Re: Oracle Application Server Admin

I installed it about 3 or 4 years ago. I have it on one machine with my databases on different machines, so if my web server got hacked, the hacker didn't have immediate access to the databases. It could still happen, but at least it would take a few extra steps.

Anyway, getting it configured was a pain for me as well. It didn't (and still doesn't) seem to make any sense that it also winds up installing an Oracle database as part of the installation. With poor documentation, I finally struggled through getting it configured and working for my use, which is just as a 'first step' for using Application Express apps on my databases. Luckily I didn't need to install any of the java 'stuff' for regular apps, though I did struggle once last year trying to figure to figure out how to get BI Publisher running to see if it was worth it. That took about a week, but I finally got it all going (the worst part was trying to find the correct java 'thing' to get installed, the Sun site was terrible about making what I needed easy to find)

But, after those headaches, it's been running pretty good on a Windows 2003 Server. The only things I've had to do are adding more DAD's for different apps on the databases. But, I've also never taken the effort to even attempt any of Oracle's patches after my first attempt ended in failure. OAS has become such an important 'part' now that I'm scared to mess with it, it's working, why try to fix it and take a chance of it breaking?

But, there is also a new version, based on Apache 2.0 I believe, so unfortuneatly, I think one of these days I'll have to uninstall everthing and then install the new version, so the security folks will quit having coniption fits. Money is extremley tight, so taking a class is out of the question, and from the course descriptions I've seen, mainly are geared towards adding in all the extra java junk that I don't need or want. I have enough problems without trying to decipher java error messages for my users (those are about the only thing I've ever seen worse than Oracle error messages).

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• Bill Ferguson -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l