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Linux Business

NZX Moves To Oracle On Linux 213

Posted by timothy from the marketing-victory dept.
sn00ker writes "In this story in The New Zealand Herald, we learn that the NZX stock exchange has moved their database systems to Oracle running on RedHat Linux, running on commodity Intel-based hardware. What's really impressive are the performance numbers they're claiming. Quoth the article, "One key query - searching the data on historical trades to identify maximum trade values - has been cut from 36 seconds to 0.03 seconds." An improvement of over 1000 times is spectacular in anybody's books, and is one hell of a boost for the proponents of Linux at the back-end of the financial world."
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NZX Moves To Oracle On Linux More

NZX Moves To Oracle On Linux

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  • Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr Rick ( 588459 ) * on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:22AM (#9683460)
    "An improvement of over 1000 times is spectacular in anybody's books, and is one hell of a boost for the proponents of Linux at the back-end of the financial world."

    Oh come on! They consolidated 21 databases and moved to Oracle. That's why it is 1000 times faster. The move to Linux is a footnote as far as the performance issue is concerned -- as stated in the article, the move to Linux was for cost. I'm sure Solaris or god help me, Windows Server 2003 would have given similar performance results. Now if they had moved to MySQL...

    • Re:Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:29AM (#9683487)
      The article is a bit short on details. There is no mention of the previous hardware or software for example. Did they move from 21 SQL servers running on windows to 1 oracle running on linux? Maybe they just got rid of a bunch of aging unix machines and build a cluster of intel servers running linux.

      Either way though the fact that a major exchange is running linux is big news. Their database is their life and they are trusting it to linux. That says a lot.

    • Re:Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:33AM (#9683508)
      So perhaps it's time we coin a new term here. anti-FUD? I love Linux, but it's been obvious to me from the get go over four years ago now that pro-Linux articles and pro-Linux users sometimes stretch the truth or slightly warp reality to make it seam better than it is. There is no doubt...Linux is better than MS anything in my mind...but come on let's be realists and scientific here...not religious. Linux needs to win on factual merits...not more marketing gimicks that look a lot like those latest MS Office comercials that give it's users joy gasms.

      • Re:Linux? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        than again...considering we are marketing to the masses now...dumbing down our advertisements might be well warrented. Since when has any salesman ever been honest anyway? That's what Linux needs now...people touting it over MS products anywhere a user can buy MS products...then there is that entire issue of how to pay those salesmen...

      • Re:Linux? (Score:3, Informative)

        by jrumney ( 197329 )
        Except the original press release wasn't really pro-Linux FUD (or anti-FUD), it was Oracle FUD. The claim was that switching to Oracle 10g got them the performance increase. The fact that it runs on a cluster of Linux boxes was mentioned as a cost factor, not a performance one.
      • Not anti-FUD, simply DUF (beer).

        Obligatory Simpson's quote, sorry...

      • BLAMM == Blind Loving Advocacy in Media and Marketing.

        PUFF == Partisan Usability Fact Filtration

    • Re:Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:33AM (#9683512)
      You could argue that Linux was a factor if it was a move from 2003 to Linux, though to back that up you'd have to show that Linux handles assloads of threads better then 2003 does. Solaris on the other hand does handle assloads of threads and then some just fine, its one of Solaris's selling points and as far as I know it does handle them better then Linux currently does. So they may have lost performance by choosing Linux over Solaris, but that was more then made up for in the consolidation.

    • Re:Linux? (Score:5, Funny)

      by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:36AM (#9683524) Journal
      NZX stock exchange has moved their database systems to Oracle running on RedHat Linux,... and [this] is one hell of a boost for the proponents of Linux at the back-end of the financial world.

      It's great news that Larry Ellison has Open Sourced Oracle!

      And to think people criticize me for getting all my news from Slashdot.

    • Re:Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rodgerd ( 402 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:43AM (#9683554) Homepage
      While you're correct that the article conflates a bunch of work that happened, it's entirely possible that Linux was an enabler for this - for example, the cost per (unit of performance) of Solaris is still (IMO) fucking ridiculous at the lower and middle ranges compared to the cost of the same on Lintel.

