Re: System Requirements Oracle 9i Database

"Larry R Harrison Jr" <larrytuaz_at_cox.net> wrote in message news:<Ydgqb.2765$0K6.2664_at_fed1read06>...
> My wife, who wants to help me jump-start my database designing skill-set (I
> do a lot of it in Access & Visual Basic), purchased Oracle 9i Database for
> me. It has 16 CDs altogether.

I think the other posts here, while perfectly correct, didn't address the database design skill-set issue.

>
> I am a total newbie with this altogether, I mean TOTALLY--any average 9-year
> old knows as much about it as I do. My skillset in Access & Visual Basic is
> considerable--to the point I have a couple of clients whom I've been
> designing such databases for--but in Oracle I am totally dumb, frankly.

Database design ought to be separate from database programming and database configuration, but it isn't. One winds up using the capabilities of the tools provided. In the case of Access & Visual Basic, that often means learning many bad habits. That's true of Oracle too, but generally to a lesser extent, because it has historically been used at larger shops that spring for formalized designers. (There are people who make an entire career out of pointing out how major database vendors tend to screw up relational theory, but that's another story, see
http://www.dbdebunk.citymax.com/page/page/616965.htm for example.) So I don't mean to be mean, but you might have a lot of unlearning to do.  Most of us around here have seen some unbelieveably bad systems, and we often blame it on people trying to apply techniques specific to vendor whatever.

If you've taken a relational theory class at a college, ignore this post. If you haven't, it will be the best thing in the world for your career. And I don't mean a class in Access! :-)

>
> Heck, I'm not even sure how current Oracle 9i is. And as my wife paid less
> than $100 for these 16 CDs--and I've always been under the impression that
> Oracle is a VERY serious software package--I figured it would cost a grand
> at least, so maybe she didn't even get the real version of it for all I
> know.
>
> What are the system requirements for this version? I currently have Windows
> XP Professional (not server) on a 500 MHz computer with 256 Meg of RAM; I am
> about to add a 1.753 Gigahertz Athlon XP 2100 system with 512 Meg of RAM and
> a 30 Gig Hard drive, and I figure that would be powerful enough.

It all boils down to what exactly you want to do once you get the db up and running. "Oracle" is a very large collection of products. One set within that is 9iAS, which I can guarantee won't run on any configuration mentioned in this thread so far. There is also a product called Oracle Designer, which is for modelling business processes, entities and relationships. See http://www.oracle.com/tools/index.html?designer.html . If you are going to use any of this stuff, you will probably want at least two computers. Hey, computers are cheap these days. :-) If you are going to try to cram it all on one computer, get at least 2G physical memory. Accessing Oracle through ODBC connections from MS products is just silly, although a lot of places do it.

This newsgroup is purposed towards administration (which is a good thing) but that is usually less than 10% of an "Oracle shop."

>
> Tips?
>
> Also, what books are good for learning this?

See http://www.orafaq.com and google this group for previous postings.
>
> LRH
jg

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