Which version of 8

I've finally graduated to the point where I am getting involved in system design and architecture. I've worked mostly with Oracle 7 in the past but the reality these days is that new system will be getting Oracle 8.

I do understand that Oracle 8i is more recent than Oracle 8, but it also appears that Oracle is marketing both products. I also understand that 8i is more geared to web-based applications - but is that the only difference. Are there any other good reasons to prefer one over the other? Right now the applications I am working with are OLTP using non-web client applications, but there is nothing to say that in the future they won't go to web-based applications. Does that mean I should go ahead and recommend 8i at this point or should they just go with 8 until they have a need for the extra things that 8i provides?

Are there any major differences between the installation procdures of 8 and 8i? I've done Oracle 7 before and it is just a matter of running the orinst shell script and answering a bunch of prompts along the way. Can I expect to see major differences with 8 or 8i in this process?

Since I'm also getting involved in design rather than in maintenance I also want to do an OFA-compliant installation and have downloaded the white paper from the Oracle site. Most of it seems to make sense. Does anyone actually have supportable arguments against following this standard? Received on Wed Feb 23 2000 - 14:56:45 CST