      And while Windows Server 2k3 can run on the same cheap hardware, can you get a production quality release for AMD64 if you need gobs of RAM? What about the cost of multi-CPU licenses, and any client licenses needed? All money that buys you more power in the Linux world.

      It may well have been the case "well, with Linux, we can buy enough CPU, I/O, and DBA tuning time to make this thing sing. With Windows we blow money of software licenses. With Solaris we blow it on licenses and proprietary hardware."

      • Re:Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

        by christophersaul ( 127003 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @02:27AM (#9683686)
        You don't need to buy licences for Solaris, it comes with the kit. If you mean proprietary in the sense that Sparc doesn't have the largest market share, then Sparc is proprietary - in the normal sense of the word it's a lot more open than Intel.

        Using an Oracle RAC cluster of Sun V440s would have actually been cheaper than clustering 4 way Dells - Sparc kit's a lot cheaper than it was. You'd also have had some decent 64bit capable boxes. Check out the TPC/E benchmarks - Sun boxes blow everyone else away in terms of price/performance on a real world database app.
        • You work for Sun, don't you?

          Seriously: Sun is great; I love the kit, and for a high-end server system I'd highly reccomend it. But you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think it's cheaper (even using a Microsoft-esque TCO calculation) at the low-end.

          Truth is, Moore's law is working relentlessly against Sun. Lintel systems become more powerful by the day, and being commodity, they become cheaper too. Sun's market is slowly, but surely being eaten away. A move (again) to the (even higher) high-end only

          • Re:Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by christophersaul ( 127003 )
            Check what a 4 way 16GB V440 costs compared to a 4 way Dell!

            Lintel systems have fast CPUs, but no decent memory bandwidth. On the famous HPC Linux clusters everyone loves on Slashdot you'll see the first CPU running happily at 90% plus, the second sitting way below that - you're simply waiting very quickly for nothing to happen.

            Opteron systems are another thing entirely though - that's why Sun are focussing a great deal on that platform. There are even a couple of reference architectures for Oracle on th
          • No, he's right. If you're paying the RHAS subscription, Sun hardware is definately cheaper at the low end; it's close otherwise.

            This makes me think the RHAS scheme is stupid, and is trading marketshare for short-term profit. Which is ok for a short-term plan, but they have to somehow get marketshare up to a critical level (20%?) long-term... they may be eating seedcorn here.
        • You don't need to buy licences for Solaris, it comes with the kit.

          Unless, of course, you need to upgrade, where Sun will now charge you for licenses.

          in the normal sense of the word it's a lot more open than Intel.

          Tell it to the UltraSPARC/Linux developers, when Sun refused to release errata information for them to deal with data corruption and halting bugs their processors. Real open.
          • 99% of customers have a support contract, upgrades are included in that.

            You mean the OpenBSD developers who refused to sign an NDA which the Linux guys were happy to sign?

            Sparc is an open standard - http://www.sparc.org
      • It may well have been the case "well, with Linux, we can buy enough CPU, I/O, and DBA tuning time to make this thing sing. With Windows we blow money of software licenses. With Solaris we blow it on licenses and proprietary hardware."

        That may be true, but not to the degree of a 1000X performance increase, which is what I think OP was protesting.

    • Re:Linux? (Score:2, Funny)

      by kumachan ( 618013 )
      they might have taken out the the bit of code that said

      wait 35 seconds ...

    • Re:Linux? (Score:3, Funny)

      by cujo_1111 ( 627504 )
      Sshhhhh!

      Don't bring facts into any argument for open source. The zealots will lynch you!

    • Re:Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by supersnail ( 106701 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:45AM (#9683896)

      An inprovement of 1000 times might not be that sectacular, it depends what the system was replacing.

      Most likely it would be some unix hardware circa 1997. (say 4 x 200 Mhz Solaris, 512MB, with SCSII II disks, or, perhaps even a VAX complete with snails pace IO would be typical for that period in that environment). So a 2 x 3 gHz, 2 GB, with fibre channel ought to be faster. Plus it looks like they rewrote the whole system to take advantage of Oracle 10 features.

      What is perhaps more interesting for slashdot readers is that for most people working at the trading end of finacial services this is very much a non news story. The last two sites I worked at had implemented or were implementing Linux cluster server based systems, and, these were both for volume performance critical systems.

