-----Original Message----- From: Dave Hull
Quoting Brian Densmore <>:
I recently acquired an older version of Oracle (v. 8i). I was wondering if it might be possible to load it on a Linux box? Or if I need to break out the NT cd's? I haven't even opened the shrink-wrap yet. I was thinking about using it at home for projects, or possibly on an alternate PC for access by my webserver.
You can download Oracle from Oracle for free and use it for development (non-production) work.
Right, I knew that, but this is a fullblown shrink-wrapped enterprise level version with all the bells and whistles and documents. Which is a bit different than the download version (which I ordered from Oracle way back) on a CD from Oracle, I think I also have the 9i download version on CD.
If you're just wanting to gain some experience with it. I believe I had installed 8i on Red Hat a few years back, but I had to jump through some hoops.
Well, I've been wanting to play with some databases for a while, but I have some real projects I will be working on also.
Thanks, Brian
* Brian Densmore (DensmoreB@ctbsonline.com) wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Dave Hull
Quoting Brian Densmore <>:
I recently acquired an older version of Oracle (v. 8i). I was wondering if it might be possible to load it on a Linux box? Or if I need to break out the NT cd's? I haven't even opened the shrink-wrap yet. I was thinking about using it at home for projects, or possibly on an alternate PC for access by my webserver.
You can download Oracle from Oracle for free and use it for development (non-production) work.
Right, I knew that, but this is a fullblown shrink-wrapped enterprise level version with all the bells and whistles and documents. Which is a bit different than the download version (which I ordered from Oracle way back) on a CD from Oracle, I think I also have the 9i download version on CD.
If you're just wanting to gain some experience with it. I believe I had installed 8i on Red Hat a few years back, but I had to jump through some hoops.
Well, I've been wanting to play with some databases for a while, but I have some real projects I will be working on also.
mmmmm PostgreSQL!
Quoting Brian Densmore DensmoreB@ctbsonline.com:
Right, I knew that, but this is a fullblown shrink-wrapped enterprise level version with all the bells and whistles and documents. Which is a bit different than the download version (which I ordered from Oracle way back) on a CD from Oracle, I think I also have the 9i download version on CD.
According to Oracle's web site, the versions available for download are the full versions. Even the documentation is available for download. We've been using the downloaded versions where I work in a production environment (yes we have the licenses) for a few years and I can tell you they are identical to the packaged versions we received in the mail after we bought the licenses.
I prefer to grab the latest ISOs from Oracle though because they have the most recent patchsets applied.
If you got 9i on a single CD, you must have a "personal" version or something because 9i requires three CDs... 10G requires only one CD, or so I was told by our Oracle rep.
Well, I've been wanting to play with some databases for a while, but I have some real projects I will be working on also.
Good luck. I usually reach for MySQL first. We've been using the 4.1.2 version with full support for referential integrity and transactions with great success in production for nearly a year with only one strange bug that has recently been addressed by the developers.
MySQL is much easier to manage than Oracle, IMHO. But if you're dealing with money, it's probably a safer bet to stick with Oracle, though I'm not sure that's going to be true for much longer.
-- Dave Hull http://insipid.com
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 09:44:43 -0600 Dave Hull dphull@insipid.com wrote:
MySQL is much easier to manage than Oracle, IMHO. But if you're dealing with money, it's probably a safer bet to stick with Oracle, though I'm not sure that's going to be true for much longer.
If you're dealing with money... now that is a silly reason. Oracle is no more safe than PostgreSQL, it's called making a good backup.
I use PostgreSQL every day for money related transactions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Oracle is really only necessary if you need to run a HUGE database across multiple servers. Otherwise, it's just a waste of money.
--------------------------------- Frank Wiles frank@wiles.org http://www.wiles.org ---------------------------------
Quoting Frank Wiles frank@wiles.org:
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 09:44:43 -0600 Dave Hull dphull@insipid.com wrote:
MySQL is much easier to manage than Oracle, IMHO. But if you're dealing with money, it's probably a safer bet to stick with Oracle, though I'm not sure that's going to be true for much longer.
If you're dealing with money... now that is a silly reason. Oracle is no more safe than PostgreSQL, it's called making a good backup.
I use PostgreSQL every day for money related transactions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I intentionally left PostgreSQL out of my comments because I have almost zero experience with it. From what I've read, it's as capable as Oracle. Something MySQL had not been until recently since they lacked support for referential integrity, atomic transactions and stored procedures.
The version of MySQL we're now using has enforced referential integrity and full transaction support. The performance is amazingly good and the care and feeding required are minimal. We've been using it for almost a year and I believe it just came out of beta... shh, don't tell my superiors I had deployed a beta product in a production environment handling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I wish I could say the same about the care and feeding of our Oracle deployments. I dread patching our Oracle RDBMSes (yes Oracle does a lot more than just DB, but this thread started out about the DB specifically). Some of the Oracle patches go smoothly, some of them make me feel like I'm caught in a Rube Goldberg machine.
I'm not a decision maker (well, not for RDBMS decisions anyway) where I work, so I didn't decide to go with Oracle and for our purposes, I'm not sure why we're using it. I think it had something to do with the fact that we could get support for both the OS (RHELAS) and the DB from one vendor.
I have been working with Oracle as a DBA and programmer for four years now and in that time it has been very reliable, but management is not painless. I've been working on a product that I hope to take to the market one day and it runs entirely on MySQL. I think it's ready for the enterprise, but that's only because I've seen it working flawlessly for us in a high volume 24/7 environment.
One day I hope to get my hands dirty with PostgreSQL, but there's so little time.
Oracle is really only necessary if you need to run a HUGE database across multiple servers. Otherwise, it's just a waste of money.
Ahh RAC, er Grid, er something... How does PostgreSQL cluster? Supposedly MySQL has clustering support, but I don't know anyone that's tried it yet. I like the idea of clustering Oracle DBs and repurposing different servers at different times depending on current needs, but thus far we haven't needed it yet.
-- Dave Hull http://insipid.com
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 13:44:42 -0600 Dave Hull dphull@insipid.com wrote:
Ahh RAC, er Grid, er something... How does PostgreSQL cluster? Supposedly MySQL has clustering support, but I don't know anyone that's tried it yet. I like the idea of clustering Oracle DBs and repurposing different servers at different times depending on current needs, but thus far we haven't needed it yet.
There are several differnet ways to do it actually, Slony being the most popular. It's master -> slave replication however, not true as advanced as Oracle's options.
--------------------------------- Frank Wiles frank@wiles.org http://www.wiles.org ---------------------------------
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Brian Densmore -
dan radom -
Dave Hull -
Frank Wiles