Re: oracle

I've worked with Progress' database and 4GL for ten years or more (programmer/analyst and DBA - combined roles, mostly; in addition, I've always been the only DBA). In that time, I've had but two situations where I've had to restore the database and roll forward, etc. Both of those were due to hardware failures (disks). I've never, ever experienced a "database crash" (i.e. where the database engine went awry and mangled the database). My boss as-of-this-moment has severe difficulty believing this - the main system he's responsible for is Oracle-based and database crashes have been a fact of life. However, I personally have never worked with Oracle, so that last remark is only hearsay.

It's often said that the Oracle RDBMS is bomb-proof and perfect for mission-critical systems. Given what I've experienced, I will say the same about Progress. There is no reason to regard it as a second choice. I will also remark on the need for a DBA - since Version 8, my life as a DBA has been boring. Stuff as much memory as will fit in the machine, set the RAID up (0+1 for the database, 1 for the ai and bi files), set sensible database, ai/bi, shared memory (I've only ever managed Progress on Unix) and client parameters at the outset, tweak gently as required, keep an eye on the disc usage, run a paranoid backup scheme and that's about it. Seriously, you need something else for your Progress DBA to do as well. I'm always been a Unix sysadm as well and I'm now also doing NT administration (<jibe> I have to say it - I do spend the majority of my time in the NT world these days </jibe>).

My two-penn'orth. Hope some of it helps.

Regards, Steve Received on Wed Nov 22 2000 - 23:47:48 CET