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Oracle 9i Makes it to Mac OS X

Posted by pudge on from the i-knew-the-day-would-come-like-a-hellfire-upon-the-lands dept.

mcockerill writes "Oracle just posted a development version of their latest RDBMS (Oracle 9i release 2) for Mac OS X (300+megs of it). It requires Jaguar to run. No fancy installation wizards or GUI config apps as yet; the whole thing is command line only for now. But still, this is a major development as far as serious use of Mac OS X in a server environment is concerned. It's long been rumored to be on the way -- after all, Ellison is on Apple's Board -- but frankly I never thought I'd see the day."

14 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Saw this comming... by Quicksilver31337 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you have the a dev release of 10.2 there is a ODBC control app in the utilities folder, likey implemented with this in mind.

    However as of now it seems to lack any drivers.

    --
    _______
    Death wish, n.:

    The only wish that always comes true, whether or not one wishes it t
  2. Database Hardware by Null_Packet · · Score: 2

    Beyond the argument of XServer speed, there will soon be the requirement for SCSI drives for the XServe. IDE just doesn't cut it under decent loads. If I were to build an Oracle 9i server today on an OSX Server, I'd add a RAID card and an external storage array. I personally would love to see Apple offer this equipment, but surely sales #'s will have to go up for the XServe.

    My question is, I wonder who Apple/Oracle think the target market is for the combo?

    1. Re:Database Hardware by foobar104 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Beyond the argument of XServer speed, there will soon be the requirement for SCSI drives for the XServe. IDE just doesn't cut it under decent loads.

      There's zero reason to put SCSI drives inside an Xserve. You're not doing any IO-bound tasks on the root drive anyway. If you need IO performance, you use an external Fibre Channel JBOD or RAID. (Internal RAID card? What's the point? Software RAID costs less and performs the same. If you really need performance, you use a hardware RAID controller.)

      I personally would love to see Apple offer this equipment, but surely sales #'s will have to go up for the XServe..

      Like, oh I don't know, Xserve RAID, maybe?

      (Can't find a picture of Xserve RAID on Apple's site, since it hasn't been released yet. But if you saw or attended the Xserve roll-out, you've seen it. It's a 2 Gb storage system with dual RAID controllers and 1.6 TB of capacity per disk chassis.)

    2. Re:Database Hardware by drsmithy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      There's zero reason to put SCSI drives inside an Xserve. You're not doing any IO-bound tasks on the root drive anyway.

      I would propose to you that a significant number of customers could and would be performing some serious I/O on the ca. 150GB you could fit inside an Xserve with SCSI drives. Why spend extra on an external RAID chassis just to serve up some files to a few hundred users ?

      Software RAID costs less and performs the same.

      Unfortunately OS X's software RAID is pretty dismal. Unless it's improved markedly in 10.2.

      If you really need performance, you use a hardware RAID controller.

      Which is why they should have put an IDE RAID controller into the Xserve. Shit, it's not like a 4-channel 3ware card is particularly expensive, so an OEM on-the-board equivalent should have been par for the course.
      It's just another example of Apple only going halfway towards a great solution. Killing the floppy with the iMac was another (great that they killed it - absolutely stupid that they didn't *replace* it).

    3. Re:Database Hardware by foobar104 · · Score: 2

      Killing the floppy with the iMac was another (great that they killed it - absolutely stupid that they didn't *replace* it).

      You mean with a CDRW standard in all Macs? Yeah. Sucks that they didn't add that feature....

    4. Re:Database Hardware by King+Babar · · Score: 2
      Killing the floppy with the iMac was another (great that they killed it - absolutely stupid that they didn't *replace* it).

      You mean with a CDRW standard in all Macs? Yeah. Sucks that they didn't add that feature....

      What sucks is that it took them 3 years for writable CD media of any kind to be standard on all Macs. Seriously, the iMac dates from 1998, and I don't think CD-R(W) was stock on everything until last year. Actually, Jobs famously had to say "we screwed up on that" when analysts asked him what took them so long in getting writable optical media into their product lines. I've got an (otherwise quite nice) iMac DV SE that has a DVD-ROM drive...but no built-in CD burner. It really was a bizarre screw-up.

