Re: Opinions Wanted on Oracle for NT

Ed Jennings wrote:
> [..] this application
> will be deemed mission critical with 24x7 uptime requirement,
> [..] I don't have
> sufficient knowledge of Oracle on NT to challenge her. [...]
> 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.

My site has recently completed conversion of all of its databases from Unix (Digital OSF/1 version 3.2) running on Digital Alpha servers to to Windows NT (3.51, service pack 5(I think)), running on Compaq servers. Please understand that I am not a "unix bigot"; I am merely speaking from my experience over the past year and a half.

Our databases are Oracle 7, release 7.2.2.4.11. At low volumes of usage they are reasonably reliable, although several unexplained and evidently insoluble (by Oracle Support) problems have arisen with distributed databases using read-only snapshots.

HOWEVER, performance is not consistent and generally tends to degrade over time when there are several resource-consumptive processes. I cannot remember a week during which we did not have at least one unscheduled database outage, either because Oracle crashed or because the server blue-screened. The median number of unscheduled outages during the week is 4. All of our production databases are shut down weekly for a complete backup; which means that, in general, an Oracle database on NT cannot be expected to remain up for a week at a time.

Furthermore, the Windows NT platform does not scale well and cannot be clustered -- I have heard of some clustering technology called "Wolfpack" that is in the works; but I have also heard that it is laughable at the moment.

I strongly recommend against using Windows NT as an Oracle database server platform for any mission-critical, enterprise application. If you must use NT, I recommend that you deploy Oracle7 release 7.3, and have duplicate servers so that you can use offline standby databases.

-bn
neumebm_at_hpd.abbott.com

(I doubt I need make it clear that these opinions are mine, and not those of my employer; but just in case be so advised.) Received on Fri May 02 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT