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Oracle to the best of my knowlege is trying to figure out IE7 as best as they can.
Their official blogs are discussing this as well
The list of browsers supported on Oracle 11i Ebusiness Suite is mentioned here
And as of date, IE7 is not a part of it!

It was called Raw Iron, and was introduced in 1998. It went over like a lead balloon. People said they wanted an appliance, but they also wanted to tinker with the OS. Just search Google: "raw iron" oracle and you'll see what I mean. And for further proof: http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:148128 41480014660872::NO::F4950_P8_DISPLAYID,F4950_P8_CR ITERIA:7931107631402

> Oracle did not work well on Red Hat Linux for us, in fact, it worked very badly.
> I know that raises cackles here and people say it has worked fine for them and
> give anecdotes about their successful experiences.

It's not anecdotes, its about successfully running Oracle on Linux since years. You most likely ran into problems because of one or both of the following typical issues:
1) You had a spare x86 box, some RH version, and tried to run some Oracle version on this combination. Bad idea, start only with proven HW, Linux version and Oracle version combinations.
2) You have expert admins for Oracle on a specific Unix version (Solaris in your case). They did not bother to acquire special Linux knowledge beforehand, because Linux is similar to Unix.

> I'd be curious to hear the names of major companies that are running Oracle on Linux in production.

Take a look at Oracle's success stories.

Running Oracle on Linux is not "cheap". You have to invest and prepare as with any other platform. Therefore, just "trying out" Linux in an Enterprise environment without a proper migration plan often results in disappointment.

> Oracle did not work well on Red Hat Linux for us, in fact, it worked very badly.
> I know that raises cackles here and people say it has worked fine for them and
> give anecdotes about their successful experiences.

It's not anecdotes, its about successfully running Oracle on Linux since years. You most likely ran into problems because of one or both of the following typical issues:
1) You had a spare x86 box, some RH version, and tried to run some Oracle version on this combination. Bad idea, start only with proven HW, Linux version and Oracle version combinations.
2) You have expert admins for Oracle on a specific Unix version (Solaris in your case). They did not bother to acquire special Linux knowledge beforehand, because Linux is similar to Unix.

> I'd be curious to hear the names of major companies that are running Oracle on Linux in production.

Take a look at Oracle's success stories.

Running Oracle on Linux is not "cheap". You have to invest and prepare as with any other platform. Therefore, just "trying out" Linux in an Enterprise environment without a proper migration plan often results in disappointment.

And who says they don't do that now?

Suppose Oracle supports their own, reduced, version of Linux (with any performance enhancements that they deem necessary). If they "partnered" with a hardware vendor, you'd have a single stop for your database server needs.
You've always got stuff like this:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/linux/valida ted-configurations/index.html

They could get it so you could buy everything through them easily enough, they'd just need to coordinate and give the other companies a slice of the pie in return for their support.

You want some application designed or special services or whatever?
http://www.oracle.com/consulting/index.html

Last year, our support contract guys explained that Oracle has several different branches of support. You want just standard TAR/SR working, you get with their standard support guys. You want specialized on-site (or remote) administration done, you've got a different branch of support guys. You want a special application made or special support for your application level stuff, they've got a branch that handles that too. Yes, Oracle will actually build (or even debug) applications for you. It'll cost you, some of it pretty big-time, depending on how much time you need them to work on it. But they can do it, no problem.

You gotta be realistic about what you want and the time frame, but they've got a lot of options if you want support or anything else done, provided you dig deep enough into your pockets. I will say that they weren't going to quote us any numbers on a hypothetical basis, they'd evaluate it.

I'll say that not all of this is quite to the level that you were referring to, nor is it quite the level that a lot of people are talking about, but it's close, and it's not a big step from where they are now to getting to that point.

And who says they don't do that now?

Suppose Oracle supports their own, reduced, version of Linux (with any performance enhancements that they deem necessary). If they "partnered" with a hardware vendor, you'd have a single stop for your database server needs.
You've always got stuff like this:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/linux/valida ted-configurations/index.html

They could get it so you could buy everything through them easily enough, they'd just need to coordinate and give the other companies a slice of the pie in return for their support.

You want some application designed or special services or whatever?
http://www.oracle.com/consulting/index.html

Last year, our support contract guys explained that Oracle has several different branches of support. You want just standard TAR/SR working, you get with their standard support guys. You want specialized on-site (or remote) administration done, you've got a different branch of support guys. You want a special application made or special support for your application level stuff, they've got a branch that handles that too. Yes, Oracle will actually build (or even debug) applications for you. It'll cost you, some of it pretty big-time, depending on how much time you need them to work on it. But they can do it, no problem.

