From:	IN%"brimble@hfrd.dsto.oz.au" 11-APR-1991 17:27:21.52
To:	baar@decus.com.au
CC:	
Subj:	Feedback on oracle

Received: from manta.mel.dit.csiro.au by decus.com.au; Thu, 11 Apr 91 17:26 AEST
Received: from munnari.OZ.AU by manta.mel.dit.csiro.au with SMTP id AA08838
 (5.65b/IDA-1.4.3/DIT-1.2 for baar@decus.com.au); Thu, 11 Apr 91 17:26:46 +1000
Received: from hfrd.dsto.oz (via augean) by munnari.oz.au with SunIII
 (5.64+1.3.1+0.50) id AA22344; Thu, 11 Apr 1991 17:26:44 +1000 (from
 brimble@hfrd.dsto.oz.au)
Received: by fang.dsto.oz (1.2/4.7) id AA07677; Tue, 9 Apr 91 12:21:52 pst
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 12:21:52 pst
From: brimble@hfrd.dsto.oz.au
Subject: Feedback on oracle
To: baar@decus.com.au
Message-id: <9104110726.22344@munnari.oz.au>
X-Envelope-to: baar


Hi Milton. I passed your request re Oracle onto a DECUS leader in Canada who is
an Oracle person. She (Grace Brauen, '91 SPC cochair) sends the following:

=====================================================================
Dear Milton,

I have spoken with some of my various contacts up here about ORACLE 
v6.2.  I was certainly very surprised to hear that you had a copy of 
the product, so that I assume that it is a BETA copy.  The production 
v 6.2 is not slated for release in the United States until end April.  
At ORACLE Canada, they prefer more testing than the "yanks" do, and
so we do not expect the prod v6.2 until later.

Fundamently, as you are no doubt aware, v6.2 is a complete
rewrite of the lockmanager.  My contacts here are not fully
comfortable with trusting that it will work.  They *highly*
recommend that you "test the living crap out of it" (one of the 
more colourful contacts said that) in a clustered environment,
before you place it on your production machine(s).  

Memory usage is definitely a factor.  As memory gets cheaper, so do
companies making software expect purchasing organizations to
enhance their computer operating system environment with more memory...
keep this in mind when you think about ORACLE v6.  I have supported
as DBA ORACLE 6.027 (last release I touched, have supported it
since ORACLE v3.7).  I LIKE ORACLE v6...but one DOES have to pay more
attention to tuning of VMS, and as ALWAYS, that ones applications
in ORACLE are properly designed and tuned.

Mike McGahey, from Monenco Ltd, said, "How the sga will handle itself is 
what I am looking for...I have a gut feeling that tpo will not be handled
properly...all of those pointers could get messy."  Mike is an ORACLE
guru, especially when it comes to performance.  Mike suggested also that
one should use pl sql wherever poossible (to answer another of your question
areas) to obtain the best perf you can.

SQL*net is not really officially slated to be "clean" until version 7.
Under v7 ORACLE, there is a total rewrite of the SQL*net architecture;  
from the tools (forms, plus, etc), the sql*net portion of the kernel,
to the sql*net portion of the oracle kernel.

Other comments on performance of v6.2, ORACLE stats (audited by
Codd and Date) are 425.7 tps on a VAXcluster.

Here are a few other beta sites that I suggest that you contact.
The Children's Hospital in Boston are one of ORACLE's most used
beta sites...start with them.  Also, in both the US and Australia, 
you could speak with Coca Cola Ltd.  You should also make sure that 
you have the LATEST beta release before playing with it.

Hope that this is a help to you...afraid I can't give you much more
than that at the moment...better that you contact the beta
sites than me.

Let me know what you decide to do...I would be very interested in hearing
the results of your inquiries.

Gracie Brauen
Facilities Manager, Systems Integration Group

National Research Council of Canada
Montreal road, Bldg M-50
Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada.

(613) 990-8042