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Linux Helping Oracle
Mr. Fahrenheit writes "CNN has a story about how Oracle's effort to port their database to Linux may be helping them to out pace IBM." From the article: "In its biennial survey of the world's largest databases, WinterCorp, a database research and consulting company, reported that Oracle dominated its list of 175 large databases. For the first time, databases running on Linux appeared on WinterCorp's list -- and all of them came from Oracle."
This story demonstrates enlightened self-interest, not kindness. While us folks using Linux will get a better operating system as a result, the Oracle corp will get an OS which can run its software well.
I just wish the people at ATI and NVIDIA would start to understand that giving technical details to open source developers doesn't always have to hurt. Technology is not a zero sum game; it's like science in which there are benefits to working together.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
I'm still awaiting an Access port. Then we'll have a truly fantastic Linux database. Til then, I'll stick with my trusty flatfiles.
The assertion that Linux is helping Oracle gain grounds on IBM isn't supported at all in the article. DB2 also runs under Linux, and if they said that Oracle on Linux is faster than DB2 on Linux then I could understand it. But just because Oracle runs under Linux, doesn't mean existing DB2 customers will jump ship to Oracle. Also new customers in the market for a database will not go to Oracle just because it runs under Linux because so does DB2. They'll compare the merits of the databases, and the costs that go with them.
since i have had much, much more success with db2 on linux than with oracle on linux. as always, YMMV...
MORTAR COMBAT!
I have recently had a lot of experience trying to install Oracle 9i on linux. The installer is broken in multiple places, and the only way to get it to install is to buy an Oracle support contract (there are specific "coyprighted" scripts that can not be found on the web). Even after you buy the contract, you have to go through several permutations of apply this patch, run this script... to get it to work. Once working the database becomes a resource hog, and seems to break quite often when I am applying system updates. Trying to move database tables from one server to another is also a major pain in the ass (although it could just be that MySQL is very easy) I can not think of anything short of a gun to the head that could convince me to try installing oracle on linux again.
It is welcomed news that Linux and open source foster a productive cooperation in the high-end database market. The interpretation given in this article gets it just backward, wrongly positioning Linux and IBM in opposite camps (facts given in the article don't support the interpretation offered). Who the # wrote this article?
You could just as easily say the opposite, Oracle is helping linux.
I'm still awaiting an Windows port of Richard M. Stallman. Then we'll have a truly fanatic ex-Linux pundit. Til then, I'll stick with my trusty gefilte fish.
*yawn* sorry, tried my best, still too sleepy..
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Oracle has good reputation for working with large size dbs. It's not cheap though, at ~$50K/CPU.
We put about 210 million records in Postgresql database for one of our apps and so far Postgresql has shown itself really well. Queries are quick, database is stable, backup times are reasonable... personally, Postgresql has exceeded my expectations.
It's good that Oracle runs on Linux, as Postgresql has done for many years, but at what point do you really need to spend all that money on Oracle? I think Postgresql will be more than sufficient for 95+% of all apps out there.
Exactly what can not be reversed engineered? The DB? You are welcome to do so.
Postgres is heading in that way by its support of plsql and other capaibilities.
Of course, it does not have the speed of Oracle. But if you want speed for simple queries, try MySql (or even slqlite). Of course, you will give up a great deal of capabilities.
And finally, you have DB2, which competes well against Oracle on speed (lite on capabilities).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's kind of saddening when OSS zealots like yourself do not understand the very licenses that are the foundation of what you hold so dear.
Once again class... you can link against LGPL libraries and are only required to make available the modified source of the LGPL library, not the apps/libraries of yours that are using it.
Now under the GPL (notice the missing first L) that is a different story and depending on the kind of linking involved then yes, if the external libs were GPL and they linked against them in a very specific way... then they would have to release the code of the libs/apps of theirs that use it.
Guess what? By your own admission they are using LGPL libs, and no doubt any GPL libs they are using are done in such a way to permit them from having to release their core source.
Please, sit down and read the GPL and LGPL licenses one more time... and maybe, read the FSF FAQ's on both which give a better idea of what you can and cannot do with GPL and LGPL software.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Wait: Oracle is porting their database to Linux and the headline is "Linux Helping Oracle?" Sounds more like Oracle is helping Linux get into the datacenter, or at the very least, there's a symbiotic relationship. Linux is useful to Oracle (this isn't news, they've been pushing to an all-Linux solution for years) but Oracle is also very useful to Linux. Hate Oracle if you must, but admit that they've put a lot of money into Linux.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
1. Oracle has good (albeit expensive) support
2. Oracle is very customizable
3. Oracle is very powerful (in terms of expressiveness of its custom SQLish statements)
4. Oracle performance is incredible when properly tuned
That said, Oracle is not a newbie database. It won't configure itself for you like MS SQL does. It expects to be operated by a professional who does nothing other than work with Oracle all day.