You gotta be realistic about what you want and the time frame, but they've got a lot of options if you want support or anything else done, provided you dig deep enough into your pockets. I will say that they weren't going to quote us any numbers on a hypothetical basis, they'd evaluate it.

I'll say that not all of this is quite to the level that you were referring to, nor is it quite the level that a lot of people are talking about, but it's close, and it's not a big step from where they are now to getting to that point.

I use Oracle 10g everyday at work. It's a good database and does the job nicely. Unfortunately I have to use another solution made by them: XSQL. I can honestly say that it's probably the worst framework I've ever used in my life. Sure, some parts of it make for rapid development and deployment, but other parts of it are a complete nightmare and sometimes I wonder why they bothered.

Basically I'm wondering why Oracle want to pinch consumers away from Fedora and Ubuntu instead of just working with them to help intergrate their databases more seamlessly into these distros?

I'm not sure LAOJ works out cheaper than MIMN. Oracle 10i is $15k/processor vs $5.7k/processor for MSSQL 2005. If you're developing for a typical MS corporate environment, that's quite a difference!

Agreed though, "Whatever tool fits the job". If scalability requirements are lower and the deployment environment is flexible/OSS/outsourced, then LAMP will do a great job.

I especially hate that it can operate only with MS SQL.

...and, apparently, ORACLE - with "Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET" (http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/dotnet/tool s/index.html).

apt-get install oracle-xe

Nope, never .. Oh wait .. what's this?

http://oss.oracle.com/debian/

Uh, Oracle, a "software company", already licenses according to the number of cores you have.

And those who can afford the money for a system that is for most cases inferior anyway, can obviously afford to pay for Oracle support.

Oracle, compared to Postgres, is:
about as fast[1]
con: prohibitely expensive for own use
con: can't be used for replicated software at all[2]
pro: handles big clusters better
con: criminally memory-hungry
con: requires a dedicated DBA just to keep it running[3]
pro: can be used as a ploy to give executives a bonus[4]

[1]. In fact, in most cases Postgres is FASTER. It takes some cherry-picking to create tests which "prove" Oracle's superiority -- so guess why Oracle forbids publishing any unapproved benchmarks?
[2]. One of products of our company, a HR system, is priced at $600, another one, invoicing+stocks, #330 (Poland, so it's way less than it would be in the US). A glance at Oracle's pricing shows that they start at $5000 for the minimal license. This isn't just "expensive", this is "no business".
[3]. If one system needs separate staff for basic operations, and the other just works, which one is better?
[4]. I guess this is pretty much the only reason to use Oracle, ever. And in that case, you do have the money to donate a bit to the Free Software project that handles your mission-critical app, and frankly, the donation needed will be lost in underflow for you.

100% agreed - Oracle Support has helped me through tough jams at all hours. A few support analysts weren't so good, for example maybe their English was poor, so I just asked for someone else.

The "how do I" questions are better directed towards Tom Kyte - http://asktom.oracle.com/ - who is a downright genius. He's showed me how to write difficult queries, make architectural decisions, we've discussed theory, he demonstrates advanced features such as analytic queries, materialized views with auto-query rewrite, partitioning, RAC, the guts of the optimizer, etc., etc. Here's an example of a difficult query he wrote for me, and his reply was within an hour - http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4 950_P8_DISPLAYID:12864646978683#38343930750808

Tom will make fun of you, though, if you use "IM-speak."

100% agreed - Oracle Support has helped me through tough jams at all hours. A few support analysts weren't so good, for example maybe their English was poor, so I just asked for someone else.

The "how do I" questions are better directed towards Tom Kyte - http://asktom.oracle.com/ - who is a downright genius. He's showed me how to write difficult queries, make architectural decisions, we've discussed theory, he demonstrates advanced features such as analytic queries, materialized views with auto-query rewrite, partitioning, RAC, the guts of the optimizer, etc., etc. Here's an example of a difficult query he wrote for me, and his reply was within an hour - http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:8:::::F4 950_P8_DISPLAYID:12864646978683#38343930750808

Tom will make fun of you, though, if you use "IM-speak."

How much more integrated can it get, shy of running in kernel space? There's already an Oracle-specific file system which is used in RAC installs. It's the only filesystem of its kind which is in the main Linux kernel.

I'm not really sure how much deeper it's likely to get.

How much more integrated can it get, shy of running in kernel space? There's already an Oracle-specific file system which is used in RAC installs. It's the only filesystem of its kind which is in the main Linux kernel.

