Re: Where is Oracle’s Grid ?

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 07:27:36 -0800
Message-ID: <1071674766.40553@yasure>

Comments in-line.

Noons wrote:

> "Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1071649660.660848_at_yasure...
>
>

>>Actually not.

>
>
> Actually, that's coming quite a few days later... took that
> long to ask the questions? ;)

On a business trip. Monday 6:30am flew to Detroit via Denver. Tuesday had a three hour meeting then flew back.

>
> The farce I was refering to is the release of the product
> and how it is being handled by Oracle as a PR exercise. What's
> in it asd far as grid I don't give two hoots nor will almost
> everyone else until probably 10.2. Like always with new releases
> of Oracle. Fed up with their over-hype.

I understand. But that's the world we live in. Everything is a blinkin' media event.

>>But the differences are very significant: At least as large as OPS to
>>RAC and that was a complete rearchitecture.

>
>
> And given the GREAT adoption of RAC and OPS by EVERYONE
> out there (IOW, bugger all), I can see how relevant that's gonna be...

But that is exactly the point. OPS was version 1.0 and it just didn't work well. RAC a big improvement with cache fusion but still with limitations (many caused by the fact that Oracle's QA needs to learn what those two letters stand for). But with this generation I am impressed enough that I think almost everything I propose will be at least a two-node grid.

>>Grid will do things that
>>couldn't even be conceived of under OPS and is a huge extension from
>>RAC. This isn't just another dumb name change (and you should all know I
>>am the first to criticize them) this is phenomenal.
>>

> I know. Ken Jacobs gave us all a great description, so did most of the
> Oracle people who have talked about it since.
> Unfortunately, we heard EXACTLY the same story about 7.3, 8i, 9i
> and so on. Remains to be PROVEN that it will indeed be that good.
> Or even usably (!) stable.

With that I can't argue. We must wait for the final release plus a patch or two.

> Your word or anyone else's, NDA or not, is just not enough.
> Nothing against you as I hope you'll realise.

But of course. I just found a huge amount of negativity being batted about by people that had yet to see the product. This is the first time I've worked with something such as this and been pleased.

> It's just that most of us who work at the coalface and have to deal
> day in day out with the crap Oracle puts out just fail to be impressed
> by bombastic statements from marketing, beta testers or anyone else.

Marketers are paid to say nice things. If they didn't they would be unemployed. Some testers may say nice things because they are trying to cozy up with a 8000 pound gorilla. Quite frankly academics just don't have to care. I can keep teaching at the university until a fall over.

> It's people like us that have to put up with bugs, SQL written by sub-standard
> morons, features that were announced as revolutionary and then don't work,
> etc etc. And who get ultimately blamed for all the crap that comes out
> of Oracle.
>
> What Oracle marketing STILL hasn't realised is that the kind of
> user that worries about grid and RAC (major developers) is the vast
> MINORITY nowadays.

And my suspicion is that this will not be the case within five years: Of that I am quite certain just as I am certain that DBAs that don't know UML are a dying breed. The industry is changing.

> Unfortunately, we do NOT write the 3rd party CRAP that sits out there
> in user land and is imposed on us. But we get blamed as if we wrote the
> stuff by arseholes that read TK's books and dump on us that "we" are not
> using bind variables. And other deranged rubbish.

My thoughts about the quality of those 3rd party products are, for the most part, unprintable.

> FINALLY, with 10g the problem of crappy SQL seems to START to be addressed
> by Oracle. About farking time! It's only 12 years LATE!

Only if you are about ready to retire. But don't interpret what I've written to mean that Oracle has suddenly morphed into something other than a software company. It is still what it is. All I am saying is that I am very pleased with things I am seeing and impressed by where they are leading.

> People like us prefer to see for ourselves how good it is. More important: how
> RELEVANT it is. Nothing personal, as I said.

I understand. And it is certainly possible that what is great in an early Beta will be all dropped or rendered unusable by changes to the final release. All we can say is what we see. And even that to a very limited extent.

> And quite frankly, I'm a LOT MORE impressed by ASM than by the grid
> and all its paraphernalia of marketing. And yes: it's not ASSM,
> it's ASM I'm talking about. That is indeed mind-blowing. And
> history will prove me right when I say this: if ANYTHING will make
> 10g popular, it will be ASM and its revolutionary approach to handling
> disk management. A step ahead of anything else on the market.
> The grid? Stuff it. I'll worry about it in another 5 years.

Not even a kind word for regular expressions? ;-)

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)

Received on Wed Dec 17 2003 - 09:27:36 CST