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

[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?

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

[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.

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.

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.