    • Ya, pretty much (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @04:12AM (#9683986)
      I've discovered that Oracle is pretty much OS agnostic because it pretty much takes over the system it is installed on. That aside, when a server is pure anything, the OS really isn't relivant. When all it does is run one app, the performance is pretty much tied to that app. All modren OSes provide good disk, memory, network, etc services. Now you can argue specifics till you are blue in the face, but when running one app, it doesn't much matter.

      Where an OS can shine is if you are running lots of stuff (eg webserver, scripts, database server, media server all on one box) and espically when you are screwing around and hence likely to cause problems. However when you do a DB install and run nothing but that, the OS is just a helper. It talks to the hardware and provides some simple APIs. Which OS it is isn't of much consequence to performance.

      The cost thing makes me curious too. We tried Solaris on Linux. The DBA couldn't get it to work, and neither could I. Then I looked at the requirements. We are trying SUSE, since that was listed... Well, sorta. It didn't run on normal SUSE, just SUSE Enterprise Server. Likewise not RedHat, but RHEL, and also UnitedLinux. In otherwords, high dollar server Linuxes. Oracle tech support wouldn't even talk to us unless we used a supported OS. We ended up option for Windows XP Pro, since it was supported. As I said, OS didn't much matter, just that it ran Oracle.

      Now while I'm sure (or at least pretty sure) Oracle could be made to run on a non-enterprise Linux, what would be the point? They wouldn't support you and support is one of the big reasons to buy Oracle (not cheap in case you were wondering).

      • Macho, macho ,men (Score:4, Funny)

        by jotaeleemeese ( 303437 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @07:05AM (#9684547) Homepage Journal
        We tried Solaris on Linux,,,,,

        Man, let me stand up and take my hat in genuine appreciation.

        This ladies and gents, is a real hero.
      • Linux is a good thing to use with Oracle, becuase it's what Oracle suggests for best performance these days. It also gives you clustering, which means you can replace your 20 separate databases with a 20 machine cluster and have the single database not overloaded.

        You definitely want a supported enterprise Linux for your production machines, but it's also worthwhile to give developers on workstations copies of Oracle to use locally. Development can be a lot easier when you have a database that's all your ow

    • Depends how you read it. (Score:3, Informative)

      by yem ( 170316 )
      Oh come on! They consolidated 21 databases and moved to Oracle. That's why it is 1000 times faster.

      A significant section of the IT world think of linux as nothing more than a hobby Linux - that you can't rely on it for anything mission critical.

      What this is saying is that Redhat Linux CAN foot it with the big (commerical) boys like Sun and Microsoft.

    • Re:Linux? (Score:3, Funny)

      by chegosaurus ( 98703 )
      > Now if they had moved to MySQL...

      That *is* a joke, right?
    • Actually the Oracle-guy said they tweak Linux (by taking unneeded stuff out) to increase performance quite a bit.

    • Re:Linux? (Score:2, Funny)

      by trewornan ( 608722 )
      So the flow of information would be:

      Geek -> Pointy Haired Boss -> PR Bullshit Man -> Journalist

      And the final result doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Why does this come as a surprise?
    • seriously, you can get dramatic performance improvements simply by:
      1) Proper indexing
      2) Proper allocation of DB files across disk controlers
      3) Proper use of in memory cache
      4) use of the proper raid configuration (related to point #2)
      5) cleaning up queries in the application (one cross product and you can bog down the biggest servers).

      My first suspicion would be that the staff that set up the original system were goobers....
    • Why don't you show us in the article OR the summary, that the 1000x improvement is attributable to linux.

  • Always check your indexes (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:27AM (#9683478)
    Obviously a much-needed index was added during the migration...
    • Obviously a much-needed index was added during the migration...

      Obviously.
      The migration is from where the obvious isn't to where the obvious is.

      The obvious is obvious once you see it. It is not equivalent to easy.

      "With enough eyes all bugs are shallow"
      If the right set of eyes looks at it just right, the bug is obvious.
      You will be able to immediately spot obvious bugs I make that I cannot see.
    • I've been working on a stock/option database for the past 6+ months. I have a good idea where the increase has come from. When they moved from one server to another, it probably did the equivalent of clustering on a key. Just so you can see how big of a difference this can make...

