Oracle FAQ Your Portal to the Oracle Knowledge Grid
HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US
 

Home -> Community -> Usenet -> c.d.o.server -> Re: oracle grid

Re: oracle grid

From: Howard J. Rogers <hjr_at_dizwell.com>
Date: 23 Sep 2004 15:40:22 -0700
Message-ID: <14a1f766.0409231440.5a251f5d@posting.google.com>


joel-garry_at_home.com (Joel Garry) wrote in message

> > I'm going to simultaneously agree and disagree with you Daniel!
> >
> > You *can't* have a Grid without a RAC (so Noons is right). For the
> > simple reason that, without RAC, as an end-user, I would know what
> > server I was connected to (ie, I would *have* to know), whereas the
> > essence of Grid-ness is neither to know nor care. And for that, I need
> > a choice of instances running on a plethora of servers.
>
> End users don't *have* to know. I have middleware that hides it from
> them. So, for example, if Mr. DSS-guy has to try every whichwaything
> with his data, I can put a replicant on his pc (or if he complains
> about performance, let him buy another pc/server) and let that take
> the hit, rather than the oltp system. Perfectly doable with O8
> vintage middleware.

As I said, there are merely degrees of gridness; a spectrum. It's not black and white. What you've described is at the low-end of gridness, and yes it was perfectly do-able in 8.0+.

But clearly, your description is not very griddy. As an end-user, it would seem that I have to know whether I should attach to a local replica of the data, or whether I can use the main infrastructure. As an administrator, it would appear I am supposed to know whether this guy's queries are clobbering the OLTP users, or whether I need to do something about it.

In a "true grid" paradigm, neither of those bits of information would be needed, because the backend server would just reconfigure itself to make sure the DSS stuff runs without affecting the OLTP stuff. And if that involved powering up another instance to dedicate to the task, so be it. There would never be a question of having to replicate to a desktop, because the backend would sort itself out so that it was always up to the job. Perhaps another "grid technology" (formerly known as Resource Manager) would kick in to sort out the competing demands... who knows? Point is, it gets sorted, without my having to poke around with init.ora parameters etc etc etc.

Similarly, your o8 vintage middleware does a reasonable job of hiding the complexities from users -but in the very griddy 10g world, we have clusters of 10g Application Server, so that even on the middle layer, we have no idea which particular middle server you've connected to. And those multiple application servers load-balance and re-configure themselves so they can always cope with the load.

Do I believe any of this stuff is for real? Not much. I'm merely playing devils's advocate and trying to interpret the Oracle marketing hype (for myself as much as for anyone else). And truly, there's not much fundamentally new about most of the technologies needed to make it happen -it's just that 10g has brought them all together and improved them and co-ordinated them to the point that bits of the dream can become a form of reality. If it were truly do-able, I'd sign up for it. And 10g certainly gets us some of the way there. It certainly doesn't get us *all* the way there, but on the other hand I think that saying most of it was doable with version 8i is rather missing the point... about how *well* it was doable, or how *easily*.

Regards
HJR Received on Thu Sep 23 2004 - 17:40:22 CDT

Original text of this message

HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US