[SGVLUG] Are there any oracle gurus on this list?

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Max Clark
> 
> Wow - This is kinda a loaded question. 

heh heh heh -- do I ever ask any that aren't? ;)

> Emerson, Tom wrote:
> > questions:  Installing
> > 
> > -- some time ago [couple of years by now] I got a promotional CD of
> > Is that likely to be a "current enough" version to be of benefit,
> > or should I burn up the DSL line and pull a few more .iso's?
> 
> I would definitely download the current installer files from 
> the Oracle website. Things change quickly, and two years is ancient.

gotcha -- pretty much thought so anyway, but I'd have hated to spend a day downloading only to find I'd picked up essentially the same version as to what I had...
 
> > -- HOW should I install it?  The system I will likely be ...
> 
> Stay away from RAW partitions, yes Oracle will be faster on a 
> RAW disk, 
> but honestly - if you needed that sort of performance this 
> wouldn't be a 
> "play with Oracle" and then migrate to it project. 

Very good point :)  Realistically, however, there are plenty of existing DBA's here who will likely oversee the actual construction and management of the migrated database (on an AIX system, I believe, and a massive SAN for disk space, so partitioning and raw-vs-filesystem won't be something *I* have to worry about)  I was thinking more for my own personal use / learning, and hoping the answer wouldn't be along the lines of "you could use the local filesystem, but performance would be dog slow" -- sounds like what I hoped for is the case :)

As it turns out, the actual "migration" effort is likely going to be done by an outside consultant with no knowledge of the "quirks" of our system -- whether or not that will be as effective as having someone with intense knowledge of the current system (but little practical Oracle experience) perform the conversion remains to be seen.

> > USING Oracle:
> > 
> > -- ... just how difficult
> > is it to define a "database", or is that even the right term?  (I
> > hear the word "schema" a lot...)
> 
> In oracle you have an instance (think database) that is identified by 
> the SID, and within the instance you can have schemas. The 
> best way to 
> describe a schema would be a concept similar to branches in a cvs 
> repository. You can create multiple virtual databases within the 
> instance that you control access to based on username/password.

Hmmm... this is going to have to be the "hands on learning" part I'll have to do on my own.  I think I chopped it, but one point you made above was that the "database" as such is built as (pre)allocated space in a large binary file -- the HP database is essentially the same in that the "schema" for an HP database is passed through a parser that creates a set of files; these files in turn are built to contain a specific number of entries [defined in the aforementioned schema] and never grow for the life of the database [well, not unless you have a third-party tool]