Re: Do sites actually install Oracle themselves ? What a nightmare...

jp_at_queen.plaza.nt.com (JP Srinath) writes:

> It's not fair for you guys to judge a sortware product
> by just the ease of installation.
>
> It's highly tunable product and hence no amount of GUI
> is going to help much, unless you know what you are doing!

I _must_ disagree.

First just let me say that people can and should use whatever criteria they find useful to evaluate software. Hopefully they would choose attributes that reflect their interaction with the software. Otherwise, they would have no accurate assesment of this software. Since this thread started in comp.sys.hp.hpux, you have to understand that you are going to get a lot of system-administration-point-of-views in this discussion.

And, second, I have to say that, at least as a good rule of thumb, from my experience, software that is difficult to install also tends to have other problems. This seems to be a result of either poor organization in the company that makes the software, or poor overall design of the product. As only one of many examples: I know of a CAD package that requires that all users share one global, world-writable, design directory. It also incidentally was fairly hard to install, and impossible to install securely. The typical vendor response for software like this is "Oh, you mean that you actually want to run other software on that machine? Why? We do not reccommend that, and if you have any problems, it must be because of the other software running on the machine." The unfortunate truth is that they are often at least half-right. Some other hard-to-install and buggy software package is doing stuff it shouldn't, causing strange interaction with the programs own "features".

Would you buy a new car that required you to take off the wheels and 're-configure' the hydrolic braking system just because you live 1000 feet above sea-level or just because you happen to park it in the same garage with your vespa scooter?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that oracale is a bad product -- actaully, I've never had to use or install it (knock on wood...), but Your suggestion that you can't judge a piece of software by it's installation has no logical basis.

-- 
Fred Clift - fred_at_byu.edu Systems Manager - Computer Science - BYU
"Remember, if women don't find you handsom, they should at least
 find you handy."  -- Red Green