In particular, "optimizer that needs many hints" is a sign of the power of Oracle. They assume that if you are optimizing, that you want to wring out every last bit of performance. Thus, they give many options but require you to take the time to analyze your data and tailor the optimizations to your data. Oracle rarely trades power for ease of use.
Oracle's not designed to be a push button solution. It's designed to allow expert users to do everything they really want to do.
Eh... honestly in all my work with databases, I've wished for a lot of things but never "I wish this database were faster". I've always wished it had more and better referential integrity options, more inheritance features, better filesystem interfaces with more frequent writes, but the problem has never been "this database isn't doing queries fast enough". There have always been some queries that were slow, but they have been from dbs that are poorly designed -- a poorly designed query into a poorly designed database will probably still run slow on a "faster" database.
All's true that is mistrusted
I've used Oracle on both Linux and Solaris. We were running it on Linux workstations, along with a bunch of other things, for development, and on Solaris to test it in the conditions we expected it to use in production, with nothing else running on the database server. Even so, we found that it was faster in the Linux setup. Of course, this is a while ago, and on relatively small data sets, and not an especially high-end Solaris machine, but it was still striking. At the time, at least, if you could get a big enough Linux box to handle your data, it would cost probably 1/20 of the cost of a Solaris system capable of the same performance. You'd probably have issues if you had to move to a database cluster, because the software for getting a cluster to work wasn't so good (when we tried it a few years later), but for a range of useful sizes, Linux was a much better value than Solaris.
The issue with clusters seemed to be that it was only available in a special custom Red Hat configuration, and it wasn't well tested, because it was just Red Hat and Oracle doing it, not everybody looking over the patches for whether they would screw up the rest of the system. There's been a bunch of merging work on cluster stuff since then, so the code quality is probably now up to the usual standards.
(Of course, I've been just as happy with other database programs on Linux, but I don't have any experience trying to use them for insanely large or busy databases; our program was supposed to work with huge data, but we never used it on huge data ourselves.)
Oracle didn't port their database to Linux for charity or because they love open source. They went in for the money. What a surprise. They wouldn't have known Linux existed if they wouldn't have been requested by customers, because with i386 you have been getting more bang for the buch for some time now. And Linux is THE i386 Unix. I am talking big corporate supported stuff, I know that BSD is cool and all. But Red Hat on Intel servers has been a very good deal in many cases. And if the customer doesn't spend as much on hardware they might be more willing to shell out the fortune that Oracle demands.
And this is news???
What's cool about porting Oracle to Linux is that Oracle can modify Linux. They can drop parts of the kernel that don't help Oracle run, and add parts Oracle needs but that isn't part of Oracle. I'd love to see an Oracle Linux distro that is stripped to do nothing but run an Oracle server (not even run Oracle clients) and maybe one of Oracle's Java app servers, in clusters.
--
make install -not war
I'd say they're right, but also this article is a tad late to the party. This has been going on for at LEAST 5 years, since 8.0 was first released for, I believe, Redhat 7. Consequently, this is not some huge rush for Redhat, and I actually have found tighter distros to run 10g better (I like gentoo, but it's a pain in the ass to get tuned right for this particular task). Anyway, what I found interesting is that our linux oracle systems absolutely STOMPED the 8 way v880/16GB Solaris boxes in archive testing involving 4+TB databases (this to us was a real shock btw... I'm currently buying v40z class servers from Sun that are 4x dual core opteron boxes for like a 10th of the price of a true solaris (Sparc) platform. Thus I would say IBM's problem is Sun's problem in this case as far as selling big iron anymore).
... well weird... 'Sun support? Can I get a download link to your windows drivers?'). Try it and be shocked ....just a tip.
... use something like http://www.puschitz.com/InstallingOracle10g.shtml
I think Oracle is winning because Oracle is honest to god better than their competition. I was (am?) a DBA for 10 years on Sybase (AIX), SQL Server 6x 7x 2kx, Informix 8x 9x, and Oracle 8x 9x 10x at various times, and though I've moved on to a database architecture role with the company I'm with, I'm still making the call on systems purchases. We use mostly SQL Server 2005, for cost, in the smaller 4-6TB systems and they run great, but I wouldn't even consider DB2 for any production role anymore with Oracle out there making it happen in so many better ways.
