@bigjim said:
... refuses to even run because I don't have the proper version of the JVM installed. ...
My favorite question is "why did they go to Java for the installer anyway?!"
Has anyone ever looked at the task manager in windows when running the 8i installer? That's the last time I had the pleasure of installing oracle, but I remember it consuming so much memory on one of my test servers that the installation couldn't complete due to lack of memory (this is only during the file copying stage, I wasn't even setting up a database - just having it create the scripts to run later!).
Rediculous.
I have to say I hated the old installer (with its 8000 different languages supported and etc etc etc), but I hate the java-based one even more!
On another note - I love oracle for one feature - PL/SQL. I've never seen anything remotely as good as it in any other database engine, and for this reason alone I would happily use the OracleDB for any large scale projects for as long as its available. However, as soon as somebody can add a fully functional language seamlessly to their DB engine (and I'm not talking about something like embedded java like Oracle did -- what a stupid concept), I'll be happy to switch to their product.
Of course, there are several other features I like about Oracle, but I can live without all of them except PL/SQL.
Kelly