Re: HELP! migrating from NT to UNIX

From: Joel Garry <joel-garry_at_home.com>
Date: 27 Jan 2004 16:53:51 -0800
Message-ID: <91884734.0401271653.464cf865@posting.google.com>

"Niall Litchfield" <niall.litchfield_at_dial.pipex.com> wrote in message news:<4015531b$0$2435$cc9e4d1f_at_news.dial.pipex.com>...

> "Andrey" <adm_at_mlm.ru> wrote in message news:bv2o2p$rub$1_at_gavrilo.mtu.ru...


> > > Four major companies that used to be in the World Trade Center are out

> > > of business. Bankrupt. Gone. Not just because of the 9/11 tragedy but

> > > specifically because they lost their corporate data.

> > >

> > > Perhaps the OP's migration won't kill anyone. Perhaps it is not a

> > > database belonging to an engineering company, a hospital, an

> > > intelligence agency, or whatever.

> > >

> > > Apparently the fact that the OP was unethical is unimportant to you.

> > > Apparently the fact that he might make an extremely expensive mess and

> > > cost people their jobs isn't important to you. Apparently if some other

> > > person with a "great personality" did it to you or a member of your

> > > family you wouldn't mind. Well if so why are you criticizing us? Why

> > > aren't you posting the solution to the OP's question?

> > >

> > > My suspicion ... if you actually knew enough to help the OP ... you'd
> > > also know enough to not do so in this situation.

Well, I think you are making an unwarranted assumption about the OP's ethics. It is entirely possible that he was hired by some PHB who doesn't know the difference between 10g and an Excel grid. Now, unless the OP misrepresented himself to the PHB, that's the PHB's responsibility, right? Especially if he's head of the CIA. And even more so if it is nepotism. We don't have any evidence one way or the other of nepotism or an ethical lapse.

Yes, he might make an expensive mess, but I don't see how people can lose jobs over that. Either the migration works or it doesn't or it corrupts everything unrecoverably. I would make the assumption that if it is small enough for a PHB to hire his nephew, there aren't enough people around to hurt, because if it is a large org, there will be enough expertise around to help him through it. And I, for one, _love_ stories of large orgs where that is not true. There is no getting around the fact that the ultimate responsibility is with management, not with some newbie.

Sybrand may be correct, but it ain't necessarily foregone that the OP will fail miserably. It all depends. If the OP can follow directions, ask the right questions, and has support, he ought to be able to stumble through a Solaris install. The migration may be very simple, we don't know that there's 500,000 lines of Pro*C code to translate. If the front end is effin' VB...

> >
> > Daniel, all what you wrote above is subject of divine mercy and insurance
> > staff. Why don't you help OP with books, goods, food, etc? All you can

>  issue

> > is "do not touch anything" or "Goto oracle.com" advices. People can care
> > about themselves even if they work with Oracle.

Andrey, I agree you should go away, or at least think about what the limits of your knowledge are and post accordingly. I'm uncomfortable sounding like I'm agreeing with you and having to explain it.

> 
> Perhaps you can point me to the insurance company that will cover for
> backups which were taken, but were lost along with the data centre when they
> weren't taken off-site as per normal practice.

Business interruption insurance. Altavista gives a sponsored link that actually has some decent stuff:
http://www.irmi.com/expert/insurance.asp

"Valuable Papers/Computer Files. Policies may only provide a small limit for valuable papers or limited coverage to only restore computer files from back-ups. This could be problematic if the only back-ups were stored at the loss site. Also, some policies may provide coverage for the costs associated with recreating or re-engineering information that was lost. Where this coverage is afforded, a methodology must be developed to accurately capture the time and expense required in recreating the information."

So, such policies are out there. Whether anyone bothered?...

> 
> Dan and Sy have both offered relatively sensible advice and links to the OP.
> Like them I have difficulties in dealing with someone who says 'I've just
> got myself hired to do a job I cannot do, please help'.

Why the difficulties? Maybe he can with a kickstart. It's not like someone asking for homework cheats. Honest questions with informed and understanding management, maybe through necessity he can figure out what he doesn't know and avoid getting ripped off by some useless salesperson. It just all depends exactly how far in over his head he is. Some little nothing 100M db might work out mostly ok with 9i defaults and SQL*Loader. The NT might just have needed some decent dba work to deal with growth, so what? as long as it gets kicked up into unix.

More importantly, the Oracle/cdos world should not toss such situations into the garbage.

--
@home.com is bogus.  "All communication has a moral dimension.  People
grow or diminish in moral stature by the words which they speak, and
the messages which they choose to hear." - The Pope.
"Let's get small." - Steve Martin

Received on Tue Jan 27 2004 - 18:53:51 CST