Oracle

[Brian Densmore]

I plan on using MySQL and probably PostgreSQL,
too. But Oracle has lots of nice gui tools 
for doing design work and such. Plus I have
several books on Oracle that have not even been
read yet. So it's a learning thing, even though
the final implementation may wind up being in 
MySQL or PostgreSQL, for licensing and distribution
purposes. Which would also give me some opportunity
to port from Oracle to other databases and learn
the ins and outs of such portations. I have several
server capable PCs laying around and plenty of space
left on the home LAN. So it's an ideal project.

As far as the 9i, yes I believe both the 8i and 9i
download versions I have are personal versions. I do have
one specifically for Linux. So you think Oracle is a doomed
application? Does that also include: SQL Server, DB2, et al?
I tend to agree, but I doubt they will entirely disappear, for
a long time, kind of like COBOL. There will continue to be
a number of older shops still using them far into the future, but
the market will shift towards the OSS RDBMs. So, portation
skills will be useful.

Just looking for gotchas to look out for before diving in.

Thanks,

Brian


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Hull 
> 
> Quoting Brian Densmore <>:
> 
> > 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.
>