Powerhouse & database choices.
Edis, Bob
bob.edis@fleetpride.com
Thu, 21 Jun 2001 09:15:48 -0500
G'day Margaret
Thanks for the info. Actually PowerHouse 7.33 works very fine with Oracle
databases. I think you mean that version 8.n was the first OpenVMS
implementation that supported Oracle 7 and 8 RDBMS.
The AlphaServer es40 is a big improvement in performance over the 4100.
10,000 PowerHouse programs! Wow, that's big. How many PH
analysts/programmers are required to support that size application? The
biggest I've worked on was about 5,000 programs (including scripts) and that
required a team of about 5 people to support it. What type of application
is this system?
Converting this many programs with such a small team over that period of
time is a significant achievement. I worked at the beginning of a similar
project that ended up taking 9 months and a dozen people for only about
4,000 programs and 600 tables. Good job!
I had a look at the word doc (not everyone got it) and I see some of the
findings are quite different to what we found. The date issues in
particular. We had no trouble with zero dates in Oracle Rdb. The is some
sort of tweak the DBA can do to get around this. Including NULLs was
problematic though as we had to add code to check for IS NULL wherever code
that checked for zero was found.
Thanks again for the response to my questions,
Regards,
Blue
-----Original Message-----
From: KRAMARZ, Margaret [mailto:margaret.kramarz@mfi.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 3:51 AM
To: 'powerh-l@list.swau.edu'
Subject: RE: Powerhouse & database choices.
Hello Bob,
My mistake, it was 8gb not 8mb.
As far as Cognos and Oracle Rdb goes, version 8 of Powerhouse is the first
one that offers access to Oracle database, therefore I would say it is very
true that Powerhouse was working pretty tide with Rdb. This is probably why
we had a bit of the struggle trying to get rid of vms idiosyncrasies in our
710g1 powerhouse code.
Our Tru64 Unix box is es40 alpha @667Mhz, 2 cpus and 8gb (not mb) memory.
The cluster is running Powerhouse and other stuff.
We went into production in November 2000 and it is stable so far.
We still have few smaller Oracle Rdb databases around, running Oracle Rdb
V7.0-31 under OpenVMS V7.2-1 .
As far as I know we made attempts to get Cognos and Oracle consultants to
look at our systems, but it did not result in any significant improvement in
the long run.
The project involved recompilation of about 10,000 Powerhouse programs and
transfer of 300gb of data from Oracle Rdb to Oracle 8.1.6 . I don't have
all the stats but we have started in February and it took 2-6 people at
50-100% time unitl implementation mid November.
Most of the changes in Powerhouse could be handled by global string
replacement.
The issues with the Powerhouse upgrade to version 8 are best highlighted in
the attached document drawn by one of my collegues from the development
team.
It is a word document that I will be happy to send to anybody interested. It
is however too long, and my previous message has been rejected due to the
length of it - therefore I cannot send it to the list.
-----Original Message-----
From: Edis, Bob [mailto:bob.edis@fleetpride.com]
Sent: 20 June 2001 15:31
To: 'powerh-l@list.swau.edu'
Subject: RE: Powerhouse & database choices.
G'day Margaret
I find your situation interesting. Only 8Mb RAM?
I don't know what software that Lycos, Northern Light and AltaVista are
using with Oracle Rdb but they are HUGE databases. Oracle Rdb was selected
by those companies (and stock exchanges, London for example, and telcos -
MCI, Sprint) BECAUSE of its performance advantages over other database
engines.
I was told by Cognos in the past that PowerHouse worked better on an OpenVMS
platform with Oracle Rdb than Oracle other because Cognos had worked with
Digital's techs to right into the guts of the DB engine rather than having
to go through a middle layer interface as it does with Oracle 7 or 8.
The apx4100 is an older machine. Did you replace OpenVMS with True64 UNIX
on the same machines? True64 UNIX is going to be faster than OpenVMS for
most applications as there is less over head in the OS. I don't know about
its reliability though.
What version of Rdb were you running? Did you ever try to work with
Cognos/Compaq/Oracle to fix the performance problems?
I don't particularly support any OS/RDBMS combination of another. I just
believe in looking at all the alternatives objectively and making a rational
decision rather than an emotional or political one. HP/UX with Oracle 8.1.6
(or 8i) is a great combination if you have the ready expertise on-hand. I
have worked with this environment, and VMS/Rdb, and MVS/DB2, and MPE/Image,
and NT/SQL Server, and ...
I am interested (and I know a few others are too) in what you went through
in the conversion. What were the human, cost and technical issues you had
to overcome and what issues resolved themselves by moving to the new
environment.
Regards,
Blue
-----Original Message-----
From: KRAMARZ, Margaret [mailto:margaret.kramarz@mfi.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 6:06 AM
To: 'Edis, Bob'
Cc: 'powerh-l@list.swau.edu'
Subject: RE: Powerhouse & database choices.
Hello Bob,
I just wanted to comment on the Alpha/VMS - Oracle Rdb configuration.
I believe that indeed the performance would be OK for the 4GB database.
However this configuration did not work for us.
We were running 300Gb Oracle Rdb on Alpha/VMS in cluster environment of 4
apx4100 machines
@600Mhz and 8Mb memory against Powerhouse 710g1. We had over 300 users.