I'm not really sure how much deeper it's likely to get.

"what they are trying to do hasn't really been done before"

The Hierarchical File System
DBFS
Project: OCFS

`next to ZERO file formats that are currently in widespread use by the computing world know anything about "metadata"'

ReiserFS
XFS

Besides Oracle is much more polite when they tell you "RTFM".

RTFM = Read The Fucking Metalink

MySQL is great for a simple use.
For "professionnal" use, I prefere using Oracle XE.
Oracle XE is at the same price as MySQL... free and installed in 5 minutes!

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database /xe/index.html

The limitation? It will use up to 1gb RAM and 1 CPU. There is only one database (instance... not number of users) and it is limited to 4gb in size...
When you have reach these limits, you need a better server who is more expensive than the license of 10g itself...

But that wouldn't be /. way. I suggest you look into HTML DB, http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/obe10gdb_vmwa re/develop/htmldb/htmldb.htm It's exactly what you are asking for. It has a nice easy to develop front end thing with an Oracle backend. I worked with its earlier versions and you could spawn web based apps from tables in a snap.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/support/patches.h tm

Give me a moment, and I'm sure I'll think of one.

Main article link is working again.

By the way, parent's link has an rogue trailing slash at the end, you may have to remove it to see the page.

Or just click here (same link)

Since TFA seems to be slashdotted, here's an alternate. I'm assuming that version 3.0 (May 17th) is the new version.

http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2006_may/ber keleydb-je-ga.html/

MySQL on a Windows box is slow as hell. If you've got enough hardware power (2GHz P4 or equiv and 1GB ram) then Oracle XE is a fast screaming monster. Oracle XE is free but does have a limit to 4GB total database size, but that's still quite a lot of database for small web apps. I recently built a fairly elaborate web app with Windows/IIS/OracleXE/PHP and it went together quite slick. I then ported the whole thing over to SuSE Linux 10.0 and Apache 2.2.2, PHP 5.1.4 and the OracleXE for Linux, and it runs literally four times faster on the very same piece of hardware.

Here's an excellent site for Oracle/Apache/PHP info for both Linux and Windows platforms.

Actually, oracle 10g runs on os X, not just the client, but the full database, and JDeveloper/SQL Developer. Sybase ASE 12.5.3 and SQL Developer are also available. And Sam Pullara from BEA, who has been doing his dev work on a PowerBook for over a year now, has released his notes on how to do it.

I personally bought my first mac as a way to develop on the road without a network connection. I was working in PHP/MySQL/Apache on Linux and using Dreamweaver/Photoshop on a Windows machine at home. The mac replaced both the machines so well, that after a few months, I just stopped using the other machines. Now 3 years later, I only have macs in my home.

BTW, I am studying CompuSci at university, and thus far, no course has required any technology that is not readily available on my PowerBook G4. This platform really is the best of both worlds, easy enough for mom to use, but you can take it as far as you want, it is as powerfull a development machine as anyone could hope for. It has the perfect mix of opensource power and polished commercial apps that are not available on any other platform out there.

OAS was discontinued several (3?) years ago. It was crap. Oracle acknowledged it, bought the code for the Orion app server, updated it, added functionality, and released it as their app server. It's a very powerful product, and has very good performance.

TopLink is an Oracle product. TopLink is one of the best ORM projects available.

ADF is a very powerful enterprise level development framework.

Oracle is one of the major players in creating and releasing JSF components.

Oracle JDeveloper is a very powerful and free Java IDE.

The reality is that Oracle's Java offerings are quite good now, much better than when you last looked.

Well, then it will be the ideal kernel for a machine running an Unbreakable Database.

FTFS: But they are amateurs on everything security related.

Exactly - because only amatuers would force their customers to use cscript as part of the patching process.

M$ and Firefox manage to release security patches that install themselves. Why can't/won't Oracle do the same?

Maybe it's job security for that abortion known as MetaLink.

Or maybe it's so these clowns can charge Oracle's customers $1000 an hour to not fix anything.

You must not get out much on the web, especially in a corporate environment.

There are a list of some here: Sites that Make Mozilla Sad

And even more can be found here: Mozilla Reporter Database

But the worst sites are on corporate Intranets or behind logins.

At work I am expected to use Microsoft Project Server Web Access. This archaic piece of trash requires IE because it uses ActiveX. The webby app we use to manage our Outlook/Exchange profile info only works in IE. Our Exchange web access e-mail only provides a crippled interface to anything other than IE.

