[GLLUG] Converting Oracle DB to Linux

[Matt Graham]

On Thursday 04 April 2002 14:05, you wrote:
> 12. What will it take to move our database on to Linux?
> Your CEO sees a chance to save
> money and use those 486 computers that are just sitting in storage.
> You have been asked to give a presentation on what it would take to
> move your company's database to Linux.
>
> Your company has 65 employees. The company is currently using an
> Oracle database that contains approximately 150 tables and takes
> about 15 gigabytes of disk space. The company is running a WindowsNT
> network.

If they want to stick with Oracle, they won't save (much) money.  
Though Oracle runs on Linux, Oracle is a couple of orders of magnitude 
more expensive than a DozeNT license.  Running Oracle on a 486 is also 
a Really Bad Idea if you want to maintain reasonable query response 
times.

If they want to switch to a different database, things get a lot more 
interesting.  Typically, they'd have a bunch of purpose-built 
applications, which probably depend on features in Oracle which don't 
exist in Postgres or are implemented differently in Postgres.  That 
means testing all the purpose-built junk, then recoding the bits that 
don't work.  Oh well, check 

http://www.palslib.com/PostgreSQL/Migration.html

near the bottom for advice on migrating stuff from Oracle to Postgres.  
Got that link by Googling on "Migrate Oracle Postgres" and sorting the 
results by eyeball.

(Replacing company NT/2K fileservers with Linux boxes running Samba is 
much easier than this, probably why the instructors didn't pick that 
topic...)

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