Re: Oracle on Alpha OpenVMS

> I think it's safe to say that all current O/Ses will eventually be
>obsolete and support from Oracle will be dropped.

The question is when. though. There is little doubt that NT and UNIX will be around at least the next 10 years - No one believes that for VMS/Oracle. This is the same logic people gave me when they still used 6 digits date in the 80's. Why worry about something thats going to happen 10 years from now?

> I've used Oracle on OpenVMS for just over 1 year now. I don't have
>a lot of experience with what happens when you call Oracle because
>the software runs fine and there's been little need to call them. The
>two times I have called it's taken probably an average of 15-20 minutes
>for them to get back to me with someone who understood the VMS product
>and could assist ( in both cases a minor patch related to SQL*Net was
>the problem )
>

Not much argument there - OpenVMS is still the most reliable operating system ever built - but that is not the point. The point is, with so few VMS sites the product always lags and patches are behind. Did they ever even release 8.0 on VMS? Hint - What is the release date of 8.i for VMS ?

>
>> With NT, UNIX, and now even LINUX sales so strong, there is just no
>> incentive (or reason) for Oracle to put any money into VMS.

> Other than the customers ( some of them rather major ones
>apparently ) who want to use it?

Lets have this conversation in about 5 years, OK? People love TANDEM and other niche machines too, but you can't sell a database into a loyal following of a couple thousand sites. It doesn't work.

What killed Oracle on VMS was the fact the VMS sites have an almost plug and play replacement - You just drop in a UNIX or NT box, and leave the VMS client side Oracle intact for now. Every single site I am involved with that has OpenVMS has a migration policy - Nobody wants to be last, no matter how good VMS is.

Steve Received on Tue Dec 01 1998 - 18:55:47 CST