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Oracle 8i Linux port on the scene
fatherdatabase writes "After a slight delay, Oracle finally releases a port of 8.1.5 for Linux. Requires a (free) technet account. Check it out here. " It's a free download, but they do require e-mail address, etc etc. Have fun.
The cognoscenti who are a little familiar with Oracle's web/ftp presences might, like myself, have just skipped going through Oracle's frequently-overloaded technet webserver and just gone straight to Oracle's FTP site and grabbed the stuff from there directly. Higher likelyhood of connection, can get ncftp to hammer if you can't connect first time, and also, it's anonymous!
...lets hear from someone who has actually USED and DEVELOPED Oracle 8.15 under NT.
Firstly, Oracle has become the industry standard RDMS simply because, as a backend database/application server, it is escellent, regardless of whether it runs on NT or a *nix box.
Most DBA's will do their administration tasks from the SQLPlus 3.3 or 8.0 command prompt anyway, not from the various GUI tools provided. Our DBA rarely used the Schema mangaer or Enterprise manager - he and every other Oracle DBA I've worked with, have ALWAYS used the command prompt. Even us developers used it - in the 9 months I worked on my last project, I never saw any kind of GUI manager - I don't even know what it looks like.
As for performance, true, NT is slightly (duh!) behind * nix but Oracle runs equally well under both - a credit to their engineers. We had very few problems and when we did, it was generally NT having the problem, not Oracle (unless you count Designer or Developer 2000 - don't get me started on those sh*tty products). But in the big picture, the problems were rare, even under NT. Thus for most applications, it doesn't really matter - use the OS your used to with Oracle (unless its a mission critical system that has to up and working 24 - 7 then I'd stick to *nix. Most apps aren't this important).
Oracle 8i runs just fine on my NT partition on a PII 350 with 64 megs of ram and 1.5 gigs of hard-drive space - so put the crack pipe down before you spout about terabyte/petabyte databases. Oracle is designed to be scalable - You can use it for a 500 meg database or a 5 terabyte database, as long as the hardware can handle it (my last project was used on a PII 450 box and took up about 1 gig in total storage space).
I'm still waiting for my Oracle 8i for Linux CD to arrive (I too ordered it 3-4 months ago). My NT CD arrived in April. BTW, both of these are the "real deal" - fully functional, non-time limited versions of the Oracle 8.15 database (and not Personal Oracle either - just Oracle 8i ENTERPRISE Edition!). Cost $0 (CDN). I can only use it for personal, non commercial use. If I need to distibute a product based on it, then I buy the licence (or rather, my client does). Sounds fine to me.
I fully agree with you that this news is very good as it will encourage a whole new segment of the IT world to try their thing on Linux - it will make developing and/or porting robust, enterprise level apps to Linux easier, which will increase the user base. Nothing but good can come of this.
But lets not take this news as another mindless opportunity to spread anti-NT FUD, especially from someone who obviously does not now or has never used Oracle under anything, let alone NT. Oracle is a good product which will do fine without you spreading bald-faced lies on it behalf. You making yourself look like a fool.
Moderators -4 Insightful? WTF? Try again...this guy hasn't got a clue enought to be even 2 Interesting
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
MySQL - small, hideously fast, limited features
Oracle - huge, all-you-can-eat features
Pretty much up to you, I'd use MySQL for a smallish app and move to Oracle when I needed more than simple SQL support.
NOTHING can keep up with MySQL's speed, but sometimes you need more - transactions, relational integrity, stored procedures, triggers, row-level locking, remote synchronization, expensive books...
I work with a site that takes 2M hits/day, and all pages are DB driven. We used MySQL at first, and now are moving to Oracle for integrity, reliability, and scalability issues.
I think having MySQL and Oracle are all you would need, as they complement each other well.
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
Oracle 8i has been out for about 4 months now. But, it is not selling well. The main focus of 8i is new Internet features. It sports a Java VM, new web-based development tools, supports audio and video, and has a new file system.
Most users upgrading to it don't seem to care about these features. They just want to run a newer, faster version of Oracle.
So, why Linux now? Simple. Linux rules the Internet. With such are large percentage of Linux servers running the web, why not realease this Database to a market which might care? This database and its' new features are supposed to be for the web. Linux is the natural OS to release it for.
Of course, as soon as Linux users start bragging about how great 8i is, Windows users will demand it. Guess what? They already have it. This seems to be a backwards way of releasing it. But, Oracle is just now realizing the potential of Linux.
You can see more information about the sluggish adoption of 8i here.
1) for you who don't know what Oracle is: Its a database. Not like mSQL or PostGres or Microsoft SQL server ... it is a device-indendent, SQL based database. Oracle 8 for Linux (retail $12,800 USD, this is a demo version) is designed for 2-100 Gig databases. It is designed to properly operate on any sort of hardware -- AIX, VMS, HP-UX, Linux, NT, SCO, Solaris, etc. on and on and on. 2) If you are excited by oracle 8I and have less than 256 megs of ram on your linux box, don't bother downloading oracle 8i. Its designed with Terabyte and Petabyte databases in mind. 3) Oracle for NT is not even a competing product to Oracle for Unice ... The unix versions of Oracle are stable, efficient system from a decade of testing and development. For server functionality, you can't beat Oracle on a mainframe and Linux in my experience shows the same maturity. I doubt Oracle8i for NT would even run properly i.e. the 100% CPU spike bug. 4) There is one function of Oracle8 for Linux that is lacking -- all of the functions are character mode. There is no motif support (maybe its in 8i, havent downloaded it yet, site is BUSY) ... under NT you get pretty tools like Enterprise Manager, Schema Manager and simplistic install tools. Without these, Oracle is very difficult to learn and understand from a DBA perspective. However, the NT tools make DBA's follow the Oracle-defined idea of performance and installation, which according to O'Reilly's DBA books is the LAST thing you want to do. Since most Oracle installs on NT i've seen are 100% out of the box (the SQL command line is rarely seen) this is another performance hit. For these rambling reasons, Oracle on Linux is a strong presence ... Unfortunately, we must keep in mind that these are beta developer releases and the real meal deal starts at $10,000 USD++++++ Gerg
--- ask me about nihilism, I will have nothing to tell you.
Nope. It's a Development-only license. No time restrictions, but once you implement your application, you (or your customers) have to purchase a license. They're attempting to jump-start the Linux market by persuading developers to create and/or port their applications on Oracle (for free), then sell server licenses when the apps go 'live'. Pretty smart move on their part, if you ask me.
Moo!