Oracle To Finish Linux Makeover This Year

An anonymous reader writes "According to a CNET News article: 'Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004, the database powerhouse said Wednesday. In October, the company finished the Linux transition for the 5,000 programmers of its Oracle Applications software. Now the transformation has begun for those who work on the database product, said Wim Coekaerts, director of Linux engineering, in an interview at the CeBit trade show in New York.'"

Comments

Anyone using Linux/Oracle on standard PC

[funkytwig]

This prompts me to ask the above question whitch I have been asking in several other places.

Was wondering what the potential was for using Linux on fairly standard PC hardware to run an Oracle server. Is anyone actually using one in a
production set up and if so what number of users/size of database/applications are they using.

What I was thinking was something like fairly standard main board (i.e. gigabyte/Abit) Inter/AMD 2000 (possibly dual) with 1-2GB memory (or even
less) and Serial-ATA (or possibly IDE RAID) disk.

I guess my question is can oracle be run on a sub 1000 system for real world applications in SME?

your general experiences/feeling (based on real world rather than theory) would be interesting.

Re:Anyone using Linux/Oracle on standard PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle licenses (at least for the database) are not nearly as expensive as everyone thinks. Yes, for a large machine, they can be expensive, but Oracle Server Standard Edition is similar in price to SQL server or Sybase. Probably about $2000 for a single CPU linux box. Oracle is a complicated product, but it does have a lot of features. And I find the documentation to be very good.

Most of the cost is the support contract anyway

As for PC hardware - generally more than adequete for running most Oracle instances. The application design is a million times more important than the hardware (good query plans, good CBO statistics, etc)

The number of disks is generally more important than the type, but for a large database, disks will tend to be the biggest bottleneck. These days, the disks are generally going to be in an array, connected via a Fibre Channel card. The disk array probably costs more than the oracle license.

As a long-time Oracle consultant, I see customers always willing to spend money on more disks/cpus, but never to make relatively simple application changes (put redo logs on disks by themselves, have developers use explain plan to see what their query does, THINK about what thier data actually looks like and index appropriately -- i.e. histograms)

FYI - I run oracle 9i and 8.1.7 on an old PC - easily can do 50,000 TpM (small transactions), probably a lot more. Just depends on what you are trying to do with it.

Re:Anyone using Linux/Oracle on standard PC

[duffbeer703]

It's fast because basic features that you would have to code yourself in your apps are integral to the database engine.

Compare DB2 or Oracle to a MySQL database... you'll find that with the exception of a "read only" database with prepared queries, the commercial DBMS's will blow MySQL away.

Re:Anyone using Linux/Oracle on standard PC

[Decaff]

Oracle is not fast. Not not fast. Speed isn't Oracle's game. Data integrity is. The point is that you sacrifice speed for things like real atomicity.

Oracle has phenomenal speed, and superb query and index optimisation. Its even faster if you give it raw access to disk. The point of paying a lot for a system like Oracle is you don't sacrifice speed for atomicity. You don't just get speed, you get scalable speed.

Re:Anyone using Linux/Oracle on standard PC

[turgid]

Its like putting a $30,000 engine in a Yugo.

Do you have to uprate the brakes, suspension, transmission, wheels, tyres and seatbelts too? How much does it cost to run? How much does it cost to service? How much are spare parts for the fancy engine?

After uprating the Yugo that much, wouldn't it have been better to buy a sportscar in the first place? One that's been designed and engineered as a balanced, integrated and tuned system to begin with?

Re:Anyone using Linux/Oracle on standard PC

[BrianMarshall]

Databases are usually pretty disk intensive, so I would probably go for SCSI disks. Anyway - when the hardware costs are dwarfed by the Oracle licence cost - why skimp on the hardware?

It has been my experience, over many years, that when Oracle is working, it is compute-bound. Actually, now that I think of it, I am not sure that this is true when using IDE disks, but Oracle goes through a lot of cycles. One reason is that it gets a big block of disk to which it has very fast access but it uses cycles to encode/decode data going to/from the disk.

I am running a $700 personal version of Oracle on a $900 box (2.4 GHz).

Re:Anyone using Linux/Oracle on standard PC

[jedidiah]

Code your Oracle application well and you will be able to successfully exploit multiple datacenter grade servers with it. Oracle installations that exploit more than 100 cpu's for a single database are not that uncommon.

Scaling of clustered Oracle is linear.

How many programmers now?

[pubjames]

Microsoft sometimes claims that it has more full-time programmers working on Microsoft software than there are working on Linux software. If we add up IBM, Novell and Oracle, all of which have moved thousands of programmers to Linux, do we have Microsoft beat yet?

