Re: ORACLE and NETWARE - risky or not risky ?

Annie TANGUY (atanguy_at_concept.fr) wrote:
: Is there any referenced litterature about the risks using ORACLE on
: NETWARE or at least, the drawbacks ?

        Running any third party application on Netware platform is risky to some degree since Netware has not memory protection isolating one task from another. More stable platforms, especially Unix, isolate memory of each tasks except of explicitly requested shared memory regions. Moreover, Oracle in Unix runs as dedicated user, thus protecting it's executable, configuration and data files. Oracle fault never crash Unix platform and bugs in other Unix programs (application, administrative tools and so on) never crash Oracle (except the case when directly related with Oracle). Unix has virtual memory system, so memory shortage does not crash Oracle or other applications (but slows it down). So Oracle in Unix is perfectly protected by OS, other protection (user-level security, crash protection, data protection) is implemented by Oracle.

        When running on Netware I see following problem:

1). Oracle is not running in isolated memory region, so bugs in other

    applications running on server (backup, groupwise, mail, anything)     could crash Oracle and Netware entirely. 2). Netware has not virtual memory, so some memory hog task may crash

    server before admin could take any action. 3). Oracle files may be not visible by outside network users, but are not

    protected from processes running on server. They may be damaged or     read by non-Oracle processes.
4). Netware multitasking is cooperative, so bug in process may easily hang

    entire server.

These problems may be not so serious - there are not many application running inside Netware server. Do not run any 3rd party application on server running Oracle and You will reduce risk drastically. There is good side of Netware design: Netware has little system overhead, so Oracle may work more efficienly on Netware server.

Sorry for bad English
Timofey Kutergin
SA/DBA   Received on Fri Jan 09 1998 - 00:00:00 CST