The performance was very poor with lots of bottlenecks in the area of
OpenVMS Lock Manager,
even though we employed solid state disk and memory channel.
As soon as Powerhouse 8 was available, we started migration project to
Oracle 8 on Alpha Tru64 Unix.
Today we are running 340 GB Oracle 8.1.6 database under Tru64 Unix, and
Powerhouse 820d
under Alpha/VMS. We have hardly any performance problems, the bottlenecks
dissapeared,
and overall performace gains measured by the response time are in the range
of 200%.
We doubled number of users, doing both OLTP and DSS processing.
We are not the ones to recommend Oracle Rdb anymore, after all the strugles
we went through.
Regards
Margaret Kramarz
-----Original Message-----
From: Edis, Bob [mailto:bob.edis@fleetpride.com]
Sent: 18 June 2001 16:29
To: ''
Subject: RE: Powerhouse & database choices.
G'day Russell
The HP/UX with an Oracle 8.n (or 8i) solution is a popular approach these
days. You can find out from the conformance table on Cognos' web site about
what databases are supported on the HP/UX platform.
However, you need to review your decision about HP/UX. according the a
TechData survey I read (Are Proprietary RISC Servers More Expensive Than
Their UNIX Alternatives?, TechWise Research, May 1999), TOC on an
AlphaServer, whether running OpenVMS (preferred) or True64 UNIX is
significantly lower over a 3 to 5 year period than other server choices,
particularly if you plan on clustering at any stage.
If you do decide to go Alpha/VMS then Oracle Rdb is the RDBMS of choice for
performance. The largest and fastest internet search engines (AltaVista,
Northern Light, Lycos, etc) use this combination as well as many stock
exchanges and telecoms around the world. However, Oracle 8.0.n, Sybase, and
other RDBMS vendors also have products that perform well on
AlphaServer/OpenVMS platforms. OpenVMS administrators are usually cheaper
than UNIX admin people. In fact, according to a recent issue of Contract
Professional magazine (www.cpuniverse.com) UNIX heads the top of the list as
to the most in demand skill set in the USA. High demand usually leads to
high salaries/rates than competitor technologies.
I suggest that before you jump into any particular platform/database
technology you consider the following:
1. Total cost of ownership over a period of time significant to your
business
2. Cost of human resources required to support the hardware, OS and RDBMS.
3. Performance of the platform/RDBMS combo in respect to working with
PowerHouse 4GL.
4. Availability of resources, both technology (HW/SW) and Human.
5. Implementation time and difficulty for each candidate solution.
6. Upfront costs.
7. Additional benefits and opportunities that can be gained from each
alternative.
We use PowreHouse with Windows NT and MS SQL Server 7.0 here. Performance
is not an issue so much as cost. I would not be satisfied with this setup
if there was a greater demand on resources though.
Good luck in your project.
Regards,
Robert Edis (Blue)
Manager - Business Intelligence
FleetPride
520 Lake Cook Rd., Suite 100
Deerfield IL 60015
Tel: 847.572.8039
Fax: 847.444.1096
www.fleetpride.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Garner [mailto:russell_garner@aapl.com.au]
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2001 10:38 PM
To: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
Subject: Powerhouse & database choices.
Dear all,
My company is endeavouring to port our current Powerhouse software onto
another
platform away from non supported Data General and Interbase products,
and I am
just after opinions on what people think are our replacement options.
We originally went down the NT/SQL7 path but ran into data throughput
issues
as an ODBC connection to the database isn't feasible for us.
With this, and for many other reasons, we've decided to stay with a Unix
solution.
HP/UX is at the top of the list for now, but I'd like to get some
feedback from
others out there as to what they have and their impressions of it.
Since Interbase is no longer supported, what databases are
recommended/viable for
use on a Unix box (HP or other) We currently only have twenty or so
users on the
system and the database size (currently Interbase) is only about 4Gig.
We don't
want to go the Oracle way as we don't have the manpower to look after
it.
Any ideas, suggestions, or general comments are warmly welcomed.
Thanks
Russell Garner
Senior Analyst
Australian Arrow
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Mailing list: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
Subscribe: "subscribe" in message body to powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
Unsubscribe: "unsubscribe" in message body to
powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
http://lists.swau.edu/mailman/listinfo/powerh-l
This list is closed, thus to post to the list you must be a subscriber.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Mailing list: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
Subscribe: "subscribe" in message body to powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
Unsubscribe: "unsubscribe" in message body to
powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
http://lists.swau.edu/mailman/listinfo/powerh-l
This list is closed, thus to post to the list you must be a subscriber.
****************************************************************************
******************************************
The information in this e-mail is confidential and is intended solely for
the use of the individual
or entity to which it is addressed. Any views or opinions presented are
those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of MFI Furniture Group PLC or its
associated companies.
****************************************************************************
******************************************
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Mailing list: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
Subscribe: "subscribe" in message body to powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
Unsubscribe: "unsubscribe" in message body to
powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
http://lists.swau.edu/mailman/listinfo/powerh-l
This list is closed, thus to post to the list you must be a subscriber.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Mailing list: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
Subscribe: "subscribe" in message body to powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
Unsubscribe: "unsubscribe" in message body to
powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
http://lists.swau.edu/mailman/listinfo/powerh-l
This list is closed, thus to post to the list you must be a subscriber.