Then I get this thing in the e-mail about Oracles new web site with a link to a presentation here - but don't open this in Firefox or it will crash! that only works in IE.

I had to repeatedly e-mail certain folks when links with illegal backslashes showed up in links on the department web site. They finally fixed those but there are several apps on the site that require or claim to require IE. (What the hell: here , here, , here and the system that we now have to use to get our pay checks says here (login required) that "Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher) is the only supported web browser for Employee Self Service. Using any other browser may affect your ability to gain access." It mostly works but the the help system requires IE.

Then the other day I am trying look up info on my home warranty and I find this part of their site: Aon Home Warranty

So anyway yes they exist. Yes, real people run in to them all the time. And the Firefox community needs to do something to fight back.

http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/eplext.pdf

Nothing that Oracle sells cost $200k per CPU.

Already last fall, one might theorize that Oracle Corp. had decided it had been feeding Linux enough, and that it should start watering some other ecosystems:

Oracle Selects Solaris as preferred OS

installing oracle on debian/ubuntu is about the easiest thing ever:

add following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian/ unstable main non-free
deb-src http://oss.oracle.com/debian/ unstable main

#apt-get update

# apt-get install oracle-xe-universal

# /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

it runs like a dream on my ubuntu box.

installing oracle on debian/ubuntu is about the easiest thing ever:

add following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian/ unstable main non-free
deb-src http://oss.oracle.com/debian/ unstable main

#apt-get update

# apt-get install oracle-xe-universal

# /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

it runs like a dream on my ubuntu box.

This is no longer true with Oracle XE. Oracle XE comes in as native RPM and Debian packages and can be installed and ready to run in 5 minutes. Little administration is required. Also, it comes with Application Express which is a completely Web-based rapid application development (RAD) environment.

See http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database /xe/index.html.

BTW, there is an Oracle XE repository available. See http://frits.homelinux.com/wordpress/?p=9&SID=5031 C9559A765B126EE6BB19BBA6CBE3

If you are too stupid to follow a simple installation instruction that tells you exactly what all the kernel parameterrs need to be, I wouldn't put the blame on anyone but yourself.

And if you try to install Oracle on an unsupported distribution, you can not expect it to work flawlessly. I install databases on a regular basis and I have never had the installer crash on me since version 8.0.4, i.e approx 7-8 years ago. Does it crash? Sure, most of the issues we have with the installer is due to people not reading the instructions, trying to install on a configuration not meeting the minimu requirements, using an incorrect version of JRE, thinking that they know better than everyone how things are done and ignore instructions.

I've said it before and I'll be happy to repeat it. Oracle RDBMS is currently the most complex piece of software sold publically and it requires knowledge about the product to manage it.

Stop blaming Oracle and blame yourself for being an ignorant who can't follow instruction like this one

• Apache ADF Faces
• Eclipse EJB3 Tooling Project
• Elipse JavaServer Faces Tooling Project
• Eclipse BPEL Designer Editor Project

Take a look at Oracle's OSS page for more projects. One of the biggest is OCFS, Oracle's clustering file system which they released with a GPL license.

Sure most of it is to make it easier for them to sell software for Linux users, but it's out there, with various OSS licenses.

• Apache ADF Faces
• Eclipse EJB3 Tooling Project
• Elipse JavaServer Faces Tooling Project
• Eclipse BPEL Designer Editor Project

Take a look at Oracle's OSS page for more projects. One of the biggest is OCFS, Oracle's clustering file system which they released with a GPL license.

Sure most of it is to make it easier for them to sell software for Linux users, but it's out there, with various OSS licenses.

I think Oracle is doing a fairly good job with blogging, actually. And the Identity Management Discussion Forum on OTN contains many threads re: Xcellerate, COREid, etc.

Umm Oracle Financials, the complete design and implementation, full Java front end, a complete dev environment... So they have an application dev environment, and all the applications they put out, now including PeopleSoft.

Oracle supports Novell / Suse, Asianux and RHES as it stands now. As well as doing code contributions back to the kernel. Admittedly this is predominantly to do with their clustered file system, and some of the memory allocation stuff, but still, it's better than some. They also run a number of their servers on Linux as well. They would have to have one of the biggest commercial Linux installations around at the moment.

So; they are doing application development on Linux, Linux kernel work, supporting the operating system through 3 or so distributions and a number of iterations thereof...

Really, why not just buy Novell / Suse and take their staff who can help to support it, and who are doing exactly that now?!?

