Anyone using SQL*Net successfully?

Dear netters,

we are gathering information on using Oracle with SQL*Net. Our system would consist of:

• 50 .. 100 386SX/16 MHz PS/2 micros with minimum of 4 MB RAM
• Token Ring or Ethernet
• UNIX box as a server

The name of the game is that all Forms are run on the PCs and all data resides on the server. The user can run SQL*Plus and ReportWriter reports either on the PC or on the server. The users DO NOT use any terminal sessions of any kind - the only way PCs and the server communicate is via SQL*Net. The users do not (necessarily) use a local database or database links, they log straight to the server.

We are not sure whether this really works with current Oracle versions (RDBMS 6, SQL*Net 1.1, SQL*Forms 3.0). SO IF YOU HAVE TRIED THIS KIND OF A CONFIGURATION, COULD YOU PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

1. Are you satisfied with the response time, especially with forms using many SQL statements? An interesting example would be a form with a POST-QUERY trigger which executes many SQL statements for each record fetched or a multi-SQL-statement commit-time trigger.
2. What is your connect time? I mean if you start an oracle session with SQL*Plus or SQL*Forms, how long does it take before you are connected?
3. Are you satisfied with working with SQL*ReportWriter running on the PC and data residing on the server? I.e. can you navigate through SRW screens quickly enough?
4. What is your exact configuration? SQL*Net over which protocol?

I'm asking only subjective answers to questions 1 and 3 because you really can't compare objective times without long explanation about what kind of an operation was performed.

I have seen a system like this which used an IBM 4381 mainframe as a server running RDBMS 6.0, SQL*Net for APPC 1.1 and Forms 3.0 on PCs. The response time for questions 1 and 3 was bad and connect time was over 30 seconds. A single SQL statement took generally at least 2 seconds to execute, and a trigger with 6 SQL statements took at least 17 seconds to execute. This was measured on a weekend, when CPU load was very low (the tester was practically the only user!) and the SQL statements returned just a single row each and used carefully tuned indexes! So I want to know if there are better configurations or should I forget SQL*Net for heavy production use.

Please reply via e-mail. I will summarize if anyone requests.

Thanks in advance!

--
Juhani Jaakola
jaakola_at_cc.helsinki.fi