Our department is loosing access to MS Server 2000. I am looking into
different possibilities of replacements, Oracle being one. I know
Oracle is available for free, but I'm not clear what the limitations of
it are, and that's what I need clarified for me please.

It would reside in an intranet environment on a single processor
machine with about 2-10 people accessing it at a given time. We would
also need some sort of replacement for our DTS packages. I'm not sure
of what kind of equivalent feature is available on Oracle. The DTS
packages basically import CSV files and run several queries in a row
before and after the CSV import, and perform some scripted
transformations when importing the data.

Thanks in advance!

shumaker@cs.fsu.edu wrote:
> Our department is loosing access to MS Server 2000. I am looking into
> different possibilities of replacements, Oracle being one. I know
> Oracle is available for free, but I'm not clear what the limitations of
> it are, and that's what I need clarified for me please.
>
> It would reside in an intranet environment on a single processor
> machine with about 2-10 people accessing it at a given time. We would
> also need some sort of replacement for our DTS packages. I'm not sure
> of what kind of equivalent feature is available on Oracle. The DTS
> packages basically import CSV files and run several queries in a row
> before and after the CSV import, and perform some scripted
> transformations when importing the data.
>
> Thanks in advance!

Contact me at the University of Washington ... use the email address
below: Don't just hit reply.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

You might want to look at "External Tables" for your DTS requirements.
Docs are available at http://tahiti.oracle.com, free registration
required.

In one possible scenario, you can simply define the files and use
create table as select from ... with your transformation to do the
import and transformation together (depending on what sort of
transformation you have to do, of course).

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/mariss...ple-152210.php

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:57:40 -0800, shumaker wrote:

> Our department is loosing access to MS Server 2000.

Wrong wording. The right wording would be: "our department did a great
job and we are rewarded by not having to contend with MS Server 2000 any
more. The damagement will finally buy us a real database."

>I am looking into
> different possibilities of replacements, Oracle being one. I know
> Oracle is available for free, but I'm not clear what the limitations of
> it are, and that's what I need clarified for me please.

The Oracle RDBMS that is available for free is Express Oracle.
Express Oracle is a serious toy, but a toy nevertheless. It cannot
exceed 4GB in size, which is far too small for any serious application.
Nothing else is free for a commercial environment. In addition to that,
Oracle has something called "Oracle Standard Edition One", which doesn't
include some advanced features (no partitioning, RAC, AQ) and which
costs few hundred dollars, typically below $1000. You can also buy
standard edition, license fee is $4500/CPU. Enterprise edition (EE) costs
$10000/CPU. Your description sounds like it can be satisfied by the
standard edition one. For more information, you will have to contact
Oracle sales. I don't work for Oracle, I have never worked for Oracle
and the information I gave you provides a ballpark and cannot be
considered accurate. Make sure that you tell your Oracle salesman how
much do you intend to spend so that he doesn't try to convince you that
4 HP SuperDome computers in a RAC configuration with EMC Symmetrix
as the shared disk farm are the only solution for you. Software sales
people are slightly less trustworthy then used car sales people, lawyers
or politicians. Any software sales people from this group are excluded,
of course.


>
> It would reside in an intranet environment on a single processor
> machine with about 2-10 people accessing it at a given time. We would
> also need some sort of replacement for our DTS packages. I'm not sure
> of what kind of equivalent feature is available on Oracle. The DTS
> packages basically import CSV files and run several queries in a row
> before and after the CSV import, and perform some scripted
> transformations when importing the data.

CSV files are not really exotic, to say the least. There is approximately
a gazillion of tools that can be used to load them: external
tables, SQL*Loader, Perl, PHP, the tool formerly known as HTMLDB (now
Oracle*Prince), visual basic, .NOT and many, many more. You can even use
PL/I and CICS combination to load CSV tables into Oracle RDBMS, although I
admit that it would be a little unusual to buy that just for loading CSV
files. If any database is well supported by tools, it's Oracle RDBMS. You
don't even have to give up DTS if it works with ODBC or ADO.

--
http://www.mgogala.com

Mladen Gogala wrote:

> The Oracle RDBMS that is available for free is Express Oracle.
> Express Oracle is a serious toy, but a toy nevertheless. It cannot
> exceed 4GB in size, which is far too small for any serious application.

You can actually do a lot of damage with 4 Gb of data. I think in this
case it will fit the bill quite nicely. And if it isn't enough storage,
then the option to upgrade to SE1 or SE is very attractive.

> Nothing else is free for a commercial environment. In addition to that,
> Oracle has something called "Oracle Standard Edition One", which doesn't
> include some advanced features (no partitioning, RAC, AQ) and which
> costs few hundred dollars, typically below $1000. You can also buy
> standard edition, license fee is $4500/CPU. Enterprise edition (EE) costs
> $10000/CPU.

You can check prices on store.orcle.com. Mladen has them a little (a
lot) wrong


>
>>It would reside in an intranet environment on a single processor
>>machine with about 2-10 people accessing it at a given time.

Look at named user pricing. It will be cheaper than CPU based pricing
for 2-10 users. For both SE and SE1 the minimum named users licensable is 5.

>> We would
>>also need some sort of replacement for our DTS packages. I'm not sure
>>of what kind of equivalent feature is available on Oracle. The DTS
>>packages basically import CSV files and run several queries in a row
>>before and after the CSV import, and perform some scripted
>>transformations when importing the data.

Use External tables and table functions. See the doc on OTN

Thanks everyone for your replies. Very helpful!

I think I may even be able to continue to use my existing DTS packages
if I modify the connections to point to the oracle server.

Since I have found that my Access Data Projects don't cooperate very
well with SQL 2005, then Oracle is looking even more attractive. I'd
have to use some sort of mediating drivers in either case anyways.

