Opinions on Unorthodox Server Setup

My organization has a complex legacy client/server app which we normally use in a mission critical environment where it generates a good volume of data. In this environment we of course have good servers for our Oracle instances, with redundant everything and hot and cold backups and all that good stuff.

The idea has arisen to reuse this legacy application in a different kind of environment where the data is not as critical, but there may be some real benefits in its use there, provided we can keep the costs down for the new installation. Keeping the costs down is a major driver.

The data in this new environment will not be as critical as it is elsewhere in our organization. Really, due to the low volume of data, small number of concurrent users (three) and non-critical nature of the information, Oracle is really overkill. But reuse of all our existing (rich-functionality) code entails keeping it on Oracle (there are a lot of dependencies, including lots of server-side PL/SQL).

One idea to help keep the costs down is to not require a server machine for the Oracle instance. There will be three client workstations (probably XP professional) and on one of these client workstations we would install Oracle 9i standard edition. All three clients will use this database. Backups would be limited to nightly cold backups to a CD-ROM drive.

I kind of think we're putting the cart before the horse here but I'm trying to stay neutral. Wanted to know if anyone more technically knowledgeable than me would share their opinions with me on this? What kinds of problems could we run into (beyond the user turning the workstation-server box off at 5pm and the scheduled backup not occuring that night)?

Thanks! Received on Wed Jun 30 2004 - 20:22:44 CDT