Oracle ?

[ron]

I've worked with Progress software for 13 years -- both as a developer and DBA. I like it! Powerful, reliable -- and nice and easy to use.

Unfortunately (for me! :blue: ) it looks like my company will buy a new system that will not operate with Progress ... only Oracle. Thus, I'm looking forward to getting to know Oracle from a DBA perspective.

I'm sure there are many of you out there who have worked as a DBA with both Progress and Oracle. I'd be most interested in a few bullet points about what I'm likely to experience. Is it "similar" to administer? If not, what are the "big differences"? Does Oracle have VSTs? (Or similar) If not, how do you get at all the statistics? Can you use AI (redo logs) to update a warm spare like with Progress? Or, is there a better way to do it?

My understanding is that Oracle doesn't have an equivalent to Progress's 4GL. What language do DBAs normally use to extract stuff from the DB? (Or do they always use "tools" of some sort?)

Does one dump/reload Oracle databases every now-and-then -- like with Progress?

Ron.

 

[TomBascom]

0) Don't panic -- these "replacement" projects are rarely as simple and easy to do as the people who proclaim them say that they are. I know of one that is coming up on its 10th anniversary IMHO there is (at least) an 80% chance that the manager who made this decision/announcement will be gone within a year and the Progress system will still be there.

1) You might want to make sure that the other application really requires Oracle. The Progress db is rarely "on the list" but you may be able to use a Progress database with applications that only require generic SQL-92.

2) I'm no Oracle expert but Progress and Oracle are much more similar than, say, Progress and MS-SQL. Many Oracle concepts have Progress equivalents. Progress lacks some of Oracle's high end features and Oracle has lots more 3rd party tools available.

3) Oracle has lots of config files, command options and setup tasks to play with. Many of the administrative concepts should sound familiar.

4) Yes, Oracle has a VST equivalent. I haven't had enough coffee yet to remember what they call them.

5) Yes, Oracle has undo/redo logs and they have lots of fancy replication schemes available.

6) Yes, people dump & load Oracle databases. But some of Oracle's fancy features ought to make that even less necessary than it is with Progress.

Getting up to speed on Oracle shouldn't be a big problem for a Progress DBA.

 

[ron]

Thank you Tom!

I appreciate your preamble, but I'm more than 99% sure that the decision to move systems will go ahead -- and at least as sure that we won't be able to keep Progress. I regret that, of course! But that's life!

Ron.

 

[rhi]

Ron,

I've also worked with Progress for 13 years, 10 as a DBA. Am also an Oracle DBA the past 8 years. I can tell you for sure, there is no downside in this for you. A lot of canned systems don't support Progress DB's because the RDBMS simply can't scale to support the needs of the larger enterprise and for integration reasons.

I'll disagree with Tom on point #2. Progress is NOT more like Oracle than MS-SQL. Oracle & MS-SQL & DB2 & all the other major brand databases are more like each other, with Progress kind of looking like the re-headed step-child of the db world. Although, you will notice some similarities between Oracle & Progress. (Oracle Tablespaces vs Progress Storage Areas). Progress publicly stated that it does now, and will continue to make the 4GL engine more "Oracle like". The SQL-92 engine is more like the major DB brands, but I don't know any application vendors using it.

You can get the VST equivalent and much more via various dba views. Don't confuse this with "statistics" in Oracle. Oracle uses database table/index/column statistics to allow what is call the Query Optimizer to determine the best execution plan. Progress has no such equivalent.

In fact, there is no feature that Progress has that Oracle does not have, that I am aware of. However, there are a lot of features that Oracle does have that Progress does not.

For example, in Progress, last I knew in 10.0B, you could almost make on-line schema changes while users are logged in. ( Meaning you could, but not if you were running AI). Oracle has allowed on-line schema changes since at least V7. And in Oracle 10g, there is almost no reason that you have to take the database down. So unless you love working weekends and evenings when users are not in the database, Oracle will have given you some of your life back.

All oracle admin functionality is done by what is called the DB Console. It is a web based gui, both for Windows and Unix. I think you will prefer it.

Oracle does not have 4GL, they have SQL Plus and PL/SQL, as does MS-SQL, DB2, etc have a similar language to Oracle.

You can "dump & load" your database, but if you set it up correctly, you'll never have to. And even if you don't set it up correctly, in 10g you can "dump & load" (defrag) your database on-line with users logged in!!!

Here are some other cool features that I have used. The database has a Recycle Bin. If you drop a table, you can get it back - data & all. If a user somehow runs a bad sql statement that updates the database improperly, you can undo that also. If you have a table with 20 million rows in it and you want to delete them all, you can "truncate" the table, which will delete the data only - takes less than 1 minute.

I would suggest 3 things:
1) start here - http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/homepage
2) download the db and play with it - http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/oracle10g/index.html
3) get training

Oh yeah, not to mention there are a heap more Oracle DBA jobs out there with much fatter paychecks . . if that matters at all to you.

 

[ron]

Thank you very much! That was exactly what I was after -- it gives me a good general idea of what it will be like.

Ron.

(PS: Where in the world are you?)