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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Re: ESRI ArcSDE application
We have three database servers that we consider our "SDE servers". They
are UNIX boxes that house one or more instances of Oracle databases / SDE
servers. There is always a one-to-one correspondence between SDE and its
RDBMS. When there is more than one instance, there are multiple SDEHOMEs
that correspond to the multiple ORACLE_HOMEs. It helps to think of SDE in
the same terms that you would Oracle Spatial -- it's just a different
product that does geodatabases and geoprocessing, but has a proprietary
data architecture. Because of the dense datasets that usually typify
spatial data, and the management of the services in relation to the
database, I would imagine putting SDE on one server and the database on
another would make for a lot of headaches. SDE is not an application, but
more of a service between the database and applications. SDE is best at
intensive spatial analysis and scientific modeling. Not only are the
databases different to manage than typical business applications, but the
cultural climate of end users who are hydrologists, geologists and
engineers are also different. Geographers use databases in different ways
-- I know, I'm married to one!
We run the applications, ArcIMS and ArcGIS, on a multitude of application servers and within Citrix or desktops. All in all, we have found this configuration to work best in our environment. SDE is starting to come into its own with its latest release, and I've found the combination of Oracle 9.2 with SDE 8.3, accessed with ArcGIS, to be fairly solid. ArcIMS, the Internet Map Server, is another story, but it's workable.
It is heartening to see a thread on SDE once in a while, because one of my major issues with this product is that the traditional IT support is bypassed, and the databases and products are supported by the GIS group, usually a bunch of geographers that use IT to do their jobs. Seeing this thread hopefully means that SDE is moving further into the major database leagues. On the other hand, to administer an Oracle/SDE instance, the DBA needs to be somewhat educated in geoprocessing and spatial datasets, so it's a two-way street.
Phone: (352) 796-7211, Ext. 4033
Fax: (352) 754-6776
Email: Mailto:Sherrie.Kubis_at_swfwmd.state.fl.us
http://WaterMatters.org
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