Re: [Nolug] call for help: white papers to show my CIO regarding Linux, Unix & Oracle

On Wed, 2003-04-30 at 17:58, Andrew S. Johnson wrote:
> On Wednesday 30 April 2003 03:34 am, Ron Johnson wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > I may be wrong, but you seem to have a very small-systems view of
> > the world. (By small systems, I mean a "starting on single-user PCs
> > and then watching them grow multi-user". In my business career, I've
> > worked on "big systems", and watched them get physically smaller, and
> > faster. These 2 starting points, it seems to me, create 2 different
> > perceptions of reality...)
>
> I may be wrong as well, but I see the "new" installations, like Google and
> many of the other in the top500.org list using clusters of Intel compatible
> processors in small (2-4) SMP configurations. I see the market for
> mainframes for the people who started on them, and find it easier to
> put their legacy apps on newer compatible hardware when parts for the
> old systems become scarce, than to rewrite the systems they've been

This is what we did when we "ported" from VAX/VMS to Alpha/VMS. (Really
it was the change from VAX C to DEC C, and it was changing linker
options and main() invocations.) If we "port" our apps to Itaniac/VMS,
it'll be the same kind of easy effort.)

> running their business on for the last few decades. When, as you pointed
> out, the apps get ported to Java or whatever, then clusters of cheap
> computers will look more attractive for the same reason that RAID took
> over from large hard drives.

> What "new from scratch" commercial apps are being developed for

Couldn't say, since I haven't been in the mainframe world since the
late 1980s.

We write new apps for VMS all the time, and so do many others. Of
course, they are all in-house. The only 3rd part apps now are
"infrastructure"...

> mainframes? Even Oracle is looking to migrate customers from their
> big iron to RAC. Resisting change is futile.

But... Since Oracle licenses are based per-CPU, we look for getting
faster CPUs inside the same box, instead of more of the same speed
CPUs, when upgrading.

However, I'm "efforting" to convince my boss that the "Unix people"
should try developing on Linux instead of HP-UX. Thus, that's why
I started the thread "white papers to show my CIO regarding Linux,
Unix & Oracle" in the 1st place.

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr.     Home: ron.l.johnson@cox.net          |
| Jefferson, LA  USA   http://members.cox.net/ron.l.johnson |
|                                                           |
| An ad currently being run by the NEA (the US's biggest    |
| public school TEACHERS UNION) asks a teenager if he can   |
| find sodium and *chloride* in the periodic table of the   |
| elements.                                                 |
| And they wonder why people think public schools suck...   |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
___________________
Nolug mailing list
nolug@nolug.org