1 or 2 databases and/or servers?

        Got a small dilemma here. A colleague of mine is involved in a project that uses Oracle 7 for two (2) independent departments within the same company. The _only_ connection between these two departments is that they may need to query data from each other's database. There are no relations whatsoever between the two databases. They merely need to have access (with certain restrictions) to the information on each other's database. Now, when consulted, I recommended that there be two distinct databases sitting on individual servers. My justification include the following factors (in brief):

• security
• ease of maintenance
• independence of operations/maintenance
• minimal "downtime"
• caters for upgrades/expansion My colleague shares my opinion but she is having some trouble getting the same support from the rest of her team. Some of the reasons they provided include difficulty in implementing such a setup, difficulty in writing applications (they're using Oracle Forms 4.5) to work with this setup and lack of documented proof that this solution was better that having both database sit on the same Oracle server or even just having one large database even though there will be two, generally unrelated set of tables. I reject these as invalid arguments but it is difficult to explain to them since they are all from AS/400 and/or mainframe background with no RDBMS experience (no offense intended). Does anyone out there have any experience with such a setup or knows of such a setup and does not mind sharing some info/experience. I am preparing a report to present my recommendation and any information would be most appreciated. Thank you.

Joe Yong
Software Alliance (M) Sdn. Bhd. Received on Sun Sep 29 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST