Re: Oracle Server NT vs. Unix

Michael L. Mason wrote:

> akrighjb_at_ci.richmond.va.us wrote:
> >
> > I'd hesitate putting a 24x7 Rdbms on NT. It's not as stable as unix
> > and not as Robust (I love that word) as unix. Unix OS comes with so many
> > utilities and our Hp-UX boxes have'nt been rebooted in months. With NT any
> > change to the system or anomaly-> REBOOT! and it goes away. Also, if you
> > upgrade Oracle products (i.e. SQL*NET) you have a chance of messing up your
> > DLLs and what not.
>

[...]

> We run Oracle 7.3.3 on NT 4.0 Server and haven't rebooted for 4 months.
> I agree that Unix is more stable, but for what we do here, NT works just
> fine. I'm sure that Unix would deliver better performance but Unix
> servers sometimes require more skilled System Admins than NT.

Hmm... Isn't the truth of this rather that in the UNIX community there is along tradition for taking system administration serious, whereas in the PC community people are used to 'just reboot'? The actual Oracle administration is exactly the same thing on all platforms - that's what I like about Oracle. As for system administration in general, I find UNIX far easier than NT - take my word for it. Or better: try it yourself - find a PC (386 or better), install eg. Linux or FreeBSD and read a book about UNIX.

> With the
> increased complexity of Unix comes more complex problems. There's my
> .02.

Being programmer with 14 years of experience on both UNIX andDOS/Windows*/OS2 I have come the conclusion, that most programs are harder to write in Windows and OS/2 than they are in UNIX. I can explain the technicalities of it too, if you like - it's something about the basic architectures of the systems. Especially in Windows the graphical interface is sort of 'built in' to the basic philosophy of the operating system, with the effect that many tasks that would be a simple matter of programming in UNIX become nightmares of complexity.

UNIX is not more complex than NT - but in NT complexities are hidden whereas in UNIX things are transparent. In other words: when things look complex in UNIX it's because the underlying tasks - networking, database etc - are complex by nature, and because the basic philosophy of UNIX is that you can better do your job if you can actually see things. And of course you can get tools - even graphical tools - that can gloss over the complexities in UNIX. The difference is that in NT that's all you've got.

/jan Received on Thu Sep 17 1998 - 02:22:08 CDT