RE: Data Pump and compress on the fly in Unix

I've got an SR open at the moment where the analyst has said that they do not recommend using Unix compress or gzip against an export dump (generated by either exp or expdp). He has indicated that there are known issues. So I've been using compress on the fly for years without issue and this is the first time I've heard that it's not recommended. He came short of saying "not supported".  

• From: "Mark W. Farnham" <mwf_at_xxxxxxxx>
• To: <rjamya_at_xxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:19:53 -0500

Hmm, I?ve never noticed that note ? is it the kind of not supported as in ?don?t call us for help in using named pipes? or the kind of not supported as in ?if you use this it won?t work?

I?m not even convinced Oracle?s software can tell the difference between a stream of bytes from a named pipe and a stream of bytes from a file.

That transparency is why Kemeny and Kurtz called them communications files and noted that every data source and every data sink is a file. I?m moderately sure D. Ritchie followed that lead when building UNIX, but sometimes I mis-remember things.

Another possible confusion is whether Oracle?s note was about Unix named pipes or what a company convicted of restraint of trade also called named pipes.

Have you got a reference to that note? I?d sure like to read it and try to figure out when in the gap between 1988 when Oracle specifically recommended using named pipes to me and now they desupported them. Of course that was export, not datapump, but I still can?t quite grok how their software would be able to figure out the difference in the source of the bytes.

Regards,

mwf

From: Niall Litchfield [mailto:niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com] Sent: Thu 11/01/2007 10:59 PM
To: James.Foronda_at_sun.com
Cc: mgogala_at_verizon.net; pythianbrinsmead_at_gmail.com; Leng Kaing; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: Re: Data Pump and compress on the fly in Unix

On 1/11/07, James Foronda <James.Foronda_at_sun.com> wrote:

	To the best of my knowledge, Solaris 10 can not run SQL Server. Solaris
	10 has ZFS, and ZFS has a 'compress' option.
	
	:)
	
	

On the other hand it might not be the best platform for your database itself just yet http://blogs.sun.com/roch/date/20060922 - It'd be fun to see those numbers with compression on :(

cheers

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info 

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