Re: Multiprocessing: Oracle 7 & Solaris 2.3

James A. Lane (jl3a+_at_andrew.cmu.edu) wrote:
: 7.1.3 has limited parallelism which allows certain types of queries
: to be spread across CPUs. Also parallel loading and parallel index
: builds.

Don't forget parallel indexing, parallel sort, parallel backup and parallel recovery.

: Expect 7.1.5 to be the release to go to, if they get the
: query parallelism up to Informix standards.

Up to the Informix standards ?? Oracle7 Release 7.1 is shipping on more then 30 or so platforms, which includes both SMP, Clustered and MPP systems. Informix 7.0 ships only on Sequent which is SMP, no clustering or MPP available until the end of '95 so I've heard. How can we beat that ??

: Strongly disagree. MPP does not give you the benefits they claim.
: There are memory utilization problems and, worse, the I/O throughput
: on MPP systems is not anywhere near the level that you get on
: shrared memory multiprocessor. Your best bet at the high end
: is a good SMP implementation, which is currently Sequent or Pyramid.
: Also, MPP is on the rocks and looking for new markets, praying
: for openings in the database server market (where they get beat
: by good SMP systems), and high bandwidth video or simulation
: systems (because of the drying up of the defense and scientific
: markets).

I do not agree. The advantage of MPP systems is that the CPU power, but also memory bandwisth and I/O bandwith is expandable. If you need more I/O, just add I/O channels *AND* cpu's to handle this. So there's virtually no limit.

I agree however that high-end SMP systems are a good bet, but especially at the high end, also have a look at Silicon Graphics or Digital, they have HUGE SMP systems.

The third option is clustering. If you have a large system, almost all of the time you need high availability. Clustering is the way to go - it will improve your performance and your avaialbility. Imagine you have a cluster of 2 or 4 large SMP systems! There are customers who use this kind of a configuration to support 1000-2000 on line concurrent users.

Sandor Nieuwenhuijs
Oracle Netherlands

• These opinions (if any) are just mine. I do not represent Oracle ---
• Corporation in this Posting ---