Re: ORACLE on LINUX

Joel Garry wrote:
> There's nothing unusual about giving support only to paying customers -
> even Linux providers do that.

We actually do pay for Oracle on NT, and have asked several times for Oracle on Linux. Most of our cries fell on deaf ears. We got a few sympathetic whimperings from some salespeople, but it seems Larry wants to back NT and not Linux.

> >We have a couple offices, both are heavily peppered with Linux.
> >We have been looking for a good database server. We are happy
> >with PostgreSQL, but realize its limitations and know that we
> >will be running into them fairly soon. We would like to consider
> >an Oracle purchase, but until they start getting off their NT ass
> >and do a Linux port (which from what I hear may already be done
> >... just held for marketing and support reasons) they won't make
> >any sale here. We don't want to run NT or Solaris (and won't even
> >consider SCO or most other Unicies).
>
> If you won't even consider Solaris or SCO, what makes you think Linux will
> be better? Put the blame on Intel, where it belongs. And check out the
> hacks for linux - those are SCO Oracle binaries. I doubt a real linux
> port would be much different.

We actually are considering Solaris, though we prefer Linux (for reasons I'll outline shortly). We are using Oracle on NT and are most unhappy with performance and stability when compared to PostgreSQL on Linux -- a "free" SQL server -- and PostgreSQL is not all that great.

We have tried SCO and Unix SysV. Both were really poor performers compared to Linux or FreeBSD. We considered Solaris x86 also, but were told by our Oracle rep that there was no port for Solaris x86.

I have heard of Oracle running on Linux using SCO binaries and iBCS, but since this is not supported by Oracle I would hate to invest money in several oracle installs only to find that things don't work quite right. A good Oracle port would be able to use raw partitions for data too, something I know Linux+iBCS+Oracle/SCO can't do.

Most of our projects require independent database servers tied to application servers. We prefer using many workgroup-sized servers rather than one "big iron" database server shared by all. It has proven more cost effective and more flexible for the type of applications we do. If we do change our model, though, we will probably choose Solaris or "The Unix Formerly Known as Digital Unix."

If you (or anyone) have any recommendations for a Unix that would run on relatively cheap PC hardware for which we could find a reasonably good workgroup DB server, I'd really be interested. As it is, it appears that we are going to invest some extra development time to make PostgreSQL work the way we need it too -- though I am hoping that there is a commercial Unix + commercial DB server out there that can accomplish what we need at a lower cost.

We are currently looking at Interbase for Linux. It shows promise, but we haven't committed yet. I have heard swirling rumors of Sybase, Informix, and even DB2 for Linux so (unless Oracle commits to a Linux port) we probably are going to reserve judgement for 6 months or so.

thornton Prime Received on Wed Jun 24 1998 - 00:00:00 CDT