      A single point of information contains date, symbol(probably and id), open, high, low, close, volume, and sometimes open interest, bid, and ask. All those fields combined are probably going to run you about 40 bytes. There ar

  • 1000 times faster? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:28AM (#9683482)
    I'm inclined to think that having a request suddenly run 1000 times faster might be due to something a DBA has done, rather than a change of OS.

    Of course, if you want to yell from the treetops "Linux runs 1000 times faster..." I'm sure people will back you up.

    • Re:1000 times faster? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:35AM (#9683523) Journal
      I'm inclined to think that having a request suddenly run 1000 times faster might be due to something a DBA has done, rather than a change of OS.

      Yeah. My call would be that they were operating an RAM-starved server. I've seen similar numbers doing basic PC upgrades!

      I remember on case (this was a few years ago) where somebody with a customer information database of about 400,000 records came to me because generating a list from a query would often take several minutes.

      They were using a Pentium-90 with 32 MB of RAM. I set them up with a (then) top-of-the-line PIII 600 with 256 MB RAM. Query time dropped to 1 second.

      No matter what O/S you run, you're going to get JACK for performance if your running your app in swap.
    • .... and the new hardware it on on.

      They probably migrated off a 10-20 year old clunker.
    • might be due to something a DBA has done

      Lemme guess. You're a DBA and you've had a hard time with your boss lately.
    • I'd tend to agree with you, even though I *am* a Linux zealot. It's likely they either got some performance boost from using Oracle 10i (what was it running before?), or from the improved hardware. I do know that Linux runs a lot of stuff faster than Windows, since I use both daily on exactly the same hardware. My Windows boot-up is godawful slow (XP, fresh install, 8 months old) and thrashes the disk relentelssly, whilst the Linux boot (Debian, fresh install, same age) runs like a dream. I think it's becau
    • I'm inclined to think they're no longer running joins across 21 databases. :)

  • Slashdot: fair and balanced (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:28AM (#9683484)
    A 1000 fold improvement in performance, just by moving to linux. Incredible. Unbelievable even.

    Comon guys. What kind of idiots do you take us for?

  • That has *nothing* to do with Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:30AM (#9683491) Homepage Journal
    I can't believe you'd get a three order of magnitude improvement in a single function simply because of a change in operating system. I mean, unless they had been using SCO or something.

    Sure, a more efficient process scheduler, a more efficient IO scheduler, but really. It would make a lot more sense for the difference to be in the DBM, or even more likely, in the design of the database itself.

    Just because someone works for a big company doesn't mean they know what their doing. The most likely reason for the speedup would have been an optimization in their own software, or their database schema. Followed by an improvement in the RDBM, and finally the OS.

    A thousand fold increase in speed simply from changing the OS is just impossible to believe -- unless there was something very wrong to begin with.

    • Re:That has *nothing* to do with Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by horza ( 87255 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:07AM (#9683804) Homepage
      Just because someone works for a big company doesn't mean they know what their doing. The most likely reason for the speedup would have been an optimization in their own software, or their database schema. Followed by an improvement in the RDBM, and finally the OS.

      I agree totally. I can't see there is any way changing a DB or an OS will change execution time by an order of magnitude such as that. My guess is that they rewrote the code since the system they were moving to is so different, and had smarter programmers that also learned from the mistakes of the previous creators. I would say they recreated the schema, eliminated useless joins, replaced loops with queries in with one single query using an IN, and the rest of the usual optimisations. I think rather than showing how fast the new system is, it showed how poor the old one had become.

      Phillip.

      • Re:That has *nothing* to do with Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

        by BlackHawk-666 ( 560896 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:56AM (#9683923)
        Possibly, but maybe not. The article mentioned it was 1000x improvement in *one function*. The rest of the app may only be a few times faster, with just one query benefitting greatly from improved OS, indexing, or an updated Oracle. I'd like to see a white paper on this and some more balanced reporting. Linux doesn't need sloppy claims made on it's behalf, it can stand on it's own merits, leave that to the MS shills.

