version:

http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/com1921.htm -
graphical overview of google archtecture: http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/over.gif

Unfortunately, none of the info at the above sites directly addresses the issue you raise, sorry.

>For a start, we are DBAs and consultants -
> we are not paid to debug operating systems
...

Excellent point, in spite of the breathless dot-com culture, sites need to be prudent in analysing their support requirements.

However, there may be sites out there that can afford to be more adventurous and/or R&D oriented than those in the dominant/mainstream business & data processing mode.

On a practical level, and this is probably more pertinent to network/sysadmn types than DBA's (sorry), one of the articles I read recently on the "OS wars" stated that there is a growing trend for sysadmns LIE to dammitment, and setup cheap hidden Linux boxes to handle stuff (IP utilities, email servers/gateways, etc) that they Received on Thu Jun 15 2000 - 15:13:35 CDT