The 4gb limit shouldn't be a problem for our databases, and it is about
the same as the limit that SQL 2005 Express has.

I'll take a more serious look at Oracle now that I know that there is a
viable cost free solution.

> Wrong wording. The right wording would be: "our department did a great
> job and we are rewarded by not having to contend with MS Server 2000 any
> more. The damagement will finally buy us a real database."

LOL. Unfortunetly, the management is likely not going to buy us a
database. Hence the reason why I'm researching what is available for
free. I'll probably even have to have people from seperate shifts
share a computer so that I can claim a desktop system as a server.

We were actually very satisfied with it, and could develop solutions
rapidly. However, I do regret developing so much that is now tied to
it now that I'm faced with weening things off of it and getting it
working with Oracle or MS SQL 2005 Express.

I could probably put together a quote for server hardware+software and
tell them there is no alternative, and when they say, well we'll have
to do without it, then I can watch them try to go back to using Excel
for their tasks, and they will soon miss the time that they could do a
day's worth of work in a couple of hours. I'd probably be shooting
myself in the foot though, as I'd be writing Excel Macros then... and
that just isn't that fun.

BTW, I don't work at FSU as I think some may have thought, that's just
where I am finishing my degree remotely. I work for SAIC.

Thanks again. Take care.

Mladen Gogala wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:57:40 -0800, shumaker wrote:
>
> > Our department is loosing access to MS Server 2000.
>
> Wrong wording. The right wording would be: "our department did a great
> job and we are rewarded by not having to contend with MS Server 2000 any
> more. The damagement will finally buy us a real database."
>
> >I am looking into
> > different possibilities of replacements, Oracle being one. I know
> > Oracle is available for free, but I'm not clear what the limitations of
> > it are, and that's what I need clarified for me please.
>
> The Oracle RDBMS that is available for free is Express Oracle.
> Express Oracle is a serious toy, but a toy nevertheless. It cannot
> exceed 4GB in size, which is far too small for any serious application.
> Nothing else is free for a commercial environment. In addition to that,
> Oracle has something called "Oracle Standard Edition One", which doesn't
> include some advanced features (no partitioning, RAC, AQ) and which
> costs few hundred dollars, typically below $1000. You can also buy
> standard edition, license fee is $4500/CPU. Enterprise edition (EE) costs
> $10000/CPU. Your description sounds like it can be satisfied by the
> standard edition one. For more information, you will have to contact
> Oracle sales. I don't work for Oracle, I have never worked for Oracle
> and the information I gave you provides a ballpark and cannot be
> considered accurate. Make sure that you tell your Oracle salesman how
> much do you intend to spend so that he doesn't try to convince you that
> 4 HP SuperDome computers in a RAC configuration with EMC Symmetrix
> as the shared disk farm are the only solution for you. Software sales
> people are slightly less trustworthy then used car sales people, lawyers
> or politicians. Any software sales people from this group are excluded,
> of course.
>
>
> >
> > It would reside in an intranet environment on a single processor
> > machine with about 2-10 people accessing it at a given time. We would
> > also need some sort of replacement for our DTS packages. I'm not sure
> > of what kind of equivalent feature is available on Oracle. The DTS
> > packages basically import CSV files and run several queries in a row
> > before and after the CSV import, and perform some scripted
> > transformations when importing the data.
>
> CSV files are not really exotic, to say the least. There is approximately
> a gazillion of tools that can be used to load them: external
> tables, SQL*Loader, Perl, PHP, the tool formerly known as HTMLDB (now
> Oracle*Prince), visual basic, .NOT and many, many more. You can even use
> PL/I and CICS combination to load CSV tables into Oracle RDBMS, although I
> admit that it would be a little unusual to buy that just for loading CSV
> files. If any database is well supported by tools, it's Oracle RDBMS. You
> don't even have to give up DTS if it works with ODBC or ADO.
>
> --
> http://www.mgogala.com

: BTW, I don't work at FSU as I think some may have thought, that's just
: where I am finishing my degree remotely. I work for SAIC.
:
which SAIC? Art Institure of Chicago or the Science guys?

and you're still top-posting ;-) ... watch out, someone's gonna flame you!

++ mcs

Just install SQL Server 2005 Express edition - problem solved, simply detach
and attach the SQL 2000 database.

The Express edition is free and comes with a lot of stuff, reporting, tools.

--
Tony Rogerson
SQL Server MVP
http://sqlserverfaq.com - free video tutorials


<shumaker@cs.fsu.edu> wrote in message
news:1139882260.433400.311720@g44g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> Our department is loosing access to MS Server 2000. I am looking into
> different possibilities of replacements, Oracle being one. I know
> Oracle is available for free, but I'm not clear what the limitations of
> it are, and that's what I need clarified for me please.
>
> It would reside in an intranet environment on a single processor
> machine with about 2-10 people accessing it at a given time. We would
> also need some sort of replacement for our DTS packages. I'm not sure
> of what kind of equivalent feature is available on Oracle. The DTS
> packages basically import CSV files and run several queries in a row
> before and after the CSV import, and perform some scripted
> transformations when importing the data.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>

Tony Rogerson wrote:
> Just install SQL Server 2005 Express edition - problem solved, simply detach
> and attach the SQL 2000 database.

Unless they are not staying on Windows

Or if you prefer since you appear to read upside down

Unless they are not staying on Windows

> Just install SQL Server 2005 Express edition - problem solved, simply detach
> and attach the SQL 2000 database.

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 22:08:22 -0800, Mark Townsend wrote:

> You can check prices on store.orcle.com. Mladen has them a little (a
> lot) wrong

Oh well. Happens to the best of us. In my family, my wife is in charge of
money, what can I cay?

--
http://www.mgogala.com