I'm not a fanboy of Ellison, I'm just realistic about who's driving the market today.
--chitlenz
PS - Oh yeah, as mentioned we're running Sun 40z's with Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 on Netapp arrays AND it is VERY MUCH worth noting that the lower end Sun/Opteron line not only runs windows, but runs windows VERY well (driver support for their servers is very very good, which was like
--chitlenz
PPS - for anyone who is curious about this topic in any real way, use an isntall guide other than Oracle's, since it's usually wrong for awhile
instead.
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
From what I've seen so far, most IT people dislike it
The kind of "IT people" of whom you are speaking, are far too untrained and unqualified to be making a valid judgement call on the merits of Oracle. Oracle is an incredibly sophisticated database system, intended to be installed and operated only by those persons with enough training and understanding of its architecture. It is intended for really big, really complex applications and not for the mundane. In its intended applications, Oracle is powerful, fast and unbeatable. It scales to levels that MS SQL and other lesser databases can never reach (DB2 is its closest peer, Informix once was too, but that's toast now). It has a steep learning curve that you must make a serious commitment to mastering, and once you've reached that expert level, you'll easily see that Oracle is the "king daddy paw-paw" of all RDBMS's.
In parallel to your statement, we could also say that "From what I've seen so far, most PC users dislike Linux" because it too has a learning curve to it that is radically dissimilar to Windows from an average PC user's perspective.
If you don't count Linux, then the platforms on which you can run Oracle on are: Windows Scales up to 32 CPUs, and gets really expensive above about four (although not in comparison with a 4+ CPU license for Oracle). Is not well known for security or stability, and does not have a strong reputation as a database hosting platform. Proprietary UNIX Generally is only supported on the manufacturer's own (very, very expensive) hardware. Adds vendor lock in, and cost. By running on Linux, Oracle lowers the barrier to entry for a new customer (and means that a greater proportion of the TCO for an Oracle system winds up in Oracle's pockets), so it's hardly surprising that they benefit from supporting it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's hard to screw up flat files enough to justify charging $$$/hour to fix things up while blaming someone else for their shitty software.
Infuriate left and right
Saying that DB2 has three lines of code:
- unix/linux/windows
- mainframe
- as/400
while oracle only has one for:
- unix/linux/windows
is a nonsensical comparison: Oracle doens't have any product on the as/400, and their product for the os/390 (mainframe) is practically non-existent. A more reasonable statement is:
"db2 and oracle each have just one codebase for the common distributed platforms"
db2 has a slightly different codebase for platforms that oracle doesn't support anyway.
Next point: migration of db2 code from mainframe to/from linux/unix/windows isn't necessarily a big deal. Sure, the file systems are different, memory model is a little different, and partitioning is different. However, some of those differences are unavoidable - the mainframe simply works differently than linux or windows (doesn't have concept of directories & files, etc). And 99% of all features and skills are the same.
My team just picked up a db2 dba who's work is primarily on the mainframe. We're not at all concerned that she doesn't have aix or linux experience - the small differences are quick to learn. Of course, she is going to have to learn linux & aix in order to run jobs, view logs, etc, etc but that's not a database issue.
...they would have included a link to the WinterCorp report.
Advice: on VPS providers
In particular, "optimizer that needs many hints" is a sign of the power of Oracle.
It's also a weakness. The plans should not be static because your data is not static. That means that when the data set changes, you need to re-optimize.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Is it just me, or did the article and the submission vary greatly in mission. According to the article, the only thing Oracle is doing is contributing a new file system to the Linux community. According to the write up, it would seem Oracle is porting its database to Linux, which I believe it did like 5 or 6 years ago. Now the article seems to make some wand waving to this being a competitive move by Oracle, but nothing in the article points to that.
--WooooHoooo--
Oracle 10 (I can address different versions if you like) uses a very complex strategy to determine what the best sequence is for a SQL computation:
1) Automatically generate statistics as you use tables
2) If those statistics are good enough then using the statistics estimate costs for various strategies
3) If those statistics are not good enough then use a rule based system
It used to be that hints were used for rule based. However there are used for times where statistics are not likely to reflect the query. There are examples given but its basically an engine override. Hopefully you know what you are doing when you override the statistical data.
All I can say is that after living in USA for the past 10 years, is that USA is more fucked up than any other country I have visited or lived in and at the moment, the count is up to about 40 countries.