    • Vindication is sweet (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @09:57AM (#9686222) Homepage Journal
      Just because someone works for a big company doesn't mean they know what their doing.

      I'd say successfullly pulling off a massive consolidation project on a financially critical system probably puts an upper limit on their incompetence.

      Just because what they say doesn't really make all that much technical sense doesn't mean they are incapable of making technical sense when it serves their purpose. Getting things done in any organization involves using your successes to push you agenda. It also means sensitivity to the other messages your audience may be receiving and what message you need to counteract it.

      For example, the PHBs may have been hearing that Linux was an unsophisticated system cobbled together by a bunch of amateurs from 1980s technology. If you don't think that message is out there, or that it can't possibly be effective , you are extremely naive. If you think you can counter this argument with technical arguments about file systems, virtual memory schemes and schedulers you are even more naive. So, here's a countermessage: "Look, this Linux based system works great. It's a thousand times faster in some important tasks than the systems we spent millions on before. How 'unsophisticated' can that be?"

      You might not think this mode of reasoning is entirely valid, and you'd be right. But it's not without its virtues. Successful decision makers put a higher premium on things being demonstrably "good enough" than on their being "best". And this argument meets the admittedly relaxed corporate standards of truth: it is not literally false and its advanced with the best interest of the company in mind.

  • 1000x performance increases... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by david_reese ( 460043 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:31AM (#9683493)
    are NOT gotten by changing your OS.

    I'm no windows sympathizer, but in the world of enterprise software, only optimizations at the database layer (or reworking badly written networking layer) can yield those kind of results.

    Sounds like they data warehoused and redesigned the schema/indexes to better match usage.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I like the quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:32AM (#9683504)
    I couldn't think of anything funny to say, so I'll just post the quote :)

    "We went for Linux, not just because we hated Microsoft, but because the cost was compelling," Phillips said.

    (Insert funny remark here because I'm unfunny)

    • Let me get this straight...

      Anonymous Coward post
      + Admission that the poster had nothing to say
      + Quote verbatim from article
      + Admission that the poster is not funny
      = Comment moderated up as Funny

      Yep, that's Slashdot.

      • Re:I like the quote (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rozz ( 766975 )
        thats because Slashdot moderators are very compassionate with their fellow AC-s ...
        making moderation non-anonymous would be a nice feature .. although im pretty sure it'll be the start of ww3
  • "We went for Linux, not just because we hated Microsoft, but because the cost was compelling," Phillips said.

  • Quite an improvement, but from what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tuomasr ( 721846 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:33AM (#9683514)
    The article states a really big improvment, but is seems hard to swallow. The article fails the mention what system they were running before, aside from mentioning "propietary Unix". I don't know, maybe they had some 10-year old system running the database before and with that I could buy the big improvement but with crucial information omitted in the article, feels kind of like puffed up hype.
    • It does say they were running 21 databases before. With all of the data consolidated into one, you could likely perform that query like so:

      SELECT MAX(price) FROM trades WHERE ticker = ?;

      Very easy to believe culling that data from several different unindexed databases could take 36 seconds (especially on older hardware), and the latter only 30 millis.

  • as I said (Score:3, Insightful)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:34AM (#9683518) Homepage Journal
    Apart from being able to consolidate 21 databases into one, the new NZX system runs faster, more reliably and at less cost, says the company's tech team.

    One key query - searching the data on historical trades to identify maximum trade values - has been cut from 36 seconds to 0.03 seconds.

    Well yeah. They consolidated 21 databases. It sounds like they had an 'overgrown' design, with lots of hacks. That's why it was slow, the consolidated the whole thing into one. Probably with help from Oracle themselves on optimization. Anyone would get a huge speedup out of that.

    • Also (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @04:27AM (#9684042)
      I really question the cost thing. I am guessing someone pushed Linux, and is justifying it as a cost based decision.

      Now, I'm sure people are about to jump on me, given that Linux is free... But WAIT! We are talking Linux for running Oracle here. Well, if one checks Oracle requirements you find that in additon to Windows, HP-UX, xOS and such, it does run on Linux, but it's pickey. They require and only support enterprise Linuxes such as RHEL and SUSE Enterprise.

