Re: Oracle costs and requirements

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:41:02 -0800
Message-ID: <1132944055.944800@yasure>

Matt Bailey wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:01:09 -0800, DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
> wrote:
>
>
>

>>http://store.oracle.com will give you list prices which, in reality,
>>are near meaningless except as a starting point for discussions.
>>

>
>
> DA, thanks for the reply. Made me laugh in places :-)

Stop! You're going to ruin my reputation.

> I agree that it's a bit of a pants assignment. To be fair though, I
> didn't give the whole picture. The costings are not the whole
> assignment - just a small part of a bigger assignment.

And this makes it better or worse? ;-)

> The assignment is to implement a thick client and a thin client (web
> based) interface to a database for a fictional scenario (your choice
> of development technology and scenario) and to evaluate each
> development approach. The costing bit was tagged on to the end.

So you need to provide 7x24 service which means RAC in the data center and likely a second remote data center, also with a RAC cluster and using DataGuard for failover. So now we are talking Enterprise Edition. Price out 8 CPU licenses. 2x2 node cluster at the primary data center and 2x2 node cluster at the remote site.

Instead of figuring in the cost of power conditioning, dielsel generators, etc. assume you have an ASP hosting it for you. You can get pricing from www.bluegecko.net or others.

> Pasting:
>
> --------------------------
> Include a section costing out your two solutions stating any
> assumptions. Assume for example :-
> (i) The Oracle site-licence fee and database server overheads are
> shared equally between your application and 3 others.

Divide by 4?

> (ii) The hourly cost for a Database designer/engineer/tester is
> £90.

So the competency and web surfing habits have to be considered? ;-)

> (iii) Include the first year of maintenance assuming 2 new tables
> will be added and 3 new screens designed and implemented.

Pick any number you wish as adding 2 tables takes less than 1 second. Creating 3 screens can take 1 hour to 1 year.

> The estimate need only be approximate but try to include all relevant
> expenses (assume the client-PCs and network have already been
> purchased and installed).
> --------------------------

I hope you have a year to produce this.

> Since the cost predictions are based on my own scenario (a chain of
> Fitness Centres) the answers to your questions are pretty much down to
> my own envisaging of the fictional company. So there are no fixed
> requirements for the costing exercise - it's really what I decide
> myself.

Given you are in the European Union I presume you will make sure all is in compliance with Basel II.

>>If the point is just to throw some garbage together and claim success
>>then I'd suggest yougo to store.oracle.com and price out a minimum
>>license on Oracle SE1, load it on WhiteBox Linux on the least expensive
>>Dell or Gateway box you can find, perhaps 2.8MHz with a gig of RAM and
>>declare success.

>
> Well, ideally I'd like to make it as realistic an estimate as
> possible, so I'll do some further investigating, but failing that,
> this looks like a good option!
>
> Matt

I still question your professor's sanity unless you have 3 months or more to do this. But have a whack at it and don't forget to purchase a maintenance agreement on your hardware.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

Received on Fri Nov 25 2005 - 12:41:02 CST