Umm Oracle Financials, the complete design and implementation, full Java front end, a complete dev environment... So they have an application dev environment, and all the applications they put out, now including PeopleSoft.

Oracle supports Novell / Suse, Asianux and RHES as it stands now. As well as doing code contributions back to the kernel. Admittedly this is predominantly to do with their clustered file system, and some of the memory allocation stuff, but still, it's better than some. They also run a number of their servers on Linux as well. They would have to have one of the biggest commercial Linux installations around at the moment.

So; they are doing application development on Linux, Linux kernel work, supporting the operating system through 3 or so distributions and a number of iterations thereof...

Really, why not just buy Novell / Suse and take their staff who can help to support it, and who are doing exactly that now?!?

Umm Oracle Financials, the complete design and implementation, full Java front end, a complete dev environment... So they have an application dev environment, and all the applications they put out, now including PeopleSoft.

Oracle supports Novell / Suse, Asianux and RHES as it stands now. As well as doing code contributions back to the kernel. Admittedly this is predominantly to do with their clustered file system, and some of the memory allocation stuff, but still, it's better than some. They also run a number of their servers on Linux as well. They would have to have one of the biggest commercial Linux installations around at the moment.

So; they are doing application development on Linux, Linux kernel work, supporting the operating system through 3 or so distributions and a number of iterations thereof...

Really, why not just buy Novell / Suse and take their staff who can help to support it, and who are doing exactly that now?!?

As far as I've been able to tell, nothing does the group scheduling other than Exchange in any decent form.

Meeting Maker can do group scheduling. It works quite well and there are clients available for Windows/Mac/Linux. When scheduling a group meeting, the client will render a parallel timeline of a given day for all participants, allowing you to choose the best time when everybody (or at least most people) are free. I'ts not free software (in any sense) though.

On a larger scale, Oracle calendar also has group scheduling. (Its clients are also available on Win/Mac/Linux.)

You wanna port that data to an F/OSS db? Done: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/gagn e_access.html

Since when is Oracle a Free/Open Source database?

I'm still awaiting an Access port

You wanna read MS Access files in linux? Done: http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/

You wanna port that data to an F/OSS db? Done: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/gagn e_access.html

You want an MS Access equivolent for linux? Done: http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/04/20/18 23249.shtml?tid=150&tid=72&tid=82

Yeah, it was a joke, I know, but beleive it or not, there are those for whom MS Access is a working requirement who might be interested in these links.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/programming.html

You should be using express for what you are probly doing anyway. There's a deb and an rpm version.

http://download.oracle.com/otn/linux/oracle10g/xe/ 10201/oracle-xe_10.2.0.1-1.0_i386.deb

Installing Oracle on Linux is a non trivial process, but it is well documented by both Oracle and Werner Puschitz. I would recommend installing Oracle 10G-R2 rather than 9i on either CentOS 4.3 or RedHat AS4.

I used Pine in college and loved it. I use Gmail now for distribution lists, and think it's great. For heavy processing of personal mail, though, I'd love to see them incorporate even more Ajax/DHTML functionality and get closer to approximating real native app-type functionality.

As an example: http://ocswebdemo.oracle.com/ . Click on the "Launch Demo" button to see an even more full-featured web client.

disclaimer: I'm on the team that created this client

The last time that I used Oracle directly, which was admittedly a few years ago, RMAN was not considered a good solution. It was only bundled with Oracle starting with the 8i series, and was possibly not quite ready for prime time then.

Even now, the 10g RMAN page is less than optimistic about previous versions:

RMAN becomes more powerful with a redesigned incremental backup scheme, offline recovery of incremental backups, previewing restore, recovering through resetlogs, file compression, and much more.

Most people would agree that RMAN is the de facto tool of choice for Oracle database backup. But as powerful as they were, early versions of RMAN left something to be desired. Like many DBAs, I had pet peeves about the absence of what I consider to be must-have features. ...

So why do many DBAs do incremental backups only rarely? One reason is that in Oracle9i and below, RMAN scans all the data blocks to identify candidates for backup. This process puts so much stress on the system that doing incrementals becomes impractical.

It also didn't use to be able to do things like backup to tape (ooh) without external tools from people like Legato. And heck, there's a whole series of books about how to use it effectively - if that isn't the sign of a poorly designed tool, well... Heck, the fact that a simple google search will show that a lot of people were (and still are) using filesystem backups indicates a severe (if historical) weakness in provided backup tools. Contrast this to most other enterprise vendors, where doing a backup is as simple as saying, "Backup to this [tape|disk] device, and make it a level [0|1|2] incremental backup."