It is always Americans without any form of international experience who come with these allegations, and i begin to understand why and the reason why is not very pretty.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Very interesting issue, since I have never seen a similar install issue and I have worked with installation issues for over 10 years.
The problem could have easily been diagnosed if you had used a real OS and not a toy OS like Windows. I take it that you checked which process were hogging CPU and since it was the installer, I'm 100% sure that your problem was with the version of JRE installed on your machine. It would have been nice to have an RDA (Remote Diagnostic Agent) output from your machine since the problem is on your side and not on Oracle's.
What is more interesting is that you show a total lack of knowledge about oracle. 400MB is easy to reduce on a single user database, but yes this is a much more resource needy system than your average editor or browser, but then again, Oracle database is probably the most complex piece of software available on the market. So yes, it will use a lot of resources and it is not intended as a single user database. Use Express or some other slimmed down database or learn how to configure it, take a 5 day DBA class. Without it, you can just as well deinstall it or hire someone who knows it.
Personally, I have worked with all versions since 4 and we are now on 10.2.0.2, that means I have about 20 years experience with Oracle.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
There are systems so complex that merely becoming competent in them strips one of objectivity. Near as I can tell, Oracle's databases are such. db2 definitely used to be, I'm guessing it still is.
That kind of complexity is useful for a while, but then the advances of Technology tend to bury the product. Some people suspect Oracle of trying to pervert sleepy cat and others by burying them, but the announcements make me think they've realized the same thing as IBM -- the money in no longer in the software, but in the services. (Something tells me there is something dangerous about that situation, as well.)
Small is the way of the future. Big institutions are only useful to the extent that they enable individuals.
I dn't know what version of Oracle the people you talk to have been using but I find that the optimizer works very well without hints. The thing I like about it is the power of the PL/SQL language and its support for complex datatypes. I also like the use of packages to group procedures and functions together logically. I can't say how this compares to PostgreSQL as I haven't really used any open source databases as the organizations I work for have, in the past, been a bit suspicious of Open Source. This is changing a little as we now have quite a few Red Hat boxes and are in the process of deploying Oracle 10g (RAC) on Red Hat.
It was my understanding that one of the largest databases on the planet was Boeing's. It tracks every repair ever made to every plane. Like down to replacing a single screw. I don't remember when it was started but my step mother was a cobalt programmer for it. I remember her getting her portion y2k compliant then quiting and making some really sick money as a freelance cobalt programmer. Anyway this was a bit back but She told me that the database was so huge that No one had been able to port it to anything. Boeing was offering some huge for the time amount of money as a reward on top of the contract they would provide for any company that could get the DB out of its cobalt world. No one had been able to do it. That list from wintercorp did not even list Boeing. Is it possible there are bigger DB;s out there that are still running on proprietary apps on main frames???? ( I am sure Boeing by now has moved away from the cobalt based DBs)
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Oracle on Linux?
Doesn't Linux have enough problems getting a foot in the door?
Partially kidding, but Oracle? Who in the Linux community wants to see Oracle running on Linux?
Oracle use to be quite grand but never evolved past the 'usability' model, mainly because they made so much money off of selling training. Virtually killing it for serious developers when interface and application independance became the norm for databases in the early 1990s.
Although they did learn to some degree and focused on the database technologies instead of trying to keep users locked into their usability patterns.
There are SO many database technologies I would choose on ANY scale project before Oracle. I guess I am a bit biased, but I also was trained and developed on Oracle for several years in the early 90s, and have been smacked around trying to make current Oracle technologies work in environments when IBM or MS and even MYSQL do things so must faster and easier.
I just don't see this as a big thing, except for the people that have bought the Oracle kool-aid and don't realize there are better solutions out there.
...is the fact that the only verison of DB2 that is fully instrumented is on the mainframe - it is in the end impossible to fully quantify performance problems under the Windows/UNIX/AS400 platforms. Oracle is fully instrumented everywhere.
Of course, I read this in some Oak Table literature, so I wonder if I should trust it fully.
Nothing wrong with what you say, but you dropped some zeroes. FTSE100/Fortune500 companies run sites with that many hits PER HOUR, not month.
Maybe MySQL is good for big applications, for some values of big...but not 200-blade Linux farm big.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Steps to install for known partners(RedHat,Suse) etc. will be shortened from 20 steps to 15. Glibc strict requirement will have to wait until next big announcement.
Well, the installation documentation states a specific version of JRE and that is NOT the latest version.
The leazt you could have done, was to follow the installation prerequisites in the installation guide. When you don't, you do get problems.