Re:How many programmers now?

[Anonymous Coward]

By Microsoft's numbers there are three million Visual Basic developers out there. That means that over three million people write software for the Windows platform. Like it or not, the thousands of Oracle programmers are a drop in the bucket in comparison.

Re:How many programmers now?

[BlackHawk-666]

I seem to recall reading they have(had) about 1500 people coding Win 2000 (NT?) and even more involved in the testing of it. With Linux, there are just a few hundred kernel developers, and they have managed to build an OS every bit as good and better than Windows. I guess the figures would become closer if you counted the Apache, KDE/GNOME teams, since Windows has this sort of functionality. If you counted all the people who work on a Linux distro or the software bundled in it then I'm pretty confident we way outnumber the MS crew now.

Momentum

[johnhennessy]

Is it my imagination, or is there actually a reasonable migration to linux underway ?

I would imagine that Oracle had a long ramp up for this.

Putting it in perspective - the next chance M$ will have to try and pull accounts back is in two years time.

What am I getting at:
If Acme Co decides to start a Linux changeover today - it could be implemented before the next OS release by MS.

My Point: The traffic is really only going to go one way for at least two years (assuming that the companies that switch now benefit from the change).

Re:Momentum

[Mostly a lurker]

It is my impression that Linux has momentum, but I think Sun is suffering more than Microsoft. To date, most of the major server migrations have been large companies switching from proprietary Unix systems to Linux.

Small to medium size organisations are still installing a lot of Microsoft servers for in-house use. On the desktop, Linux has made virtually no impression in smaller organisations, and I think they feel more comfortable with desktops and servers based on common technology. It will be interesting to see if this changes over the next year or so.

Re:Momentum

[xlyz]

I would add that will force "windows only" hardware/retailers/web pages/application to be linux compatibile as well

Re:Momentum

[green pizza]

Small to medium size organisations are still installing a lot of Microsoft servers for in-house use. On the desktop, Linux has made virtually no impression in smaller organisations, and I think they feel more comfortable with desktops and servers based on common technology.

While it's true that Linux has not made many inroads on the small to medium organization desktops, it *HAS* made a huge change in the way small to medium size businesses handle server tasks. Yes, there are MANY small businesses that run dedicated Microsoft-based servers, but there may be just as many running Linux. In fact, I've seen more Linux than "Windows Server" in the small businesses I've worked with. The Internet and Internet-related protocols and standards are one reason this is even possible. Another driving force is cost savings.

From my own experience and informal polls amongst friends, I would say that the popularity ordering for internal servers in small to medium size businesses is:
1) Windows personal file sharing
2) Dedicated Windows client running as a server
tie
2) Linux/Unix based dedicated server
3) Dedicated "Windows Server" (such as Server 2003)

For large businesses, Microsoft is king. There are a few corporate giants that run Lotus, but most are MS Office + Exchange based. It's not uncommon to see an entire rack dedicated to Exchange running on a cluster of Dells serving the email and calendar needs for a 3000 employee company. Overkill? Maybe. Overpriced? Probably.

I wish Sun hadn't killed Cobalt... I knew a lot of very happy small businesses using RaQ and Qube servers for their internal servers. The big thing today seems to be Network Attached Storage, but such applicances generally lack email daemons.

Re:Momentum

[aralin]

This is more significant than it seems at the first sight. Switiching from Sun to Linux as primary development platform means that there is actually more demand among customers for Linux systems than for Sun systems. This means that Oracle thinks that its customers are already far along in move to Linux and they have usually pretty good idea about their customers.

Re:Momentum

[Anonymous Coward]

We have two major UK food retail companies, one major mobile phone company and one major German department store as customers. Our software run on java. One food retailer went for Windows-only solution, the other went for Linux-only solution. The germans are running on Linux as well, phone guys are going for Windows stations and Sun servers. Apart from the windows-only shop, every one runs Oracle 9i. As far as I can tell, Oracle and Linux are the winners.

The tide turns

[Whitecloud]

Oracle switches to Linux because its "less expensive and faster", but im sure a bonus factor is the pro-Linux news this will generate, which will be a body blow to Microsoft.

Oracle isn't alone in embracing the open-source movement. Oracle are not alone, from the article: Dell is switching internal servers to Linux, while Novell is dropping Windows in favor of its own Linux desktop software for PCs.

Also various governments around the world have rejected Windows for Linux lately, the tide is turning.

What else is there?

