I’m at the end of my ropes with how difficult it is to install Oracle and I’m just now getting brave enough to discuss it. You see, I assumed that at some point Microsoft and IBM would have been able to make a solid case for the treachery that is installing Oracle. It is so bad that I’m surprised I haven’t wound up in a straight jacket after dealing with this insanity as much as I have.
Finally, fellow OakTable Network members at MiracleAS have taken the time to document this fact in a video. If you’ve experienced the frustration, or are perhaps a Technical Marketing type from Microsoft or IBM, I encourage you to view the video at the following link:
Kevin Closson's Blog: Platforms, Databases and Storage 
Love it! That is great! Interesting that the comments about DBA’s at the site show a very naive. DBA’s don’t spend most of their time installing databases. You install 3 databases (dev, test,prod) and then get 16 machines in a RAC. 🙂
The trick is to find a config that works for you (hardware, software, and Oracle patch set) and the use this over and over. Repeatability is the key.
Also it really really helps to follow the same procedure each and every time. Once you get things working, it will always work, all other things equal.
As a DBA supporting 28 apps in 4 environments on version 8, 9, 10 in Production (and part of a small group supporting over 200 apps in four environments) I find it invaluable to be methodical in following procedures.
(Yes I know < 10 is EOL but I must do as I am told, and many vendors still require old versions of Oracle — Production DBA’s don’t make many of the decisions you might think we do, we do as we’re told, giving advice where we can).
I support Oracle on Solaris by day and Oracle on Gentoo Linux and Ubuntu by night 🙂
Cheers,
George Milliken, DBA
Good video.
Installation isn’t that bad. The patching process is awful. “Compare the list of errors and warnings resulting from script x against this list of known ignorable errors…” In SQL Server you just click the button and it is automatic. If it reports “no errors”, you don’t have to go scan a log file for just to make sure.