Re: Oracle Web Server Performace/Ease Of use/Etc.

Hi,

kailas_at_my-dejanews.com wrote:

> Hi. The company I work for is thinking of migrating a large web based database
> search engine to a platform other than the ancient 4d. Oracle web server has
> come up as a possibility. does anyone know if there is a demo out there? i've
> tried to get one from the oracle site but there's nothing in the download
> section that is explicitly called the oracle web server(although they do say
> there is a trial version).

Maybe your are confused by product names. Oracle often refers to it as Oracle (Web) Application Server.We got a trial version of OWAS from Oracle.

> also, does anyone have experience with the oracle web server and can attest
> to it's good points and downfalls? the searches that are conducted are
> essentially free text searches through 80,000 records. please email a reply
> if possible. thanks alot!

I'm implemented a search engine with OWAS 3.0 and Oracle Context Option. If you are intrested you can
visit it at http://cisc.tu-graz.ac.at:8000/rb/owa/opac.eingabe_v1

It is a very simple library application consisting of a few, but large tables ( first modell of oven fresh database designers - good lord ) Main table for text retrieval keeps about 200 000 records. Search performance does only little depend on total row count but much more on effectivness of Oracle Context Option. Context Option gives search engines real good text searching power. You can use something like stemming ( find go, went, gone on $go ... ) scoring, fuzzy searches
Oracle Context Option is quite simple to use. We are running this application over a year now and our users ( mostly students ) haven't burned down the campus. So it can't be too bad.

But that's not our only application we are driving over OWAS. We are already running a still growing application for campus administration. You can visit it at https://online.tu-graz.ac.at/ This application can be used anonymously and identified. Identified users have different privileges on different applications. It's all done with OWS PL/SQL cartridge.

Due to the fact, that I'm not personally administrating OWAS 3.0 we are running so I can't point out what are the pitfalls.

But out of my programming expirience I can say :

Advantages :
 a.) Different Cartridges available : You can code your application in PL/SQL, Java, Perl.
 b.) Transparent PL/SQL gateway. OWS automatically resolves and manages parameters to PL/SQL - Procedures.
 c.) Different security levels implementable from no - security down to package - based security.
 d.) Database and OWS don't have to reside on the same machine. You can have mutiple server accessing multiple databases on different machines  e.) real easy database access if you use PL/SQL.  f.) Load balancing : In opposition to CGI which creates a single process for each http request a definable number of

     OWAS Web request Agent handles requests. Handling them over to others processes depening on kind of request.

    Database request loads can dynamically balanced by automatically starting additional PL/SQL cartrigdes to serve requests.

PL/SQL is a very simple , ADA - like language. Programming in PL/SQL results in very stable applications.
There are no pointers ( an no pointers needed ) but all functionallity to access each an everything in Oracle.
With dbms_pipe you can implement os - access. dbms_sql let you construct almost any statement dynamically.

There also exists a shareware tools, that let you build pages fast. If interested see

"WebView 4.6 is distributed with source code as shareware and is unsupported. However, you are welcome to send your questions and comments to the email account identified at the product download site: http://govt.us.oracle.com. Follow links to downloadable utilities, then to WebView.WebView 4.6 is distributed with source code as shareware and is unsupported. However, you are welcome to send your questions and comments to the email account identified at the product download site: http://govt.us.oracle.com. Follow links to downloadable utilities, then to WebView. "

Furthermore if you use Oracle Designer you really can completely GENERATE your whole application. A colleague of mine
generated such an application consisting of about 30 000 lines of PL/SQL code. For final release he had only to change some parameters. This application is now in production and as far as I know accepted by users.

Disadvantages :

 a.) Oracle Web Server 3.0 itself seems to be a bit unstable. It's often hard to find out what caused the server crash. We workaround this by

     having a monitor job that looks every 3 minutes if the server is still alive and if it isn't restarts it. This seems to be a mess but in reality it isn't

     because http is a stateless protocoll. So sometimes user wait a bit longer for a answer, thats all.

 b.) If you are not using Oracle Designer or Webview programming Webpages with PL/SQL can be time consuming because you have to do everything

      by yourself. There is no page - generating tool but your fingers hacking. You to build a Webpage from button up. Supplied packages are good and reliable but implement in most cases basic functionallity. On the other hand this gives you a flexibilty ( one often miss looking on Developer/2k) and it depends on how much you develop and follow a conceptual design of your application instead of quick, dirty and wild coding every. ( Nothing against quick, dirty and wild as long as no code is concerned)

Finally : We use OWS from version 2.0 up to 3.0 for two years know and we are quite satiesfied with it.

Please keep in mind that I never had the opportunity to compare OWS against any other Web server or web database gateway and that this is in no means a official statement. Its my personal opinion based on my expirience.

Hope you have an idea know and information is what you looked for.

Regards
  Robo.

Received on Thu Jun 18 1998 - 13:01:29 CDT