Re: Personal Oracle 7 & WIN 95

>==========Jacob Love, 3/20/95==========
>
>In article <dbitting-2003950942370001_at_dbitting-powermac.us.oracle.com>,
>Doug Bitting <dbitting_at_us.oracle.com> wrote:
>>This is incorrect. Personal Oracle7 is designed specifically to run with
>>Win32S under Windows 3.1. The Installer is being nothing but protective
>>and responsible here. If the Installer were to allow you to install
>>Personal Oracle7 into an environment in which the database will not run
>>(or is not certified to run), then the Installer would not be doing its
>>job.
>
>Sorry, but I've been using Oracle since 1985 and this is just more of
>the same nonsense I've gotten on a variety of similar issues. In fact,
>it is deja vu back to one of my first encounters with Oracle support
>around 1986 when they told me that they would not be willing to provide
>support because I was using a "non-certified" Intel box. So I copied
>the software to a an old clunky True Blue Intel, discovered the same
>bug (which was quite obviously software, not hardware) and was rewarded
>with an answer that it would be fixed in the next release.
>
>Now, I admit that it is completely reasonable for Oracle to warn users
>that Win95 is not yet supported. But then perhaps the marketeers should
>stop advertising that it is Win95 ready?
>
>I think it is worth noting that Microsoft is attempting to get feedback
>on Win95 and I can't think of a better way to test it out than loading
>Oracle and its client software. Not that I'm willing to spend my time
>on this.... :-)
>
>>If you want to run Personal Oracle7 in any other configuration, then you
>>are on your own. While you may not like that response, we cannot support
>>an Operating System which is not production or which may change at any
>>time with no notice.
>
>I think I actually said this. Maybe you should read the article in its
>entirety before responding.
>
>--
>-----------------------
>Jack F. Love
>Opinions expressed are mine alone, unless you happen to agree
>

Thanks for the reply(s) Jack,
Being a relative newbie myself (I've only been using Oracle since 1987) I also have become accustomed to the response ... "Not supported on that release, platform, etc." It is part of my job to evaluate and analyze capabilities of new technologies and in this case it does appear that PO7 installer fails because it can't find the Win32S SPECIFICALLY.

When products don't work, we understand that this is, after all, a BETA test and not everything is going to work the first time around.

Some of the other products that also require Win32s (like NCSA Mosaic) must have a little more forgiving approach to determining that the 32 bit environment is present since it appears to work just fine. Some other comments have also indicated that PO7 works fine by installing on another machine and then copying the directory structure over, thus bypassing the 'protection' of the installer.

I would really be quite suprised if Oracle PO7 developers weren't way ahead of us in their testing with Win95. I was just a little put-off by the terseness and
lack of a cooperative attitude in Oracle's response.

Who knows? Maybe my *unsupported* testing efforts might have improved the quality of both PO7 and Win95 ... we may never know! ;-)

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