Re: Capacity limitations

Linda Hillier wrote:
>
>I'm a total newbie creating an Oracle database for a University project.
>The platform it will be developed on is Unix, accessed via a web-based
>form. I'm not too familiar with Oracle and need to find out about capacity
>limitations. At present there are approximately 30 users of the system.
>Would an Oracle system be overkill and if so can anyone recommend a
>database language that would be more suitable.

Depends on your definition of overkill. Maybe Oracle's cost per user is higher for 30 users than let say Microsoft's SQL-Server. Maybe Oracle cost per user beats all other products when there are 500+ users. But this should not be considered as the sole reason for using or not using Oracle.

We're running a small system, less than 20 users. Oh yes, I forget to mention that the largest table in our "small" system is now approaching 160 million records. As they say, it's not the size of the ship (or the number of passengers onboard), it is the motion of the ocean. :-)

IMHO, Oracle technically addresses the complete spectrum of database usages - from a single user running on Win'95, to a 1000+ user system, from OLTP to OLAP, and even VLDBs. As for the financial side - that's for the bean counters.

Database language? Oracle supports two "languages". First there is normal SQL (based on ANSI SQL 92 I think), and secondly there is a procedural SQL programming language called PL/SQL (basically SQL plus conditional statements, functions, procedures etc). Client applications (developed with Delphi., VB, C, Perl or whatever) can talk either one of these two "languages" to the Oracle server. Of course, each of these development tools have different design and development methods that can be used, from a highly object orientated visual design environment (Delphi), to a low level do-everything-yourself environment (C with embedded Oracle SQL).

Hope this answer some of your questions. :-)

regards,
Billy Received on Thu May 21 1998 - 05:01:04 CDT