Re: Unix to Windows DBA translation

On 1 Jul 2003 16:36:43 GMT, Chuck <chuckh_at_softhome.net> wrote:

>willjamu_at_mindspring.com (James Williams) wrote in news:3f019e26.55816895
>@nntp.mindspring.com:
>
>> On Tue, 01 Jul 2003 09:00:48 -0400, SilverDBA
>> <silverback_at_photobooks.com> wrote:
>>
>> There are numerous Metalink documents on the differences. Externally
>> for the developer it is pretty much the same. Oracle does a good job
>> with this.
>>
>> Its radically different for the Admin type though. There is no Service
>> or ORADIM per see on UNIX.
>>
>>
>> Windows uses one process ORAEXE.EXE with numerous threads whereas each
>> background process is a seperate process on UNIX.
>>
>> If you have a lot of K-shell scripts for instance these must be
>> converted unless you get a UNIX shell for Windows which do exists
>> otherwise go Perl.
>>
>> There is an Oracle Book for Windows that I have seen in Barnes and
>> Noble and have thumbed throught it. Check that out. It looks pretty
>> good.
>>
>>
>>>Our shop is spreading from a mostly UNIX shop to include Oracle on
>>>more platforms. All politics aside, I would like to pick up the
>>>knowledge of Oracle in the windows environment as painlessly as
>>>possible.
>>>
>>>I am happy to RTFM, but would do best with a "difference" book if
>>>there is one. Any thoughts?
>>>
>>>Thanks!
>>
>>
>
>Politics aside, I would recommend keeping Oracle on unix. I admimister
>databases on both platforms and if I had my way they would all be running
>on unix. I have a few databases on Windows only because of a third party
>product that dictates both the platform and database.Whenever we have
>unexplainable problems, it's always on Windows.
>
>On Windows we find it's best to bounce database servers once a month,
>otherwise we've seen databases just hang. There are no errors, nothing in
>the alert log, no trace files, nothing in the listener log, etc. The
>service (similar to the background processes in unix) is still running.
>From all appearances everything is normal except you can't do any work in
>the database. You can't even connect as internal or sysdba to diagnose
>anything. Oracle technical support can't find anything wrong and they
>make it sound like it's something unique to our shop. A trip to the
>"Oracle on Windows" round table discussion at IOUG however dispelled that
>myth. There were dozens of other people reporting the exact same
>problems. What we've found is that Windows just seems to be a flakey
>platform for Oracle.
>
>If cost is the issue, run it on Linux. You'll have a more stable platform
>and still be able to use all the shell scripts you've probably already
>got with minor adjustments.

I'll second that on all counts. Especially if you have the ambition to have 500+ users connecting to your database (I'm not joking: some morons in our organization decided to run our projected worldwide calltracking system on a measly Win2k server, with 2G. Needless to say the app doesn't know anything about bind variables and the developers don't know anything about Oracle. Boy are we happy)

Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA

To reply remove -verwijderdit from my e-mail address Received on Tue Jul 01 2003 - 12:41:12 CDT