Re: Opinions Wanted on Oracle for NT

In article <336946D0.1B1D_at_mindspring.com>,

        Ed Jennings <jenningse_at_mindspring.com> writes:
>I've been administering Oracle on Unix for the last few years and know
>very little about Oracle for NT. A vendor has proposed a monitoring
>package for our company's infrastructure. The application will run on
>NT, and the Oracle database can be anywhere. Since this application
>will be deemed mission critical with 24x7 uptime requirement, I
>naturally recommended Unix as the platform of choice for the database.
If your company's livelihood/existence is dependent on 24x7x52, make an analoguous situation for the NT administrator ... Would they fly in a plane with all flight control systems managed by NT, or would they live next door to a nuclear power generating plant with NT controlling the SCRAM functions?

>Our NT administrator thinks this recommendation is in error, and
>believes that Oracle on NT is a much better choice. I don't have

Does the NT admin have specific items related to preferring NT server, or are the reasons just that it gives them the warm fuzzies???

>sufficient knowledge of Oracle on NT to challenge her. I am under the
>belief that Oracle for NT is little more than a souped up Personal
>Oracle.

Are there any criteria in rating the NT server's capacity to handle your transaction load in your environment (interactive, local batch, distributed update, etc). Our experiments show very poor performance compared to UNIX/ORACLE in a heterogenous, large environment (several dozen servers and several hundred clients per network leg).

>The application in question will be firing thousands of transactions
>(1-2 K each) a day at the database, and will have 25-75 users querying
>the database. In addition, batch reports will be generated at night.
>
>Can anyone tell me if NT is stable enough to handle this?
>Is Oracle for NT robust enough to handle this.
>Can the App & Oracle reside on the same NT box?
>Do I need two NT servers (one for the app & one for Oracle)?
>Can I have more than one instance of Oracle running on one NT box?
>Should I move to squash this now and insist on a unix database?

Also keep in mind the necessary hardware platform. NT on Intel may not be appropriate for the application, and non-Intel NT is not usually as robust.

Be aware that ORACLE does the first version of each ORACLE release on Sun Solaris (for 32 bit) and DEC UNIX (for 64 bit). I think that there is an implication that the ORACLE/UNIX combination reaches stability earlier than most other combinations, particularly on the forementioned platforms.

>
>I'm prone to the last choice myself, but I welcome all input.
>
>Ed Jennings
>Oracle DBA
>EPS, Inc.
>302.791.8176

Bill

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