Making the Case for Oracle

Database on Windows

July 2007

Dwight B. Davis

dwight.davis@ovum.com

www.ovum.com
Table of Contents.........................................................................................................................1
Making the case for Oracle Database on Windows .....................................................................2
Customers and industry trends drive Oracle/Microsoft interoperability......................................2
Oracle Database leverages Windows platform..........................................................................4
Development tools and technologies.........................................................................................5
Oracle on Windows = the right combination for many users......................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9

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Making the case for Oracle

Database on Windows
One of the best-kept secrets in the IT industry is the depth of support
Oracle offers to customers deploying its databases on Microsoft Windows
platforms. Despite its highly visible support of Linux, Oracle was the first
of the major database vendors to port its software to Windows in the mid-
1990s, and continues to support a large and robust Oracle-on-Windows
user community. The vendor’s Windows integration capabilities range
from ensuring interoperability with core Windows features such as Active
Directory to making sure its databases and tools work seamlessly with the
popular Visual Studio development suite. Customers ranging from ‘mom-
and-pop’ shops to global enterprises run Oracle Databases on Windows
platforms, but the sweet spot for this combination is squarely in the fast-
growing small and mid-sized business (SMB) market.

Customers and industry trends drive

Oracle/Microsoft interoperability
In the computer industry, things are not always as they seem at first glance. Take,
for instance, the well-reported competitive battles that have flared for years
between Oracle and Microsoft. These clashes occurred first in the database market,
expanded into the operating system world as Oracle warmed to Linux, and have
included skirmishes on fronts ranging from development tools to middleware and
applications.

Behind the scenes of the high-profile clashes, however, Oracle and Microsoft have
each been willing to address a hard market reality: the two powerful vendors share
thousands of joint customers that have deployed products sold by both companies.
In particular, a significant number of customers have deployed Oracle’s database
software on platforms running Microsoft’s Windows Server operating system. This
product combination is hardly surprising given that various analysts’ estimates
credit Oracle with owning almost 50% of the database market, and Microsoft with
owning 50% or more of the server operating system market.

Oracle doesn’t publicize its platform-share data but, by some counts, the vendor
sells roughly as many databases for deployment on Windows as for deployment on
Linux. Oracle’s enthusiasm for Linux of late has tended to overshadow its sizable
Windows-based business, but the company has many years of experience and
strong capabilities when it comes to leveraging the Windows platform. In 1994, for
example, Oracle became the first database to ship on Windows NT, and has
continued to build strong Windows interoperability features into its products ever
since.

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Oracle and Microsoft have even managed to put down their gloves at times in
order to collaborate on efforts of mutual benefit to them and their joint customers.
One notable example of this co-operation has been Oracle’s participation in
Microsoft’s Visual Studio Industry Partner program, under which Oracle has worked
to ensure that its development tools and databases work well with Microsoft’s
Visual Studio development suite. Oracle and Microsoft have also joined forces with
other companies to develop and promulgate various XML web services standards
and, of late, are working to allow customers to use Microsoft’s popular Office
applications as front-end clients for accessing Oracle’s enterprise business
applications.

Although the Oracle/Microsoft base of shared customers includes many enterprise-

level companies, the SMB market is clearly the sweet spot for deployments of
Oracle’s database on Windows Server. For some, this scenario may be counter-
intuitive. Oracle made its name in the enterprise database market, but in recent
years has made great strides in fielding easy-to-deploy and competitively priced
database offerings, including Oracle Database Standard Edition and Oracle
Database Standard Edition One. Oracle has also released the Oracle Database
Express Edition, which is free to develop, deploy and distribute. For its part,
Windows Server has always been quite popular among SMB customers, creating a
strong demand for many Oracle-on-Windows deployments in this market sector.

