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Re: Minimalist ORACLE Installation

From: Hans Forbrich <forbrich_at_yahoo.net>
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 01:28:33 GMT
Message-ID: <51yrc.6185$SQ2.1489@edtnps89>


Sarah Tanembaum wrote:

>
> Some of my colleaque to look into the opensource database such as MySQL
> and/or PostgreSQL since they are easy to install and require virtually
> very little resources as compare to MS SQL*Server, Sybase, DB2, and
> especially Oracle. Is it true?
>
> The reason is that I have a limited diskspace and memory.
>
> Thanks

The smallest 'supported' footprint for Oracle that meets your criteria is Oracle Standard Edition (or Standard Edition ONE if your machine only supports 1 or 2 CPU).

You can theoretically create a custom install smaller than that, but you have to know exactly what you are doing. (And it probably won't be supported.)

The Standard Edition {ONE] has most, if not all, of the features that typical PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS Access and SQL Server shops are looking for. (This is NOT a challenge for a feature battle - just a stanement of what the developers think they want, in my experience.)

There are dozens of reasons why MySQL and PostgreSQL have a smaller footprint. As of yet, the commercial products still have an edge in reliability, scalability, and other capabilities.

Oracle, for example, provides intrinsic support for several additional datatypes AND their manipulation. While PostgreSQL and MySQL support many of the datatypes, the manipulation is in some areas still a ways off. As a result, you end up growing the effective footprint by needing to add extra software.

The kicker is that the additional things are preintegrated and tested with the database, whereas many OpenSource developers end up adding or integrating the capability manually. Some examnples, in Oracle's case: Apache-based HTTP listener, PERL, direct interface from Apache to database via mod_PLSQL, Java and J2EE, a command line interface to the data, message & message queueing, email inteface, direct HTML capability, workflow, a text/document index and search mechanism, geospatial manipulation, XML as a data type that can be joined with tables.

(Similar statements can be made for the other products.)

The counter argument is generally "I want to pick the version levels of the add-ons". Which is fine if you want to spend the time and effort supporting the required combination.

(One other _major_ difference is that Oracle uses a SCHEMA in a manner similar to other products' DATABASE. Many developers get this confused and create many Oracle Databases when they really should have one database that contains many schemas. That frequently results in a footprint that is MUCH larger than necessary.)

Don't get me wrong - I do like and use Open Source. I just believe in picking the right tool for the job, and understand WHY it's the right tool. Many developers snub Oracle simply because they do not know what it is capable of doing. Thus they end up reinventing the wheel - which may keep the initial cost low but tends to increase the long term operating cost.

HTH
/Hans Received on Fri May 21 2004 - 20:28:33 CDT

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