Re: Oracle on a laptop - how to support large-scale sales demos

"DA Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1098421509.796376_at_yasure...
> Runs with Scissors wrote:
>
>> "Runs with Scissors" <tgb_at_REMOVEsoftitect.com> wrote in message
>> news:%0Udd.19460$jo2.13612_at_twister.socal.rr.com...
>>
>>>I am currently working on a project for a Business Performance Management
>>>application. The initial goal of the project is to develop a
>>>demonstrable application that our sales force can show to potential
>>>clients. The targeted clients will be higher echelon retailers (read as
>>>very large data sets). One requirement of the project is to deploy, onto
>>>a single laptop, the application server/web server, analytic engine, and
>>>database - including a realistic data set (i.e. a few/several gigabytes
>>>of data) in order to provide realistic demonstrations. Note that in this
>>>case, several gigabytes of data represent a very small sample of the
>>>real-world product solution, say 1-5%. The primary reason for the single
>>>box deployment is to allow an anytime/anyplace demonstration. No network
>>>access required. They will not be demonstrating multi-users
>>>capabilities.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Basically, They (aka Management) want a magical solution.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>The deployment will be Oracle 9i or 10g (Enterprise Edition), Web Sphere
>>>5.0.2, and an analytic engine I'm not free to specify at this time. The
>>>BPM application will include several star-schema data marts covering
>>>things like sales, inventory, planned sales, purchases, planned
>>>inventory, etc. The application must also emulate a real-time data feed,
>>>so the database will be a "general" database doing both transaction
>>>processing and data warehousing functions.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>I'm assuming that we will be able to get top-of-the-line laptops running
>>>some flavor of Linux (probably Red Hat), but still, a single CPU and
>>>single drive smells like a performance disaster to me, not to mention a
>>>2gig memory limit. I'm looking for alternatives in the deployment model.
>>>One thing that comes to mind is a portable USB RAID solution with 5 or
>>>more drives in a RAID0 or RAID5 configuration. Another might be a
>>>three-laptop deployment where each laptop supports a specific server, or,
>>>possibly a combination of the two.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Does anyone have similar experiences they would care to share?
>>>Alternative ideas on how to get enterprise performance out of a single
>>>CPU? Know any good magic spells, or rules-of-thumb to quantify the
>>>performance expected in a real-world deployment?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Thanks in advance,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Tom
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> I just found out that the analytic engine won't run on Linux, so it will
>> have to be a Win 2K Server.
>
> What analytic engine? And why do you need it at all? What are you
> thinking you need to do that can't be done in the RDBMS?
> --
> Daniel A. Morgan
> University of Washington
> damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
> (replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)

As I said, I'm not at liberty to specify which analytic engine at this time. Why use one at all? That is a directive from the owner. The owner happens to own my company, the company that develops the analytic engine, and four other related companies. He wants to use the suit of companies in developing solutions. Please, let's not go into whether this is a good idea or not. It's his business model, and since he's worth about four billion dollars (USD) more than I, he must be doing something right.

 I know there isn't anything the analytic engine can do that Oracle couldn't provide. Just consider the analytic engine to be a tool.

Thanks,

Tom Received on Fri Oct 22 2004 - 15:13:36 CDT