Re: Oracle on NT...Why Not?
Date: 1996/03/11
Message-ID: <4i1l7g$jqf_at_tin.monsanto.com>#1/1
In article <4hoqm8$glk_at_sun630.bentley.com> Sybrand Bakker <Sybrand.Bakker_at_Bentley.nl> wrote:
snip...
>
> Of course, NT is there. When it seems to run fine, occasionally it does provide
> problems which are difficult to sort out, because they seem to be dependent on the
> interaction between NT and Oracle (and both companies blaming each other for the bug)
> There are several reasons why you should at least consider Unix:
> -Although the user interface of Unix is not really user friendly, Unix itself should be
> considered a stale, well-tested robust OS with minimal overhead (which can't be said of NT)
> -One serious disadvantage of NT is that it has no serious batch facilities that can compare to Unix
> Cron. There is a batch like facility in Oracle itself, apparently this is no serious alternative
> for database wide maintenance jobs, like backup and reindexing.
> -Availability of the latest version of Oracle for NT seems to be much much later compared
> to Unix. While Oracle 7.2 was announced in the US already in July 95, the NT "port" was available in
> January 96, and it still seems not to contain the latest version of every product.
>
> Regards,
>
> Sybrand Bakker
> Senior IS Analyst
> Bentley Systems Europe
- I have found NT to be AT LEAST as robust if not more robust than UNIX when considering such platforms as SUN, SGI, HP, IBM RS/6000 and SCO.
- I like the misspelling that made "stable" into "stale" - Freudian slip???
- NT's WINAT batch facility works just fine and is certainly equal to CRON in most respects. You can buy batch packages for NT that go way beyond CRON for cheap.
- Oracle recently announced that NT is becoming part of Tier 1 for ports. That means that NT will now get serious support from Oracle and will be among the first set of ports for any new version.
- I see no reason to run UNIX any more except in the cases of extreme high-end needs where nothing less than an 8-CPU T-500 or a Digital 64-bit ALPHA is needed for huge databases into the Terrabytes with many hundreds or thousands of users.
I think it is interesting to see the UNIX people defend there turf. There are two types of people in computing: Those who get married to a technology and stick with it to the bitter end (and the end is bitter), and those who have flexibility to change as technology changes. The second group will sometimes run into minor trouble because they might move too quickly but they will never have a "bitter end".
By the way, I still support using UNIX for the very high-end. Five years ago I still supported using IBM mainframes for the very high end over UNIX. It's just a matter of time before NT platforms are able to handle the very high-end.
Mike Corum
Technical Consulting Team
Centers of Technical Excellence
Monsanto Co
(All opinions my own and have nothing to do with the company I work at)
Received on Mon Mar 11 1996 - 00:00:00 CET