Re: Starting point: RDB -> Oracle experiences?

Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
Dean Woodward wrote:
[possibly a repost; I sent this out yesterday, but haven't seen it
come back...]

A [potential] customer is asking if we'd quote them a number to port
our DB back end off RDB and onto Oracle, still on VMS.

OK, now that you've stopped laughing at how silly the request is, I
need to come up with a number, expressed in hours, and haven't a clue
where I should start asking. Should I hit the RDB forum(s) first?

FWIW, it's well modularized, so we're only talking about ~5000 lines
of code, mostly dynamic SQL, that have to be scrutinized.

Just as important as the one-time porting effort is,
is it to look at the admin tasks after the port.
It's often said (and I can agree from supporting both
Oracle and Rdb (and Sybase :-) ) on VMS) that Rdb
realy need much less "baby-sitting" while running.

And also try to value the much better admin tools (RMU)
for Rdb. Such as backup, "show stat" and all those...

Jan-Erik.

The support issue is never taken into account when these ports are suggested. The cost to the company is usually 2x the number of support people - but, hey, they are cheap these days... just call +91.... (India).

Moving between data types can be tricky - especially the DATE/TIME data types. There is no SQLMOD in Oracle - it is all embedded using a pre-processor compliers that are not cheap (unless they have recently changed). Your entire authorization scheme will also become a challenge. Your network scheme will also be different.

If all of your access is via ODBC/JDBC etc... this will be a challenge as well. The connectivity is usually pretty easy - if you know the two inside and out and can do a side-by-side comparison...

Oracle 10g is finally getting some of the real ANSI standard syntax like CAST _ (I always hated the decode() in Oracle).

To sum it up, a good portion of the queries will work right out of the gate. The others will involve the way you handle store procedures and again date/time.

I would give yourself 1 week to get the data from one db to the other. I would then allow 2-3 weeks to get the code ("it's only 5K lines or so") straight and another 1-2 weeks to shake out any final gotcha's...
Then sit back and rake in the support hours :) (KA-CHING!!!!)

Michael Austin
I have been a DBA consultant for Rdb and Oracle. Currently working for a mid-west based wireless carrier.

.

Relevant Pages

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