Oracle9i preferred installation on WinNT/Solaris?

[Prab]

Hi,

Let me introduce as Prabhakar. I have some knowledge
of Oracle 8. While browsing the net, I came across this
site. I need to have some information on Oracle9i
and would be delighted if anyone can help. The
questions are listed below.

1. Is there any prefered platform for installation of
Oracle 9i.

2. Does the performance of Oracle 9i depend on the
platform installed.

3. Are there any features by which the search
functionality of the database be improved.(other than
indexing and creating stored procedures)

4. Does the Application Server that comes by default
is J2EE compliant.

5. Do we need to do any modification to the code
running on any other J2EE compliant server(say Web
Logic or iPlanet Web Server) to be ported/migrated to
the Oracle Application Server.

6. Do we have any search components in this similar to
that available in MS SQL server.

I would be very thank ful, if these questions
are answered. Hope you would respond and help me in
understanding the product better and clear.

Thanks in Advance,
Prabhakar

 

[CRoberts]

I can help some with what I have seen, but my experience is certainly not definitive.

1) Oracle works fine on both UNIX and Windows. I would pick the platform you are must comfortable with. UNIX's processes and Windows threads do work differently. Certainly the Windows Registry is a big factor. An Oracle installation modifies the heck out of the registry and its tough (for me) to know which start up process is an Oracle process and what is not. There is a big bunch of processes that are started up automatically whether you want it or not.

2) I done some comparisons, and for me Windows, suprisingly, seems to work somewhat better in response times when the same complex query is throwing at both. Oracle needs a lot of hardware resources regardless of the platform. Generally, your proformance gains are achieved though the init.ora being tweaked and by tuning your Sql statements, or using summary tables and materialized views if need be and depending on what you need. Is this an OLAP or a data warehouse database you are wanting? How many users are you expecting to hit the database at one time? These questions are really more relevant than a general what platform works best. Each logged in use is going to steal resources just to maintain the session. In general, both platforms work just fine. I have use both, and both are acceptable platforms. I would pick based on cost and ease of use. It is always possible to program around any particular problems you encounter.

3) Don't know what you are getting at. But, one either does a full table scan, or if an index exists, try and use that index. Oracle's new indexing mechanism (Oracle Text, was Intermedia) allows an index search on documents (like Word or PDF) stored as a blob datatype. XML is now a separate datatype, which is nice, to search for an XML element. A stored procedure, however, exists as a separate environment, nonetheless it packages a SQL request that is still sent to the database for processing. To find a particular record within a table still requires an index. Oracle does have a good number of indexes to use, even on Oracle's collection. Oracle allows operations to help the cost based optimizer along (Histograms and other such) to help speed searching.

To speed things along, one could load a table into a Index-By table into stored program and do a scan there if not too large a table exists. But this is a programmatic solution, not native.

4 & 5) Don't know this. Generally (we use Bea Logic) third party application servers don't work as well with Oracle as one would hope. Seems like when you change from one to another, a lot of class changes have to be made. Troubles with Oracle extensions seems to arise if you are using stored procedures, and collection types. Bea has problems with Oracle extensions that exist in J2EE but not in the verions of application server we are on, or so my Java developers tell me. I suspect that is the rule rather than a Bea exception. Have not used Oracle's application server, but seems to me that less problems would be found in that route. But I could be wrong.

6) Am not aware of any search capabilities in Sql Server not matched by Oracle. SQL statements are applied against a table and various indexes are used in both databases. So, is the same for both database vendors. So, not sure what you mean by this. Do use mean an IDE/GUI that makes administration easier when looking for DB objects? Oracle does have its Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), as does Sql Server. OEM is difficult to learn and use and on older versions needed a sacrificed chicken of two to function properly. They say that has been fixed.

Hope this helps some.