      To be frank, they really should stop shipping anything less than a combo drive (CD-RW/DVD) any minute now, and stop shipping anything less than a super drive (CD-RW/DVD-R(W?)) by next year.

      --

      Babar

    5. Re:Database Hardware by maggard · · Score: 2
      Killing the floppy with the iMac was another (great that they killed it - absolutely stupid that they didn't *replace* it).

      They did replace the floppy - with networking. The iMac shipped with fast & easy networking built in, either via ethernet or dial-up. Thus between reading CD's and networking it's trvial to get material on & off of an iMac. Later iDisk was rolled out to make it even easier. Now that iMacs ship with CD burners standard it's plain trivial.

      For those that really have a burning need for a floppy drive then they either shouldn't get an iMac or need to budget for an external floppy drive/superdrive/whatever. However for the target iMac audience that wasn't an issue: Few of them had any collection of must-read floppies and those with knew what they were buying. Saddling the rest of us with a dusty drive port wasn't needed and yeah, lots of us never missed it.

      ps. I've a styrofoam cooler of Mac floppies in the basement, never needed to read any of them on the iMac. Ok, looked longingly at the "After Dark: Star Trek Edition" one once but then recalled how buggy AD was, didn't look back.

      --
      I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
    6. Re:Database Hardware by maggard · · Score: 2
      Whine whine whine.

      Right - iMac didn't come with a floppy. Or other removable media. If you wanted that you had to buy it seperately.

      Was that a bad thing? Well the iMac was the best selling PC for several years running so apparently not.

      BTW - If someone's gonna cough up a grand or more US$ for an iMac they can budget in the external media or printer or whatever, and apparently they did.

      --
      I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
  3. CLI Undesirable? by Xunker · · Score: 3, Funny

    "the whole thing is command line only for now."

    This is bad? Come on! We're been waiting for a real command line on a Mac for, like, 20 years, and now we need a lickable interface for a database engine?

    Some of us dream in CLI, you know? :)

    --
    Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
  4. Client side tools needed! by d3xt3r · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Glad to see Oracle is finally making a public release of 9i for OS X, but what I really want are the development tools.

    Oracle has given us a cross-platform version of Enterprise Manager, but it still sucks on anything other than Windows. The OEM included with 9i, Release 2 for Linux constantly locks up, or takes too long to conduct simple operations.

    I think that OS X represents a great OS to finally replace MS Windows as the developement platform of choice. What we need are things like OEM for OS X, not just the database.

    I hope these tools come soon.

    1. Re:Client side tools needed! by droleary · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Glad to see Oracle is finally making a public release of 9i for OS X, but what I really want are the development tools.

      Then what you really should be doing is asking Apple to move WebObjects out the the Java ghetto they stuck it in and divorce EOF from WOF. EOF was amazingly adept at database-independent development, so getting it back would get you access to not only Oracle, but most other databases that came to the OS X platform. Pitty Apple got so entranced by the Java/Web angle, and has yet to make corrections after the Internet bubble burst. You can still scrounge up a copy of WebObjects 4.5.1, but I don't know if it'll be (or needs to be) update to work with 10.2; again, bug Apple.

  5. DBD::Oracle by hondo77 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When do I get to put DBD::Oracle on my Mac? That's what this Perl guy wants to know.

    --
    I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
    1. Re:DBD::Oracle by EricWright · · Score: 2

      You took the words right out of my mouth! I'm sure there are lot's of us out there...

  6. Re:Jaguar? by alispguru · · Score: 2

    I was under the impression that X.2 mostly did stuff to the UI, ...

    Mostly, but a fair amount of stuff is also happening at the Darwin/BSD level. One thing I know about in particular is that BSD-style signal handling is supposed to be in 10.2, which might allow porting of CMUCL (a kick-ass free-as-in-beer Common Lisp) with minimal pain and suffering.
    --

    To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.