We at Computer and Information Systems at Yale University have been
developing an Oracle 7 application, our first, for several months.
It is smallish, about 70 database objects and not yet 50mb. It will
support about 20 simultaneous users. However, it uses just about every
advertised O7 feature: declarative RI, triggers, procedures, packages, etc.
It is also very "visible" as it is the first true client/server app at Yale.
We started out using 7.0.12 and have since switched to 7.0.15.
We are stymied due to a combination of hardware bugs, Unix implementation bugs,
and Oracle bugs. I do not want to go into the history or description of
them. But, I will say that we have gotten valiant attempts from the
hardware vendor's developers and the particular Oracle development group
associated with that vendor to fix the problems. We also have an excellent
consultant who has never seen any of these problems on the platforms he
has worked on, but he says the apps he has worked on do not use all the
O7 features we do. So, despite everyone's efforts we are dead in the water.
We find it hard to believe that someone, somewhere, hasn't made a full
fledged 7.0.15 app work. We would like to know what hardware/unix
platform functions best. The FAQ says that Sun SPARCs will *probably*
work best, but the FAQ says nothing about the O7/Sun/unix combination
being any more or less buggy than any other. Both the Oracle people and
the vendor's people are honorable, but have positions and goals that are
not concident with ours. We need independent counsel.
Reid Kaplan
Yale University
(203) 432-6585
