Oracle on Unix connecting to SQL on Windows

[pfrancis]

I don't really have any experience in this subject, but I am being told some information that doesn't sound right.

Right now, the company I work for has a SQL database that is update from an Oracle database, and right now the servers are on windows machine.

In the next month the Oracle machine will be migrated to Unix instead of windows. I've been told that this migration will not allow the update any more because the Oracle database on the Unix machine will not be able to connect to a SQL database on a Windows machine. Can anyone verify if this is true? and do you have any links on how to connect a Unix Oracle database to a SQL Windows database?

Thank you for your help.

pfrancis

 

[SantaMufasa]

P,

Whoever told you that a Unix session cannot connect to a PC-based Oracle server has been smoking funning cigarettes. If you have the proper entries in your tnsnames.ora, a properly behaving listener on your PC, and properly behaving sqlnet.ora file, then you should have no problem connecting. Here is a session from a SunOS Unix prompt connecting to a PC-based Oracle instance. (The best proof of the connection is the file names for my on-line redo log files):

telnet foster
Last login: Mon Aug 16 16:43:14 from foster.xxxxxxx.com
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.9       Generic May 2002
SIDS on this machine are FOS9204
Default instance is FOS9204
foster:/corp/home/oracle$ sqlplus

SQL*Plus: Release 9.2.0.4.0 - Production on Wed Aug 25 14:17:54 2004

Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Enter user-name: system/xxxxxxx@xxxxxx

Connected to:
Oracle8i Enterprise Edition Release 8.1.7.0.0 - Production
With the Partitioning option
JServer Release 8.1.7.0.0 - Production

SQL> select * from v$logfile;

    GROUP# STATUS  MEMBER
---------- ------- -----------------------------------------
         1 STALE   D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\NTORA3\NTORA3REDO01.LOG
         2         D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\NTORA3\NTORA3REDO02.LOG
         3         D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\NTORA3\NTORA3REDO03.LOG

Let us know if you have success/failure/additional issues.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 22:32 (25Aug04) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"), 15:32 (25Aug04) Mountain Time)

 

[LKBrwnDBA]

I Agree, whoever told you that:

this migration will not allow the update any more because the Oracle database on the Unix machine will not be able to connect to a SQL database on a Windows machine

has empty space between his(her) ears.

If today it connects from Windows to Windows it may be using the Oracle Heterogeneous Connectivity which is available on all platforms.

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96544/toc.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. -- Chinese proverb

 

[dbtoo2001]

Heterogeneous has to be certified by oracle between the RDBMS and SQLServer, i.e., if your old databases were 7.3.4 and sqlserver 6.5 and the new database is 9i, then the client will not communicate. It's not a unix/windows thing.

To use heterogeneous in production, you have to pay additional licensing fees.

 

[pfrancis]

Thank you for the information. It looks like the SQL server is Microsoft SQL Server 2000 version 8.00.760 and from what I can gather, Oracle is version 8i. Do you know if there are any compatibility issues with these versions? Thanks.

 

[SantaMufasa]

I do not anticipate any insurmountable problems or deal breakers.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 21:50 (26Aug04) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"), 14:50 (26Aug04) Mountain Time)

 

[dbtoo2001]

Define 8i.

8.1.7.0 - will not work.
8.1.7.4 - will work - there is a bug that was fixed.

-Really! (Actually, the bug is encountered when an application is using the gateway. If you are running sql from SQLPlus, it works at 8.1.7.0, but same sql from an application would 'hang'. I ran into this scenario three weeks ago. Upgraded to 8.1.7.4, no more hangs.)

 

[SantaMufasa]

DBToo,

Good catch. I wasn't aware of that bug situation in 8.1.7.0. Of course we patched everything beyond 8.1.7.0 nearly immediately, so we never encountered that issue.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 22:02 (26Aug04) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"), 15:02 (26Aug04) Mountain Time)