Re: help with site+database
On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 05:41:11PM +0200, Russell Coker wrote:
> A few months ago I tried installing Oracle on a Debian system, I
> didn't even want Oracle itself, I only wanted the client libraries for
> talking to an Oracle server and the software development kit. So I
> wanted the libraries, Perl libraries, and the SQL interpreter.
any reason why DBD::Oracle wasn't good enough?
hmmm, i guess DBD::Oracle needed the oracle libraries too...
> There were no tarballs, RPM, or Deb packages, so I had to run the
> install program. It was an ELF format executable that gave a strange
> error message. Stracing it showed that it was trying to run a shell
> script that ran a java program which then ran another ELF binary!!!
> I spent a few days trying to track down what was going on (and hack
> in extra environment variables to the scripts etc). I encountered a
> number of problems including inexplicable failures if I used native
> threads through Java (Green threads worked).
> [...]
> The Oracle installation software is written by some really stupid
> people. It has plenty of moving X widgets etc to show that the
> installation is in progress, but in terms of real features it is
> seriously lacking.
that kind of broken installer crap is pretty common to commercial
software.
it's one more reason for preferring free software. "./configure ; make
install" is much easier and far more reliable. and "apt-get install" is
much easier again.
i half suspect that the installers of proprietary programs are
deliberately that bad in order to inflate the voodoo factor: the more
confusing and senseless it is, the more impressive it is to MCSE types.
or something like that.
oracle's feature set would have to be absolutely essential with no
possible work-around for any given application before i'd willingly
suffer the pain of installing and configuring it. postgres has proven to
be more than adequate for my database needs so far.
> The installation and maintenance of Oracle is a tricky thing. Oracle
> consultants are also very expensive (and generally not excessively
> skillful in my experience). For these reasons I'd recommend Postgres
> over Oracle for serious applications.
i'm sure that there are many applications where it makes sense to choose
oracle over postgres but, from what i've seen, i'd have to agree with
you.
i certainly wouldn't choose oracle for any web application. web sites
just don't need the CYA respectability of a major brand name like
oracle, and they don't need the overhead either.
the few oracle on RH linux installations i've seen were atrocities
perpetrated by utter incompetents.
e.g. installing oracle on a 512MB linux box and watching it run like
a dog, but never once noticing that linux only saw 64MB because the
consultant didn't use an 'append="mem=512MB"' option in lilo.conf. it
took me all of 2 minutes to discover this when i was asked to look at
it. in this particular case, the consultants sold over $150,000 worth of
hardware and oracle licenses when about $30,000 worth of hardware (to
run postgres) would have been more than adequate for the job. including
software development (in Cold Fusion!), the whole system cost over
$200,000 - and it never ended up working as promised (or reliably),
either. also, they never got the database replication working, or the
load balancing - so half the hardware and half the software licensing
fees were just wasted.
the application was pretty simple, too. in essence, a footy tipping
competition. something that could have been done in perl (or zope &
python) in a few weeks at most, for a fraction of the price.
(i'm sure that most of that is due to the incompetence of the
consultants rather than oracle itself)
as far as i can tell, oracle gets recommended by consultants because
it's a very recognised brand name, but mostly because of the enormous
kickbacks provided by oracle (only "discounts" aka kickbacks greater
than 95% have to be approved by senior management...anything less can be
just agreed to by the sales consultant).
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
-- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
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