      Ok, fair enough, but these AREN'T free. RHEL is to the effect of $800. Hmmmmm... Given that ORacle will also run on XP Pro, doesn't seem like such a deal any more.

      We've dealt with Oracle in this regard and found out that:

      1) It won't work on stock SUSE or RedHat systems. Dunno why, but there must be something different in the enterprise versions because it won't install properly on the normal ones.

      2) More importantly Oracle REFUSES to support you if you aren't on a supported OS. They just say "run a supported OS" and that's it.

      Well, given that, for the kind of apps one would want an Oracle database, support is important,I'm not seeing them running on a normal Linux distro hacked to make Oracle happy. So given that they are probably on an enterprise Linux, I'm not seeing the cost savings.

      The whole thing sets off my zealotry bells. It sounds like that had a horrible hacked-ass, old database system. They needed to modernize it. So they elected to use Oracle, Makes sense, when it comes to unlimited scalibility and rock solid reliability, Oracle just has it. However then someone sold them on doing it on Linux. No problem, except it sounds like cost was the selling point, which isn't really valid for Oracle.

      So now we have the justification scramble. Make sure everyone, espically the bosses, buy the cost argument. Pointing out the speed increase is also a good idea, never mind what caused it, obviously it was your brilliant decisions.

      I've seen this happen plenty, and it's not limited to people advocating Linux, any platform that they like will work. You get a zealot for platform X, that uses BS arguments to sell it. They then produce lots of hype, to make sure people think it was the right choice.
      • Oracle will always lead with a recommendation for Linux in most cases these days.

      • Re:Also (Score:2, Informative)

        by jasontheking ( 124650 )
        >1) It won't work on stock SUSE or RedHat systems. Dunno why, but there must be something different in the enterprise versions because it won't install properly on the normal ones.

        the "strace" program helps here , it will tell you what function calls the program was making when it stopped.

        I was at an oracle + RH installfest during oracle openworld in melbourne a few days ago , and was assisting people with laptops getting redhat and oracle 10i installed. There was a cheat sheet of sorts going around
        • Sure it runs on FC2.

          I run 9i and and 10g on my optimized Gentoo boxes. But don't open a TAR with us on FC2 or Gentoo as the only answer you will get is: Move to a supported platform and reproduce the problem. TAR closed.

          Another issue is that when you run SuSE Enterprise Server or RH ES, Oracle will also take all your Linux support in addition to your Oracle support. One stop support, no blame game, nothing.
          • Ya, I'm not sure why that's such a hard concept for people. Actually, I do know why. Most Linux types are of the low cost, DIY sort. They are used to hacking together things and making them work to save a buck. Nothing wrong with that, but that is not the reason one buys Oracle, you buy it because you need a rock solid platform, which something hacked together isn't by definition.

            In our case, the University has a site wide license for Oracle so we used it for that reason. However some anti-Windows zealotry
      • First of all, Linux support (notice that Linux is not sold, support is) is normally more generous than MS licensing.

        If you are unhappy with the solution provided you can alook around for a better deal because the solution, at least at the OS level is open, so any scripts that you use to juice the DB can be transported with no changes at all.

        If you get really fed up with Red HAt you can go to SuSe, and if you are a big company, you can armtwist Oracle to support other Linux distros.

        If you get fedup with M

      • The real costs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kpharmer ( 452893 ) *
        But those linux costs are nothing - compared to the oracle licensing costs:
        - $40,000 / CPU for base product
        - $10,000 / CPU for partitioning
        - $10,000 / CPU for RAC

        So, even a trivial Oracle cluster is just not going to come in under a quarter million dollars. Saving a few thousand dollars by going from windows to linux isn't going to make any difference at all.

        Unless you have a large unix support staff you can leverage, want to diminish security-related patching & vulnerabilities, etc, etc. B

        • Re:The real costs (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )
          Well I see no reason why a database server ought to need patching in a situation like this. The DB servers ought to be on a private, firewalled, network and only the DB should be accessable and only from trusted systems. This is just better for so many reasons.

