Re: Raw vs. Cooked

I think I'll change my mind for our first development install, and use cooked space. I'll then study Oracle structure and plan to use raw for production. The reason for going with cooked now is that as I started reading the Oracle Installation Guide, it seemed that, unlike Informix (have been Informix DBA), I couldn't just make the single equivalent in Oracle (i.e., a single tablespace) of a single big Informix storage unit (a "whole enchilada" rootdbs dbspace). It appeared to me from the Installation Guide that I needed to create a dozen (raw) tablespaces.

So, until I understand Oracle better, I'll start with cooked, and then "graduate" to raw, later.

Thank you all for your helpful comments.

DG

<david_grove_at_correct.state.ak.us> wrote in message news:1103230119.537094.214900_at_c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I am the dba for our shop's Informix based app. We use raw devices on
> our Sun Solaris boxes.
>
> We are about ready to start the process of redeveloping our agency's
> main app using Oracle. I am starting to familiarize myself with
> Oracle.
>
> I'm wondering about the ole cooked vs. raw space issue.
>
> In my Informix experience, I am quite comfortable using raw space.
> However,I have gotten the impression
> from Oracle folks (for example, an Oracle instructor) that the
> customary practice with Oracle is to use cooked space. In fact, the
> instructor said there wouldn't be any difference, so he suggested using
> "the more
> convenient" cooked space. To me, it doesn't really seem inconvenient
> to
> use raw, so I would be happy to go that way if there is a performance
> gain (which seems likely to me). I am assuming that there exist
> Oracle utilities to
> handle backups or loading/unloading raw storage.
>
> Anyway, while considering this, I found a recent (April 2004) Oracle
> white paper that
> seems to support my personal bias (don't we just love to see our
> prejudices reinforced?). It is called "A Quantitative Comparison
> Between Raw Devices and File Systems for Implementing Oracle
> Databases". It can be found here:
>
>

http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/performance/pdf/TWP_Oracle_HP_files.pdf
>
> It concludes that using raw devices is much superior to cooked. But,
> perhaps that conclusion is meant to apply specifically to HP platforms,
> since that was the basis of the paper.
>
> Anyway, among the Oracle cogniscenti, is raw really generally avoided
> in favor of cooked? Does this paper challenge the generally accepted
> Oracle practice? Is there a generally accepted "factoid" in the Oracle
> world that either raw or cooked is "the way to go"?
>
> We will be using one big S.A.M.E. RAID10 device. The question is to
> cook or not to cook, and administrative difficulties of raw vs cooked
> are not an issue (assuming suitable Oracle tools exist).
> Thank you for any comments.
>
Received on Fri Dec 17 2004 - 16:56:06 CST