Toy-OS - Windows... Well, why don't you tell me how to trace a process under Windows with a tool like strace or truss or glance? Which tool do I use to list all open files under Windows? How can I trace a certain thread under Windows?
The problem is that Windows has zero tools useable for diagnostic of problems and for tracing. It is the most horrible OS to use and the wast majority oif stupid issues in regards to Oracle originates in the Windows world. The difference between support issues on UNIX and Windows is amazing. Many issues under Windows is due to people who think installing Oracle is like installing any other program and that you don't need to read anything nor do you have to follow instructions. This is the biggest problem with Windows, i.e the people who use it.
During the creation of a database, you have the opportunity (in the installer really) to configure the SGA. The default value is meant to be good enough for a starter database with several users and not for a single desktop PC. That is not the target and if you don't know how to configure an Oracle database, then you should really get some training because it is wastly more complex than antyhing else you have touched. If you just laugh ar this, you will have problems with an Oracle installation. It does require quite a bit of knowledge in order to work with it. And yes, it requires a lot more resources than anything else you have used too, the documentation clearly states what the minimum requirements are for a server running oracle, but again, you seem to ignore these facts.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
All I can say is that after living in USA for the past 10 years, is that USA is more fucked up than any other country I have visited or lived
If it's so fucked up, and you're not a citizen, you've been here for 10 years because?????
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Probably because the economic incentives to live here are hard to ignore.
That says absolutely nothing about the sociological climate though.
I'm a citizen, and this is my home, so I would never leave, but a majority of the people in this country are seriously f**ked up.
Creationism anyone? That is considered a serious debate in "These United States". You do realize that the rest of the world looks at ideas like that and laughs at us, right? Not because we have people here at think like that -- all countries have their share of crazies, but because there's enough of them to actually cause a political movement -- in a LARGE democratic country.
After reading all the posts, there doesn't seem to be an Oracle customer in the house. The clueless leading the blind. Gee, all of the Oracle databases are on Linux? Duh. If you've been part of the process in the last 5 years you know that Oracle pushed all it customers to use Linux. If you are investing 7+ figures in a new system, and Oracle favors Linux, how many shops are going to go against Oracle's not so subtle advice? How many shops are going to run Solaris or Windows if Oracle and it's partners push linux? Is it because Linux was a better solution? Linux FANBOIs, keep your pants on. Why Linux? Because Larry hates Bill, is very jealous of all that cash, and doen't want to make Bill any richer. I am platform agnostic. I either have run, do run, or will run, it all. My shop used to run Oracle on Sun. We migrated to x86 and Linux. 9i is a stable product. 11.5.9 is a POS on Linux and Apache. Given lessons learned, next time I'll do Oracle on Windows. Interestingly enough, the latest push from Oracle is to run on Windows. Go figure. I hear all the Linux fanbois going in to techo-drama mode. Why? Linux is more secure, stable? Yeah right... Just look at all of the RED HAT Network alerts that flood your mailbox. Cheaper, Maybe upfront, but over time, cost are about same (Linux fanbois think they should be paid more than their Windows counterparts.) Faster? Hah. Lets talk about real world use where any increase in transaction processing on the back end is eaten by other latencies and bottlenecks in the ether. More stable? Hah. I'got NT boxes that have been running for almost 7 years with no issues. If you know what you doing, the platfom wars are moot. "Slashdot. It's like joining a pissing contest in a wind tunnel"
Easy to explain.
The company I work for brought me here because of my abilities and skills. Even though I have a green card, I will not be living here for that much longer. And if it is of any comfort to you, I can make 3 times what I make here in the US back in my home country, but I value the challenges of this job more than money since I have more than enough for a comfortable life. Add to that that the climate here in Florida is way better than back home. Looking at a home down in Keys at the moment so I can do some fishing too.
Luckily I have a great pension and a great health care system in my home country so i would never trade my citizenship with a US one.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
10g is big, but it's not hard to install, unless you're X11 challenged...
-Stu
I've been working with it solidly recently and have to say it has some good points. - It has some really neat scalability using its Grid technology. All you need to do is swip the trusty gold credit card. - It has got XML tables which are very powerful and allow you to use the power of sql to query xml without extracting all the data out. - Theres inbuilt apache with php support pre-built - HTMLDB now known as Oracle Application Express is a free bonus excellent for building in house stuff and maintance systems in very little time. - Integrated J2EE support There are lots of others good things about oracle It has alot to offer. I recommend it as far as the Database server and the companion (apache/php/oracle application express) All the 'infrastructure services stuff' may be good when oracle them selves understand it :)