          Plus, if you are going to go for an expensive OS, why not go for Solaris? Oracle likes Solaris and plays quite well on it. For that matter, Oracle on Solaris on Sparc hardware would probably be a good idea. Much more reliable than normal x86 hardware
          • > Well I see no reason why a database server ought to need patching in a situation like this. The DB
            > servers ought to be on a private, firewalled,
            network and only the DB should be accessable and
            > only from trusted systems. This is just better for so many reasons.

            I understand the concern about patching database servers - it's a *huge* challenge, and can easily knock your databases out. On the other hand, patching gives you 'defense in depth' - and a much more secure environment than just relying
            • But for stuff like that, you are probably talking about something other than Linux. that you do that on an AIX system I find highly unsupprising. Big iron systems/OSes play by different rules than little x86 systems. Windows and Linux simply don't play in the same league when it comes to patching. Of course they also don't play in the same price range, either.

              I can see plenty of situations where you'd want the DB on comoddity, or at least low end enterprise, hardware and the OS that implies. In that situat

  • Ja, ja (Score:5, Informative)

    by trifakir ( 792534 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:35AM (#9683520)
    There are even more impressive results with Kdb [kx.com] by Kx Systems [kx.com].

    Financial organizations are very conservative but even Deutsche Bank [silent-penguin.com] are migrating to Linux some of their less important processes.

    In all the cases the future of the financial industry is in cheap linux clusters.

  • Impressive, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nayigeta ( 792068 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:40AM (#9683545) Homepage Journal
    The improvement is impressive - but I would credit the overall architecture, rather than some single specific factors - like Oracle10g+Redhat or DBA or systems consolidation.

    I mean, every part of the architecture has its role.

    Some other contributing factors not mentioned, I suspect, would includes - focused performance requirements, specific purpose optimised query framework.

    Can someone point to some public material on the architecture? It would be a interesting read.

  • the NZX runs it's trading system under Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:48AM (#9683569)
    As slashdot only accepts conspiracies for posting this has never really be disseminated:

    The NZX (ex NZSE) runs the Computershare ASTS trading system for their equities and bond trading. They have done so for 4 years.
    This system runs under Linux (Redhat) on Compaq machines.

    That they aggregated some of their databases and achieved better performance is non news but the increase in performance stated is worth a conspiracy post!

  • Linux at the back-end of the financial world." (Score:5, Funny)

    by elucubra ( 685819 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:52AM (#9683582)
    C'mon, it ain't nice to call NZ that!

  • Not really (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) * on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @02:11AM (#9683640) Homepage
    An improvement of over 1000 times is spectacular in anybody's books, and is one hell of a boost for the proponents of Linux at the back-end of the financial world."

    Unless specifics about the query and the physical database model are comparable in both systems this isn't really impressive.

    Comparable - not equal - since each database engines optimizer has it's individual quirks and strength.

    Assuming that you have large joins on huge tables a couple of good indexes, which make the optimizer happy can reduce execution time from hours to seconds.

    Table scans are expensive in database speak.

  • Unbelievable (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KidSock ( 150684 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @02:40AM (#9683726)
    I cannot believe the spin on this post. Even for slashdot this is way below the bar. Anybody who knows the slightest thing about databases knows that a performance improvment like this is not attributed to which operating system or database you use. They would have had to be running Access on Windows98 on a 386 ACER laptop to see a performance to increase like this. Obviously there's something else going on. For example, a simple change in how tablespaces are organized could be responsible in which case it would be possible do precisely the same thing with just about any reasonably DB/OS.
    • Perhaps not about the OS, but it might be related to some tech in the DB...for instance, Partitioning in Oracle and Bitmap Indexes can do wonders for huge volumes of data. Partitioning creates local indexes in partitions on certain fields (date ranges, type of records, whatever), which seriously reduces IO. Bitmap indexes are used for low selectivity columns,creating a binary bitmap that can be easily AND or ORed, that might improve quite a bit the performance. The cost based optimizer can also make big dif

  • 10^3 performance increase.. No big deal.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aauu ( 46157 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @02:43AM (#9683734) Homepage
    I have achieved increases of 10^4 and 10^6 in production systems by recoding a small critical part of an application (usually less than a page of code).

    Most of the time the problem is stupid code or operational ignorance. Rarely is hardware, O/S or data base software changes the sole or main solution in performance problems. Hardware is only a factor when the system is underspecified to save money.