Industry trends drive, and support, cross-vendor

integration
A number of industry trends are working both to increase the demand for cross-
vendor interoperability and to help companies realize it. Ovum Summit tracks
many of these trends and capabilities as elements of the overarching evolution
towards ‘dynamic computing’. Simply stated, dynamic computing will leverage a
range of enabling technologies to allow companies to build and operate more
flexible and adaptable IT environments. Most important, in aggregate, these
technologies will help IT respond more rapidly to changing business requirements,
and will enable more fluid and automated synchronization between the fluctuating
demands of business processes and the IT infrastructure that supports them.

Among the most important of the dynamic computing enablers are web services
and service-oriented architectures (SOAs), grid computing, virtualization and
policy-based management. Because these and other technologies are increasingly
based on broadly supported standards, they actually make it more palatable for IT
shops to consider mixing elements from different vendors. In this context, the
many ways in which Oracle’s databases and tools can interoperate with the
Windows platform and Microsoft’s toolset have become even more important in
recent years.

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Oracle Database leverages Windows platform

Throughout its history, Oracle has offered support for a range of operating
systems, including Windows and Linux, and a variety of hardware platforms, so
that customers could choose the environment best suited to their needs.

When Oracle first started selling its database on the Windows NT platform in the
mid-1990s, Windows NT itself was best suited to small-to-mid-sized deployments.
The core of Oracle’s enterprise-level installations, by contrast, ran on one of the
major commercial Unix platforms. Even though Windows couldn’t then scale like
Unix, the Microsoft operating system did offer customers some attractive features.
Unlike the process-based model used on Unix, Oracle Database on Windows was
built on a thread-based design. This approach provided advantages specific to the
Windows operating system, since each database ran as a single process with
multiple threads, which resulted in relatively fast performance and lower overhead.

When Linux began gaining traction in the late 1990s, Oracle was one of the first of
the major commercial software vendors to deploy its products on the new open-
source operating system (OS). During the following years, as Linux grew in
functionality and performance, Oracle ramped up its backing of the OS. The
company became so associated with Linux, in fact, that its ongoing support of
Windows was sometimes eclipsed.

Today, Oracle believes that both Windows and Linux can deliver roughly
comparable capabilities as foundations for its database. Each OS, of course, has a
unique collection of technologies and services, and Oracle tunes its database to
leverage these respective features. The broad feature set of Oracle Database runs
equally well on Windows, Linux or Unix. What Windows and Linux share in common
is that they both run on low-cost hardware, making scaling out easier to manage
and more cost-effective for both the database server and application server levels.
For instance, many customers currently run Oracle Real Application Clusters
(Oracle RAC) on top of two or more Windows Server nodes. Oracle RAC allows
‘real’ applications, such as those sold by Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and others, to be
deployed across high-availability clusters without any changes required to the
application code. Inherent in Oracle RAC is its ability to run database applications
on relatively low-cost, industry-standard servers that, when clustered, can
significantly increase reliability and scalability.

Beyond delivering its core features on Windows platforms, there are dozens of
Windows Server integration points that Oracle exploits with its database. It isn’t
practical to examine each of these interoperability capabilities here; rather we’ll
briefly describe those that are of most value to customers when running the Oracle
software on Microsoft’s OS. Those key areas of integration include the following.

Leveraging Windows Server’s Active Directory and Security Framework

Oracle supports extensive interaction between its database and Microsoft’s popular
Active Directory system and Windows Server Security framework. The capabilities
users can tap into include:

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• creating mappings between users in Active Directory and the database

• support for single sign-on, permitting users to access the Oracle Database once
they’re authenticated on Active Directory
• support assignment of database roles through Active Directory group
membership
• using Microsoft Certificate Store to authenticate into an Oracle Database
running on any OS platform using SSL
• using the Microsoft Key Distribution Center to authenticate onto Oracle
databases using Kerberos keys across heterogeneous systems
• the ability to store database and network names and configuration data in
Active Directory, rather than on client devices, simplifying configuration
maintenance, security and updating
• the use of Oracle’s Network Configuration Assistant and Database
Configuration facility to set up the Active Directory service
• the option to use Oracle Internet Directory to provision to Active Directory, or
vice versa, with the use of Enterprise Identity Management (a component of
Oracle Fusion Middleware).

