A Tragic Flaw

Watching the debate tonight...

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
  - Kurt Vonnegut

Installing Oracle on Linux is too difficult

A blogger at Tech Republic, Rex Baldazo, says that Oracle installation on Linux isn't as easy as it could be.

I still think Oracle could stand to spend more time making its Linux installation smoother.

Installing Oracle on Linux is too difficult | Programming and Development | TechRepublic.com

The author goes on to say that his problems may stem from being more familiar and comfortable with Windows:

"I’m neither a Linux admin nor an Oracle DBA, which partly explains why I’m having so much trouble getting Oracle installed properly on a Linux machine. But the installation is just too complicated, especially compared to the same installation on Windows."

The company I work for, Edison Group, inc. has performed installation of Oracle on Windows in comparison tests for several years now. One of the things we've discovered is that Oracle's Database was easier to install than even Microsoft SQL Server, especially SQL Server 2005. It made sense for us to install on Windows for these projects since comparing how SQL Server installs on Windows with how Oracle installs on Linux made no sense. We also compared Oracle Database 10g with several versions of IBM DB2 UDB. We used Windows for these comparisons too to maintain the same context as the MS SQL Server comparisons.

Maybe our premise was too limited for today's datacenter realities. It seems that when installing on Linux, the Oracle installer doesn't address pre-installation steps directly. According to Rex:

"Even when I thought I had the pre-install steps completed properly, the Universal Installer would complain about one thing or another. And, of course, the darned Installer doesn’t have any ability to fix the problem — you just have to quit the installation"

He compares this to what happens with SQL Server:

"...Microsoft’s SQL Server install, which can handle much of its own pre-requisite software if necessary.

...even if you follow all the pre-install steps properly and the Universal Installer runs without problems, you still don’t end up with what I would call a working installation. You still have to do post-installation steps manually to get the database to where it will automatically restart when the OS is rebooted."

It seems to me that Oracle has a challenge here as great as the one that instigated the original research we did for them: can it maintain the ease of use advantage that Edison has been measuring over the years on other platforms? After all, Oracle seems to use the same installer for all the platforms. Why isn't it as thorough on Linux as on Windows? Or does the installer work better on Oracle's Red Hat distribution where they have control of the bundled packages and perhaps access to RPM tools specifically for that distro? It wouldn't matter if the difference isn't that great since everyone in IT knows that installations on Linux are usually more complex than on Windows. Oracle has been pushing Linux as the preferred OS for their eponymous database server for several years now. I would think that they should be making every possible effort to insure that their product offered the same ease of use capabilities on Linux as on Windows.

Edison has been negotiating with Oracle to update our research to reflect new products from all the vendors. They have been reluctant to fund the additional research required to update the procedures that have been in use since 2000 to reflect the changes in the products. The issue raised here adds some additional areas of concern that Oracle should have Edison address. I'm not hopeful that Oracle would be willing to have Edison both update the procedures or look at Linux when comparing Oracle to IBM DB2 UDB, let alone Oracle on Linux to anything on Windows.

To me, that comparison, even if Oracle on Linux is not quite as easy as on Windows, would be a powerful competitive message. One that would leverage the ease of use message on top of the unbreakable Linux message.