    Given that they consolidated 21 databases into a single database the problem could simply have been network latency between separate physical servers.

    The simplest way to get performance problems is to test on developers personal machines with tiny test databases and implement without full scale testing.

    For those of you who wish to ensure that Microsoft SQL server is slow, invoke a user defined function as part of the where clause that the optimizer cannot recognize as a determinate function when joining two tables. This will ensure a nested loop join that will take an eternity.

  • Controlled environment (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tim Ward ( 514198 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:00AM (#9683781) Homepage
    What the Oracle guy said was key, that if a software company can target a restricted range of kit, rather than every possible third party gizmo and buggy driver that can be installed under Windows, they've got a vastly easier job.

    For some software applications it makes sense to refuse to ship the software on its own and insist on giving away free hardware with the deal, with the operating system of your choice (it isn't really going to matter which operating system) fully configured and installed. That way you know what the client is running your software on, you've tested it, and you've got an identical setup back in the lab to research problems on, and you know it isn't going to crash because the client's box is running some crap driver you've never heard of.

  • Bullshit it's downtime that counts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by notany ( 528696 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:01AM (#9683784) Journal
    Let's see how many hours NZX is down during next five years due hw/sw malfunction. That's meaninful.

  • An improvement of over 1000 times is spectacular ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Burb ( 620144 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:13AM (#9683819)
    Just two words:

    "CREATE INDEX"

    It's amazing what you can do to optimise a query or two...

    Advice to the sarcasm-impared: do not take this posting literally.

  • Favourite Quote... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Boricle ( 652297 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:13AM (#9683820) Homepage
    "We went for Linux, not just because we hated Microsoft, but because the cost was compelling," Phillips said.

    Have To Smile :)

  • Linux and assumed Performance increase (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nettdata ( 88196 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @03:54AM (#9683916) Homepage
    Everyone seems to be thinking that the story is all about a thousand times performance increase because they switched to Linux.

    I don't see the article make that claim... they just said that they changed a bunch of stuff, and they now have a different system in which one sample query is 1000x faster.

    This could be (and probably is) due to a number of reasons:

    -- consolidated many separate databases into 1
    -- probable new data model
    -- probable new application design
    -- upgraded system resources (more RAM, better CPUs, faster SAN, etc.)
    -- different OS
    -- Oracle tuning / kernel tweaking

    It doesn't make sense that they'd just re-implement the exact same system and application design... they probably spent a lot of time redoing the apps to make them smarter and faster.

    To assume that Linux is singly responsible for the performance increase is kind of silly.

    • "Everyone seems to be thinking that the story is all about a thousand times performance increase because they switched to Linux.

      I don't see the article make that claim..."

      Ah the subtle things that we miss... The whole reason this article was posted here on Slashdot is because Linux is in the mix. Get it? If this was an article with the word "Windows" or "Solaris" substituted for "Linux" then it would never be on Slashdot. If this way about a 1000% increase in performance with our new Solaris, Oracle RAC

  • 36 seconds to 0.03 seconds (Score:4, Funny)

    by chegosaurus ( 98703 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @06:40AM (#9684420) Homepage
    It does say this was just one operation. I'm betting the first time they ran

    DELETE FROM clients

    It took 36 seconds to return. The second time it pretty much came straight back.
  • Sounds to me like whatever setup they had before didn't have an index. I've seen batch jobs that took *days* shrink to a matter of minutes by simply indexing the database and keeping it current.

  • Orcle on Unix vs Windows (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) * on Tuesday July 13, 2004 @01:39PM (#9689127)
    I was working on a large project where we tested platforms for Oracle. We ran two servers with similar hardware. One on Solaris+Oracle and one on NT+Oracle.

    After serveral months, it became obvious there wes no comparison in performance. The Solaris-based server out-performed the NT-based box easily by a factor of 4-to-1.

    More importantly, the NT system has to be routinely rebooted in order to remain stable. I actually had to schedule reboots just to keep the system from running out of resources!

    That was more than four years ago. Since then, the NT server was repurposed into a workstation; the Solaris Oracle server is still running with an uptime of more than two years.

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