Re: Is this the way Oracle always does business?

dlincke_at_bandon.unisg.ch (David-Michael Lincke) wrote:
>What you need to get this running is Oracle client libraries for Solaris,
>i.e. OCI libraries and header files, SQL*Net 2 and SQL*Net 2 TCP/IP
>protocol adaptor. This will enable you to build oraperl or the Perl 5 DBI
>DBD::Oracle driver to talk to the Workgroup Server on NT.

Thanks for the advice, Dave -- I finally got the same advice from an Oracle networking specialist. After considering returning the product, the sales representative we dealt with finally got it right; since this is such a big product, it took her some time to find out exactly which division of tech support we needed. But she was genuinely helpful, and talking to the right engineer made a big difference. I've heard that this is a big problem when trying to get tech support from Oracle; once you find the right person to talk to things go very well. It's just hard to find the right person sometimes.

>For your limited needs it might be worth looking into other non-commercial
>products like mSQL, though. Then again that way might be politically
>difficult for you. Bankers are a tough breed to deal with...we got those
>problems every day :)

I have looked at mSQL, as well as Sprite (written by Shishir Gundavaram, author of the great O'Reilly CGI book). Aside from the obvious political problems, the performance with these tools fall off as the database gets bigger. SO I'm looking forward to adventures with Oracle.

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