Min. memory config. for Oracle for the Mac 2.0?

We've received Oracle for the Mac 2.0, and have started using it instead of version 1.2. It has a number of significant advantages over 1.2 including:

• A new set of tools (e.g., Server Manager) implemented as MacApp applications, which will run in 32-bit mode and are much better than the crummy old System Stack, etc. (still provided).
• Oracle version 6 RDBMS kernel instead of version 5.
• Supports multiple connections (In fact, I suspect the RDBMS kernel is the same as the one in the Oracle Server for the Mac -- just the server end of SQL*Net is missing).
• Oracle RDBMS kernel runs as a Multifinder application, rather than in the system or application heap.
• Documentation set has grown from 3" to about 9" (comes with its own cardboard shelf unit! Maybe this isn't an advantage :-) Overall, this looks like a much more solid version than 1.2.

But this comes at a substantial price in runtime memory. Version 1.2 used to take ~684K on the system heap. The new version, by default, takes 4,500K for the kernel application! Of course, this can be trimmed some:

• With multi-connection, PL/SQL on, sound on, the kernel app has 820K free, some of which could possibly be trimmed.
• With single-connection, PL/SQL off, sound off, the free space in the kernel app grows to 1,987K, so the app size could be substantially reduced.
• SGA (System Global Area) has grown from 40K in 1.2 to 750K now! It could probably be reduced by adjusting the parameters in init.ora (see appendix C of the DBA manual).

As is usual with Oracle, they give me piles of details (a 9" thick stack of them), but very little (summarized) "information". I just want to know:

1. What's the minimum memory configuration for the kernel application, and what do I do to configure it that way?
2. What are the performance trade-offs for using this minimum memory configuration vs. larger configurations?

I couldn't find this in the docs anywhere (It may be there, but I just couldn't find it -- that's a problem, too). I'd appreciate any guidance via direct email and will summarize replies to the net.

Mike Wirth
Petroleum Information Corp.
Houston, Texas
713-961-5660
713-961-7917 (fax)
mcw_at_cs.rice.edu Received on Mon Mar 16 1992 - 19:22:41 CET