Re: Schema Placement for Purchased Apps

> 6) While server resources cannot be ignored,
> resources are not the primary focus of my question.

But resources are the primary focus of your answer! See below:

> With that in mind, how should I decide whether to recommend:
> 1) Use an existing instance.
> 2) Create an additional instance on an existing Oracle DB server.
> 3) Create a new Oracle DB server and instance.

How do you determine when you need to add an instance or another database? Well, if your database is currently being used for OLTP and is tuned accordingly, adding an warehousing-type of application data to it will make you jump through hoops to tune it to do both, and you'll probably not be happy with the results.

So, assuming there's two types of applications data, OLTP and warehousing:

If your current load on the server is very light, and the new application data will also place a very light load on the server, then I'd put it in the same server and instance regardless of what type of applications they are. Of course, the devil is in determining what "very light" means.

If your new application will stress the server in a way it is not being stressed right now, then see what you are going to have to do to make it work all right, and see how it will impact the other applications you have running currently. If you are adding an OLTP application to a database that already handles OLTP, then chances are you'll be OK. If you are mixing OLTP and warehousing types of data for the first time, then you should be very careful. You will have to fine-tune some memory parameters and you may as well set up another instance/database.

It used to be that the disk usage was also an issue, but it is not anymore because Oracle now allows you specify different block sizes for each tablespace, and so you can have one tablespace be 2k while another is 64k in the same database. Combined with the ability to have multiple drive arrays with different RAID levels each, disk usage issues alone will not force you to create another database/instance. Received on Wed Apr 09 2003 - 19:17:22 CDT