I plan on using MySQL and probably PostgreSQL, too. But Oracle has lots of nice gui tools for doing design work and such. Plus I have several books on Oracle that have not even been read yet. So it's a learning thing, even though the final implementation may wind up being in MySQL or PostgreSQL, for licensing and distribution purposes. Which would also give me some opportunity to port from Oracle to other databases and learn the ins and outs of such portations. I have several server capable PCs laying around and plenty of space left on the home LAN. So it's an ideal project.
As far as the 9i, yes I believe both the 8i and 9i download versions I have are personal versions. I do have one specifically for Linux. So you think Oracle is a doomed application? Does that also include: SQL Server, DB2, et al? I tend to agree, but I doubt they will entirely disappear, for a long time, kind of like COBOL. There will continue to be a number of older shops still using them far into the future, but the market will shift towards the OSS RDBMs. So, portation skills will be useful.
Just looking for gotchas to look out for before diving in.
Thanks,
Brian
-----Original Message----- From: Dave Hull
Quoting Brian Densmore <>:
Right, I knew that, but this is a fullblown shrink-wrapped
enterprise level
version with all the bells and whistles and documents.
Which is a bit
different than the download version (which I ordered from
Oracle way back) on
a CD from Oracle, I think I also have the 9i download version on CD.
According to Oracle's web site, the versions available for download are the full versions. Even the documentation is available for download. We've been using the downloaded versions where I work in a production environment (yes we have the licenses) for a few years and I can tell you they are identical to the packaged versions we received in the mail after we bought the licenses.
I prefer to grab the latest ISOs from Oracle though because they have the most recent patchsets applied.
If you got 9i on a single CD, you must have a "personal" version or something because 9i requires three CDs... 10G requires only one CD, or so I was told by our Oracle rep.
Well, I've been wanting to play with some databases for a
while, but I have
some real projects I will be working on also.
Good luck. I usually reach for MySQL first. We've been using the 4.1.2 version with full support for referential integrity and transactions with great success in production for nearly a year with only one strange bug that has recently been addressed by the developers.
MySQL is much easier to manage than Oracle, IMHO. But if you're dealing with money, it's probably a safer bet to stick with Oracle, though I'm not sure that's going to be true for much longer.