Re: Oracle

["Keith G. Murphy" <keithmur@mindspring.com>]

> Eric Langager wrote:
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> We are currently in the process of setting up the curriculum for
> teaching the Oracle database system here at the University of
> Advancing Computer Technology.  I feel that it would be a good idea to
> teach Oracle administration on some sort of UNIX platform, and I am
> very interested in the possibility of using LINUX as a platform, due
> to its appeal as a PC based system.
> 
> I have talked to Red Hat, and Caldera.  Red Hat did not recommend 7.0
> as a platform.  They do have a special version of Red Hat dedicated to
> Oracle, but it costs $2500--obviously not a solution for my students.
> 
> Caldera encouraged me to wait until the next kernal comes out, which
> may be a good idea.
> 
> I was just wondering if there is anyone who has implemented Oracle
> using Debian as a platform.  I am particularly interested in Debian
> because it seems to be less commercialized than some of the others.
> 
> I would appreciate feedback anyone might have about setting up Oracle
> servers on Debian LINUX.  Our networking lab has Intel based systems
> (Pentium) with removable hard drives, and 64 MB of RAM.  I would like
> to teach an implementation which would be easy for students to put
> together on their own with very low cost.
> 
In light of the heavy memory requirements some have mentioned, have you
considered running Postgresql instead?  It's free software, it's a
perfectly full-featured SQL DBMS, and it works great on Debian well
within your memory requirements.

Of course, they couldn't put "Oracle experience" on their resumes then,
which I'm sure would be a drawback.  In real terms, it's a perfectly
good learning platform.