RE: OT Oracle Server Operating System
- From: "Goulet, Dick" <DGoulet@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx>, <kmoore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 16:09:12 -0400
Oh I hate getting into these religious war topics, but. I started out
in this business with a terminal (VT-240) so that one could connect to a
centralized VAX. Things worked very well & there was little need for
software configuration or "DLL HELL" as it is today. Things then moved
to the client server world that made some sense & yes I've been into the
problems thereof, like two apps that want to use different versions of
Crystal Reports and/or Oracle. Now we're into thin clients that use app
servers, oh joy were heading back full circle. None of these
configurations has made sense in the end mainly because the bottle neck
never gets fixed, just moved around. The problem with host based
computing was provisioning enough cpu, memory, and disk space for
everyone's needs. Basic problem was that you needed enough for the peak
usage that occurred once a month and that was expensive. Client server
moved the bottle neck to the individual PC and the connection it had to
the backend database server. Once again one had to provision for worst
case & that again was expensive. But you also had compatibility issues
to boot. Now we're talking about app servers which again have to be
provisioned for worst case and each app wants it's own server. Damn
that's expensive as well. We have tried the Citrix route too and no it
isn't working out very well, for the above reasons namely you've got
these beefy servers sitting around idle 99% of the time and people still
want beefy pc's for their excel spread sheets, word documents, etc. And
to make matters worse someone has gotten this idea of departmental
servers into folks heads so multiply the number of database and app
servers by the number of departments you have. The problems with
compatibility may have diminished, but the complexity has increased by a
factor or two. IMHO we'll be in a mixed bag of fat clients, fat under
utilized apps servers and fat under utilized database servers till hell
freezes over, which ain't going to happen within my lifetime.
Dick Goulet
Senior Oracle DBA
-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of stephen booth
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 3:47 PM
To: kmoore@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: OT Oracle Server Operating System
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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