Leveraging Windows Server’s hardware support features

As noted earlier, Oracle has tuned its database to take advantage of Windows
Server’s thread-based model. As a result, database administrators are able to set
CPU affinities and priorities for different Oracle processes and threads. Oracle
Database runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Server platforms. In the case of
memory-constrained 32-bit systems, the database can leverage various Windows
Server memory management capabilities, including:
• the operating system’s 3-gigabyte (GB) switch, which improves scalability by
letting the database use 3GB of the available 4GB of 32-bit address space,
rather than the usual split of 2GB accessible to the application/database and
2GB allocated to the Windows Executive software
• Oracle’s use of Address Windowing Extensions (AWE), which provides access to
up to 64GB of physical memory from within a 32-bit virtual address space.
Normally, 32-bit systems are limited to 4GB of memory access
• Oracle Database’s leveraging of the OS’s Large Page support, which lets the
database establish large contiguous data sets, resulting in less fragmentation
and improved performance. This is supported on both 32-bit and 64-bit
systems with the larger page sizes of 4MB and 16MB, respectively. It is
particularly useful in 64-bit systems with large memory.

Development tools and technologies

Windows is the most popular application development platform for Oracle products,
so it is hardly surprising that Oracle has worked hard to ensure that its

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development tools and platforms interoperate well with their Microsoft

counterparts. By joining Microsoft’s Visual Studio Industry Partner program in
2004, Oracle made clear its intention to make it easy for Windows-based
developers to exploit the capabilities of the Oracle Database. That effort is
ongoing, with Oracle already working, for example, to ensure that its products
interoperate with the next iteration of Visual Studio 2008.

Oracle’s database server support of .NET is completely platform and Oracle

Database version independent. .NET applications can run against any supported
version of Oracle Database server running on any platform.

Oracle offers three main solutions (listed below) for developers working with Oracle
Databases and .NET.

Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)

This facility lets developers create .NET-based applications that can access data
stored in Oracle’s databases, as well as take full advantage of Oracle’s database
capabilities from within .NET. Accessible features include Oracle RAC, automatic
load balancing, Oracle XML DB (the database’s native XML capabilities), native
Oracle data types (including XML documents, Microsoft documents, large objects,
REF cursors and user-defined types) and PL/SQL stored procedures.

ODP.NET leverages Microsoft’s ADO.NET application programming interfaces

(APIs). Because the ADO.NET APIs are familiar to most Windows developers,
including those working in the SMB sector, ODP.NET provides an easy-to-use
solution for integrating the Windows .NET and Oracle database worlds. ODP.NET
allows developers to use any .NET functionality they need without limitation, such
as .NET DataSet.

(ODP.NET is free and can be downloaded from the Oracle Technology Network
website at http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/dotnet/index.html)

Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET

This free add-in for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio .NET 2003 lets developers
use the popular Microsoft integrated development environment and interface to
access various Oracle services and capabilities during design time (see Figure 1).
These features – many of which require little or no SQL expertise – make
developers more efficient at building their .NET application for Oracle. Features
include:
• numerous designers and wizards to easily perform various database tasks such
as table creation
• automatic code generation from simple drag-and-drop operations allowing
developers to easily create working code for ASP.NET web applications,
Windows applications and Microsoft Office applications

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• a PL/SQL Editor and Debugger that allows the editing of PL/SQL stored
procedures along with complete PL/SQL debugging support, using the same
Visual Studio debugging features that .NET developers already know
• a SQL Script editor, a SQL Script Execution engine, script management and
database source control integration
• support for exploring and creating Oracle User-Defined Types (UDT), as well as
a custom-class code-generation wizard that makes creating .NET applications
that use Oracle UDTs easier and faster to build
• an Integrated Help System, including SQL, PL/SQL and Oracle Error Reference
Manuals, permitting developers to stay within the Visual Studio environment if
they need to look up Oracle-specific information.

