Re: Is this the way Oracle always does business?

Phil Glatz wrote:
>
> dlincke_at_bandon.unisg.ch (David-Michael Lincke) wrote:
> >What you need to get this running is Oracle client libraries for Solaris,
> >i.e. OCI libraries and header files, SQL*Net 2 and SQL*Net 2 TCP/IP
> >protocol adaptor. This will enable you to build oraperl or the Perl 5 DBI
> >DBD::Oracle driver to talk to the Workgroup Server on NT.
>
> Thanks for the advice, Dave -- I finally got the same advice from an
> Oracle networking specialist. After considering returning the
> product, the sales representative we dealt with finally got it right;
> since this is such a big product, it took her some time to find out
> exactly which division of tech support we needed. But she was
> genuinely helpful, and talking to the right engineer made a big
> difference. I've heard that this is a big problem when trying to get
> tech support from Oracle; once you find the right person to talk to
> things go very well. It's just hard to find the right person
> sometimes.
>
> >For your limited needs it might be worth looking into other non-commercial
> >products like mSQL, though. Then again that way might be politically
> >difficult for you. Bankers are a tough breed to deal with...we got those
> >problems every day :)
>
> I have looked at mSQL, as well as Sprite (written by Shishir
> Gundavaram, author of the great O'Reilly CGI book). Aside from the
> obvious political problems, the performance with these tools fall off
> as the database gets bigger. SO I'm looking forward to adventures
> with Oracle.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Phil Glatz (pglat_at_quickquote.com)
> Webmaster, QuickQuote, Inc. http://www.quickquote.com
> Incline Village, NV 702 831-2404

Hello Gentlemen,

I'd just thought I'd add my two bits.

Big company or small, unless you are jangling money in Oracle's face in the attempt to purchase something from them you get the same sub-par support. Even worse, the occasional good help comes from people that are real "diamonds in the rough". E-mailing Oracle is pointless, the letters rarely get attention. Phoning in a difficult TAR (support issue) is just as bad. I've had an open TAR concerning multiple database writers open with Oracle for longer than I can remember. The admitted it was a bug and told me a tech would get in touch. I'm still waiting.

I'm glad you were able to straighten out the communications between the Sun Box and the NT Workgroup server. I have a NT Workgroup development machine that was purchased because $1500 looked a lot better than $16,000. The database works the same with two major differences. First, the ultimate capacity of workgroup server is limited -- though I cannot remember the exact figure concerning the number of concurrent users (30?). Second, all the flashy options available for the enterprise addition (replication, spatial data, parallel, etc) are not available for the workgroup server.

Using oraperl will get past the problem of accessing the database via ODBC. I have yet to get an ODBC connection to work on workgroup server. I can get a 32-bit SQL*Net connection to connect to its bigger UNIX brother all the way across the building, but the silly thing won't connect to the database residing on the NT machine. I have a call into Oracle (snicker). Please feel free to post any wisdom you might come across if you can get a 32-bit SQL*Net connection to work to WGS via ODBC.

Thank you all for listening to my vent. I hop the some of the information in it proves useful. Thank you, especially, Phil - whose mailbox this post will eventually clutter.

Respectfully,

Jonathan Lent
JCPenney Company
Dallas, Texas

#include standard_disclaimer ;) Received on Thu Jun 13 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST