[techtalk] Sun/Oracle/ODBC pitfalls

[Samantha Jo Moore]

Kris said:

> We're building an enterprise sun system (perhaps an e450 perhaps an e4500) to 
> support a complicated e-commerce application.
> 
> It seems pretty clear that no one will fault you if you recommend a Sun/Oracle 
> architecture.  But the programmers are MS ASP programmers and they will connect 
> to the dB using ODBC.  From what I've read here this could be bad.  I've also 
> read that ODBC is single threaded.   
> 
> You guys represent a plethora of information.  Would you be kind enough to point 
> out the pitfalls I may be facing?  Is there another protocol I should investigate?  
> If the programmers write Java is there another better protocol or am I still stuck 
> with the ODBC bottle neck?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> Kris

It all depends.  From my experience it is OK to use ODBC for OLTP applications.
The performace seems to be acceptable in single transaction clusters.  However,
if your application is going to have a heavier load on the database than it 
will on the GUI or the logic side then you're better off building your own
high performance drivers.

The advantage of using ODBC (and JDBC in the case of JAVA) is that your interfaces
are universal (to a certain extent, of course).  What you need to determine is 
what it is you need most:  flexibility, or performance.  

Samantha Jo Moore
CTO - The Tahoe Group, Inc.
http://www.thetahoegroup.com
sjmoore at thetahoegroup.com

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