Re: Oracle client

"elha" <elha69_at_free.fr> wrote in

<snipped>
> Is there an incompatibility between the 16 and 32 bits clients ?

What Sybrand said. To give the gory details.

Win98 implements a _single_ Win16 VM. It can do multiple 16bit DOS VM's and multiple (kind of) Win32 VM's.

The Win16 VM's calls are thunked (wrapped & translated) to the corresponding 32bit calls. That is not always that straight forward as there are more than just a few minor changes between the Win16 and Win32c (Chicago) API. (in turn, Win32c differs again from the Win32 API used by the NT kernels). So there are performance overheads with thunking (mildly put).

The reasons why not to use the Win16 VM:

- a single co-operative multitasking VM for all 16bit Win apps
- all calls are thunked
- poor memory management
- single app hogging the message queue freezes whole VM
- single app can take down the whole VM

On NT btw, you can have multiple Win16 VM's - but then you loose things like DDE and other IPC mechanisms between 16bit Win apps as they are isolated in individual VM's.

So it is no wonder that you are experiencing performance issues...

Besides the very questionable config - running ancient Oracle drivers and an ancient 16bit Windows app... the only thing that can make this configuration robust, stable and increase its performance, is deploying it on Win2000 or WinXP. It provides much better (and faster) Win16 VM implementation than the Win95/98/ME kernel.

--
Billy