FreeLists / oracle-l / Re: OT Oracle Server Operating System

[stephen booth <stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 19/07/05, Keith Moore <kmoore@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I found this quote interesting: "Ellison and other Oracle executives saw
> Raw Iron vindicating his failed network computer concept"
> 
> Since I got my copy of Inforworld last night and they have a special
> report on thin clients called "Is the desktop PC History?"
> 
> http://www.infoworld.com/reports/29SRthin.html

From what I'm seeing it looks like we might be going towards slim if
not thin desktop.  Still a PC but for must users all it runs locally
is network logon/authentication, a basic office package (e.g.
OpenOffice.org or StarOffice) and perhaps a mail client.  All the big
apps are presented to the user over Citrix, browser or X11 from
dedicated fat servers.  The biggest driver for this I'm seeing isn't
the cost of buying the fat PCs, it's the cost of dealing with
compatibility problems of running software from different suppliers on
the same machine.

Where I work on some of our PCs, until recently, due to different
software products using different versions of Oracle we had to have
three different versions of the Oracle client networking software all
on the same machine. (7.3.4, 8.1.7 and 9.2.0).  This will work, if set
up correctly.  Unfortunately most of the installs were done by desktop
support staff for whom Oracle is just a six letter word begining with
O (i.e. they don't know anything about it) with a propensity for
ignoring installation instructions, so we landed up with a lot of
machines where not only did the new software not work correctly but
neither did the old software as half it's support files had just been
blown away and replaced with incompatible versions.

If we have remote servers delivering apps through a thin client method
then we can have one app per server, or at least make sure that all
the apps use the same versions of the libraries &c.  It also means
that if someone needs an app they don't currently have then we don't
need to do a client install, we just need to change their permissions
and, maybe, put a new icon on their desktop.

Stephen
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