Oracle Database Management Strategic Directions

1. Best Practices for managing Oracle database servers.
2. Oracle Fusion Middleware products like J2EE, ADF, XML, BPEL, SOA, Web Services, Discoverer...).
3. Oracle Application Servers and Apache.

 
 
Thursday, November 23, 2006

Moving to the Apple Mac

Our company made a decision to move to the Mac. This was not a trivial decision. I wish we had video taped a lot of the debates that occurred during our meetings discussing if we should move to the Mac. There are a number of reasons we decided to make this decision, here are just a few:
- Tired of dealing with viruses on Windows and the virus software you have to run on Windows to avoid viruses.
- Ability to video conference easily using iChat.
- A lot of the staff wanted to use iWork.
- Benefits of using iSync.
- Slow Windows boot times and the high maintenance of running Windows.
- Gave all staff iMacs that just a little bigger than a wallet instead of big clunky PCs.
- Reduced maintenance and management of using iMacs. Using System Preferences much easier than Control Panel and Services in Windows.
- iMacs are almost silent and generate almost no heat compared to PCs.
- Wanted to go to all wireless keyboards and mouses.
- A lot of software we have to download onto PCs, the equivalent functionality comes with the Mac.
- Very simple networking and setting up wireless network.
- Employees were excited about using GarageBand, IMovie, IPhoto and iWeb
- Ability to use underlying Unix operating system was desired by technical staff.

Four months into the move the move to the Mac from Windows is a resounding success. Benefits include:
- We installed Firefox and Microsoft Office software, the transition was a non-issue.
- Moving to the Mac has completely changed how our organization communicates internally. Everybody does video conferencing, and communicates using audio and video casts. Everyone feels this has significantly increased our productivity and communication within our organization.
- Oracle technologists have installed Oracle SQL Developer and Oracle JDeveloper with almost no issues.
- The Mac boots a lot faster than Windows and is a lot more efficient and runs faster.
- Everybody loves the move to the Mac. Almost half of the staff has purchased Macs for their home.

A few issues we have had to deal with include:
- Oracle staff cannot download Oracle10gR2 database server on the Mac. (11/22/2006).
- A few software packages like Quickbooks have more functionality in the Windows version.

Summary: Moving to the Mac, away from the Windows operating system, has been a resounding success. It has reduced our overall administration costs of our internal systems and has significantly increased productivity and improved internal communication. Its amazing how everyone loves working with the Mac. The only issue is everyone is complaining that they want to use the Apple Monitors (very expensive). We purchased adapters and everyone uses their old monitors with their new Macs. Due to the investment in Windows it would be very difficult for a large organization to make this move. However, for smaller organizations and small businesses the Mac may be beneficial. It is very important to understand all the software your organization is running and what are the issues of moving the software to the Mac.

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    The Trubix Blog is focused on discussions on strategic directions in database technology and the challenges Oracle technologists are addressing today and in the future. This site will focus on issues and challenges of database management that cannot be resolved with a code snippet. There are already a lot of great websites out there with tons of code samples. We would like to facilitate more discussions on issues Oracle technologists are dealing with today that a quick search on the Internet cannot solve. There will also be a group of recognized industry leaders that will also participate in this blog. This blog is an extension of the Tim Tam Group, an international group of industry leaders that meet once a year to discuss strategic directions in the industry.

     

     
       
     

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