Re: Oracle vs DB2 on heavy OLTP loads

dbguy..._at_yahoo.com wrote:
> So - does anybody has an experience (good or bad) with running
heavily
> loaded OLTP systems on Oracle?

Dunno what you call heavily loaded, but does 5000 users with 30Mrow/day classify? If so, that was the load on the system I looked at >5 years ago with Oracle 8.0. I'd expect 9ir2 on modern hardware to be up to that or much more without breaking a sweat. In fact, we now do churn throgh around 50Gb/day on 9ir2 and RHAS. But that is NOT an OLTP system. 10g should be even better.

I'm quite sure IBM would be able to fix your instability problems given time and resources. Is it worth going through all the hassles of change because of a less than daily spike? Just asking.

Now, the bad: you can get nasty one-off bugs in Oracle as well. And the options are the same: wait for a patch or work around the problem. Or both. In some environments I think you'll find it doesn't matter the maker, things are very similar. On the whole I've found Oracle is quite good at fixing the glaring holes. This is not to say there aren't any left!

If you decide to move, pay special attention to your IO configuration hardware-wise. For the kind of volumes you talking about, you can't put up with "feature *blah* is supported in version x.y.z, patch 89893243" and other crap like that. Do your ground work in selecting the h/w and OS you're gonna run on and life will be a lot easier. Yes, there is a difference. No matter how much marketroids might want you to believe everything is the same in db/os-land.

Better yet: get an eval copy of Oracle for your intended platform, get access to Metaclick and start pouring through the list of problems/bugs/white papers. It will be the best spent $$ and time of your life.

HTH Received on Mon May 16 2005 - 19:51:27 CDT