1 Billion 11 Byte Words... Need to Check Uniqueness Using Oracle

I have a group that is currently using Oracle but is considering moving to SQL Server to save some money. One of the business cases they're working with is the testing of 1 billion 11 character words for uniqueness. Apparently they've been sold on the idea that SQL Server will rock their monkey.

I tend to disagree and believe that Oracle will handle this task much more elegantly.

So that I can give this group some guidance: How would you go about testing uniqueness on 1 Billion 11 character words using oracle?

Ideas to get you started:
1) Write small clients to do database inserts and distribute them across the network on small desktops. Run Oracle with one table, one column and one constraint (that it be a primary and unique key). Start the inserts and wait for an exception. You could play with the number of inserts per commit and number of boxes submitting connections to the database.

2) Install Oracle on 10 boxes and split the 1 Billion words into 10 segments. Insert the numbers into the database and check for uniqueness. This won't prove uniqueness across the entire set so you'd then have to bulk insert or import all data from each Oracle database into one master database that checks uniqueness. Maybe this would be faster than checking uniqueness on every insert.

3) ??? Any other ideas? Received on Fri Feb 08 2002 - 09:45:44 CST