[basingwerk]

This is the natural thing to do. Oracle started out on VMS and Unix type systems, and departed later into Windows. Since they ported their install process to Java between 8.1.6 and 8.1.7, and with their moves into the Application Server arena, it is clear that they have platform transparency in mind. Coupled with the fact that Unix is the dominant server platform, and Linux is a decent form of free Unix, this is a good move.

Oracle apps finally support Mozilla?

[sphealey]

Does this mean Oracle's web-based apps will finally be fully operational under Mozilla? It is incredibly frustrating to have to fire up Internet Explorer to manage some part of Oracle (9iAS management console for example).

sPh

Re:Significance

[rjw57]

Sounds identical to the NSPR (Netscape Portable Runtime) that Mozilla et al use to abstract away the underlying Operating System. Surely in this case new features exist immediately on all NSPR platforms.

May be now...

[KrisCowboy]

Since Oracle itself is transforming to Linux, may be installing Oracle Server on a Linux box will become easy. It took me 3 days to figure out how to install and configure Oracle on my Linux box.

FUD

[proudlyindian]

from the article

Windows is the most widely used server operating system; ...

Striving to be common....

Re:What about the non-technical staff?

[CommandNotFound]

Switching the programming staff from Solaris to Linux is no big deal. I'd be much more interested to hear what Oracle is doing with the PHBs, secretaries, marketers and other non-technical staff. I bet they're still on Windows.

Which may be the best route. I recall when I did some time on a Mainframe in the early 90's how ludicrous it seemed to have *everyone* using the same system to do their work: from the managers, engineers, developers, and clerical workers. All of these people had totally different jobs, but they all were forced to use the same setup to get their work done. The PC/LAN revolution was still gaining speed, and I recall thinking how much more efficient this would be: the engineers could upgrade systems rapidly for their uses, while the clerical staff could use more modest equipment that was geared for their jobs, and everyone would be happy now that they didn't have to use the same black Model T.

I felt this same derision when I was given a new box with Windows XP (I'm a developer). It seems like a return to those days where everyone is forced to use the same system. The file searching in XP is horrible for my uses, because it was altered to help newbies find their documents and digicam pics. The multitasking has degraded even more since Win2K, probably because it was optimized for home users who rarely run multiple heavy-lift applications. It feels like the mainframe days all over again: let's make the newbies and engineers all use the same system. What's old is new, I suppose.

Re:Oracle developers are not working on Linux

[markxsd]

Mostly correct. However, be aware that Oracle are working on Linux and Linux-related projects.

Re:What Oracle on Linux Needs......

[ivlad]

Because of glibc differences, saying there should be "one binary Oracle for all Linux" is like saying there should be one binary for all of Unix.

honestly say, this is a problem of linux and glibc and not of Oracle. One of the imprortant features in Solaris is compatibility - one could run a binary from 2.4 on 9. Try that with Linux. This is another issue, that stops Linux from being accepted in the enterprise world.

Re:Oracle developers are not working on Linux

[snero3]

Oracle developers will be working on Oracle software.

The Oracle guys will also be working on the kernel (mainly memory management. IO and file systems OCFS) with leading linux distros (read redhat) to produce a better kernel for the database, hence redhat advanced server.

If you are running oracle on redhat (Linux) advanced server you can get direct support for linux (as well as the traditional database/oracle software questions) from the oracle helpdesk and metalink. That is of course if you have paid you maintaince fee

Will they keep the SUN boxes?

[Walles]

So will they keep their SUN boxes but install Linux on them, or will they buy new PCs for all employees?

Re:Would you like to back that up?

[Decaff]

You've oversimplified things by just saying Oracle is fast. If given the right hardware, query time outweighs connection time, and the databases are extremely huge, Oracle performs well. Otherwise, it's too resource intensive to use reasonably

I have found exactly the opposite: having used oracle from version 7, I have seen it run very nicely on positively archaic machines (ancient sparc systems), being robust, fast, and handling bizzare page-length SQL queries, with sub-selects and unions, that MySQL would not go near.

Newer Oracles are even better: 9 was a big step forward. Not resource intensive at all. I have Oracle 10 on a 256MB 2GHz AMD and it runs like a dream; just as fast as MySQL, even with lots of lightweight queries. Its not using that much of the memory - I have heavyweight Java IDEs running at the same time.

Older oracles did indeed try and be resource hogs. The trick with those is to install what you need and no more, and go into the resource specifications during setup (memory and disk use) and simply tell them to cut back.

I have been running Oracle 8 in 128MB on Solaris for years. If you are having trouble in 1GB, something is wrong.