Re: Oracle 10G for Solaris x86

> Oracle has done a lot of work on their univeral installer so that
> installs and (well not yet one off patches) patchsets go in on
> different oses more consistently (than they used to).
>
> If we are into esoteric questions another one might be "why didn't all
> software companies decide to package all software installs and
> maintenance into smpe format".
>
> For good or bad, it takes some planning and setup to get oracle
> installed and configured "correctly" (less so on windows).

In my experience, whenever I see a "UNIX" product that has "./install.sh" (OK, not so with Oracle, but you catch my drift), it tells me that the vendor doesn't really know what is going on. Translated, they don't have a clue about UNIX, but need to have their product working on it. Usually the work ends up being done by some Windows developer who never went near a true UNIX machine in his life before that.
And it's funny, you actually can find stupidities like that in Oracle -- for example, there was an install we had to do once, that REQUIRED a framebuffer, even though the product was "designed" for a HEADLESS enterprise server. Solution from Oracle?

"Oooohhhh, yeaaahhhh, *THAT* problem... well, that's OK, just install the VIRTUAL framebuffer driver that comes with HP-UX and you'll be able to use the installer."

Does that smell of an Indian programmer working for a paycheck from month-to-month or what? I mean, it's stupidity at its "finest".

Then, take a look at the opposite side of the spectrum: Legato NetWorker. OK, yeah, so their tech support sucks like there ain't no tomorrow, but they've got a a NATIVE package for just about every damn UNIX version in common use today. I log into an IRIX box, fire up `inst`, type in `go`, and the product is installed in a pure system way. Solaris - same deal: `pkgadd` and stuff is installed as clean as can be. And let's not forget the guys use *native* X widgets instead of that mainwin crap you see a lot these days. Received on Tue Jul 27 2004 - 13:28:32 CDT