Re: Oracle on Windows Server Vs Xp-Pro

From: Newton Bolton <nospam_at_nospam.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 09:19:55 -0600
Message-ID: <41C9909B.5080906_at_nospam.com>


> Newton Bolton wrote:
>
>
>> Does anyone know if using the Windows Server OS instead of XP-Pro will
>> offer any performance advantages?
>>
>> I don't plan to use ANY Microsoft products such as IIS or Exchange.
>>
>> This will be a pure Oracle database server.
>>
>> Thanks in advance-
>> Newt
>
>

[Quoted] Howard J. Rogers wrote:>

> You'll know already, of course, that workstation-class MS operating
> systems only permit 10 concurrent users to access the machine from other
> workstations. Your anticipated load of 8 is already perilously close to
> that, and the Server O/S might be justified on those grounds alone
> -plenty more growth room. Besides which, you need to be careful that
> workstations don't do unintended 'silent' cross-connections, which steal
> from your number of permitted connections.
I didn't know of this limit. Is this a licensing limit, performance [Quoted] limit or a limitation enforced by the MS software? I have departments with 14 Oracle "named users" and they all connect to the server every day, even though only 2-4 may be using the application. The nature of this department is such that they interact with the database only a few times every hour, so the effective load on the database is negligable. However, I have never had a problem with people connecting to the 'server' (Win-NT 4.0 workstation)

>
> On the other hand, the choice of O/S can make a significant difference
> to performance: a 'rebuild all my indexes' script on one of my servers
> running White Box Linux completes in 38 minutes. When the SAME machine
> was last installed with Windows 2003, the same script completed in 52.5
> minutes. I make that a 28% speed improvement by NOT spending any money!
I agree 100% about Linux. I use Linux and MySQL both. I have tried installing Oracle on linux, but not for several years. The Oracle [Quoted] application (on the server) needs to run Reports 6I to create PDF reports for emailing, so that rules out Linux for now. I have used PHP and MySql to generate some PDF reports, and that works well, except that creating the report is more work. At the risk of veering too far off-topic, I will add that once you have written a report in a 3GL language, it is easier to reuse parts of it than it is with Oracle Reports. I have always found it frustrating that the Oracle product doesn't allow you to copy (or reference) parts of one report into other reports. (Maybe versions newer than 6I have this feature.)

>
> It might perhaps be a bit much to take it all on at once, and maybe it's
> a definite no-no for you, but I feel these days that everyone ought to
> at least be looking at Linux, for professional skills reasons as well as
> performance and cost. You'll find White Box is free, runs well on a
> Workstation-class PC, and will handle 8 or more users without batting an
> eyelid.

And, Linux and Open source competition is the only thing keeping Oracle and Microsoft from ramping up prices exponentially. I think that open source products are improving at a much faster rate than either MS or Oracle products.
--Newt Received on Wed Dec 22 2004 - 16:19:55 CET

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