Re: URGENT Help please with Oracle pricing and sizing

<bdimple_at_my-deja.com> wrote in message news:94qfhk$fjv$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com...
> Hi,
>
> I have a couple of URGENT question !!!
>
> I have just been asked if I can provide a way of
> doing sizing estimates for an Oracle Database.
> For example, given 10,000 records in a table, how
> much disk space would that require.
> Is there any way to do this ?

If your table definition was, say:

col1 char(5)
col2 varchar2(10)
col3 number

You could do worse than say that an entire record might possibly take up around 52 bytes (mileage might vary -I'm assuming a byte per digit, and a byte for each character -use Unicode character sets, or cyrillic, and all calculations are up for grabs). 10000 records therefore take 520000 bytes - or half a meg, unless my maths is way off beam (has been known to happen!).

Now assume an index on Col1 -that will be 5 bytes long, plus the row id (7 bytes, I think, but I haven't checked), so allow another 120000 bytes.

Add up the lot, double it just in case, and add a bit for housekeeping. That gives you a rough estimate of around 1 to 1.5megs. Not accurate, but in the right ball park. Allow extra space for things like TEMP and Rollback segments to handle actually working with that data, and proceed from there.

You can get terribly sophisticated in these sorts of analysis, but I tend not to see much point in it. With variable data types, you're at the mercy of the exact nature of the data in any case. At the end of the day, it's only disk space ;-)

> I have also been asked about Oracle's pricing structure.
> In particular, if Users on a Web Site send requests through
> a middle-tier Broker to a Database on a Server, how does Oracle charge
> for that ?

A lot.

> I have a feeling that in fact they charge by the CPU(s) power, but I
> may be wrong.

There is a pricing structure which, I believe, takes the number of CPUs and multiplies (wait for it) by the MegaHertzage of said CPUs. 4 x 133Mhz will be much cheaper than 4x933Mhz.

However, Oracle's pricing structure is weird and wonderful, and all sorts of deals can be worked out of a desperate enough salesman. Just be prepared to spend big and spend often. Your best bet is to pick up the phone and talk to Oracle Sales. They can give you ballpark figures for a particular configuration at the drop of the hat (the hat dropping comes free... nothing else does).

Regards
HJR
>They obviously can't charge by the number of users in an
> Internet Web Site so maybe they have some other approach.
>
> An early reply would be a tremendous help !!!
>
> My boss said he'd like an answer tomorrow - Help - get me out
> of here.
>
> Thanks very much.
>
> B.Dimple
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com
> http://www.deja.com/
Received on Thu Jan 25 2001 - 18:54:38 CST