Figure 1 Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET

Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET makes it easy to

perform Oracle database operations from inside of Visual Studio

Source: Oracle

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Oracle Database Extensions for .NET

Oracle has integrated .NET inside the Oracle Database. Oracle Database Extensions
for .NET is an Oracle Database option that allows developers to create Oracle
stored procedures and functions using .NET languages such as C# or Visual Basic
.NET.

Developers create their .NET procedures and functions in Visual Studio, and then
use the Oracle Deployment Wizard to deploy the .NET code into Oracle Database.
These .NET stored procedures and functions can then be called from within .NET
application code, from SQL, from another .NET, PL/SQL or Java stored procedure,
from a trigger, or from anywhere else a stored procedure or function call is
allowed.

Oracle on Windows = the right combination for

many users
It’s impossible to fully characterize the types of users and usages for which the
combination of Oracle databases and tools working on Windows-based platforms
represents the most attractive solution. Windows Server users now range from the
smallest of companies to large, multinational enterprises, and customers across
this span have chosen to deploy Oracle’s products on the Microsoft OS. That said,
the bulk of the Oracle-on-Windows deployments are – and are likely to remain –
within the SMB sector.

One company that falls within this sector, Kroll Factual Data, illustrates some of
the reasons many SMB customers are interested in the Oracle/Windows
combination. A subsidiary of Kroll, Inc, Kroll Factual Data provides a range of
Internet-delivered business information services to the mortgage industry. The
company is a major Windows user, counting more than 600 Windows Servers in its
Loveland, Colorado data center. By contrast, Kroll Factual Data has only about 25
Linux servers in production, including several Red Hat Linux-based servers running
Oracle’s E-Business Suite of enterprise applications.

In late 2006, Kroll Factual Data decided to migrate its 10TB of relational data from
Microsoft SQL Server to a three-node Oracle Database RAC. The company’s main
motivation for the move was its concern about SQL Server’s high-availability
clustering capability, which was provided by a third party and could have required
2–3 minutes of downtime when failing over from one node to another, according to
Russ Donnan, chief information officer at Kroll Factual Data. ‘Failover happens
instantaneously with Oracle RAC,’ Donnan says.

Donnan also liked the scalability characteristics of the Oracle Database in relation
to SQL Server. ‘Moving SQL Server from a two-socket node to a four-socket node
requires a massive migration and an enormous amount of planning’, he explains. ‘I
can add two processors to my Oracle plant fairly inexpensively’.

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Despite its shift to the Oracle Database, however, the company wasn’t interested
in moving from Windows to a Linux platform. For Donnan, the main barrier in
moving to Linux wasn’t so much tied to technical characteristics as to staffing
realities. Kroll Factual Data has a strong collection of Windows experts already on
its staff, and has generally found it difficult and expensive to find and hire Linux
experts. ‘Leveraging our Windows expertise, has reduced our overhead costs
significantly’, Donnan says.

Kroll Factual Data is running its Oracle RAC on 64-bit Windows Server, so doesn’t
need the database’s ability to exploit Windows’ 32-bit memory management
features. The company uses Active Directory to centrally manage its entire user
credentialing, rather than putting the credentials on each local machine. This
central management pays off when the company’s IT facility is audited, since
regulators prefer to have usage logs centrally stored, and processes such as
regular password recycling centrally enforced. Theoretically, Donnan says, Kroll
Factual Data could achieve the same type of central directory control using Linux,
‘but it’s a heck of a lot easier for us to own, operate and maintain that type of
infrastructure under Windows than under Linux’.

Kroll Factual Data has found the migration to Oracle Database 10g RAC to be
relatively straightforward, and says that the Oracle-on-Windows integration
capabilities have lived up to their billing right out of the box. For starters, the
company was able to port its custom applications to the three-node RAC without
modifying any of the applications’ code.

Furthermore, according to Donnan, ‘it has been very straightforward using the
Oracle Database on Microsoft IIS [Internet Information Server] and with Visual
Studio Team System. Microsoft’s SQL Server plug-ins are excellent’, he continues,
‘but I like the way the Oracle tools [ODP.NET] integrate with Visual Studio even
better. They let you do all the things you need to do as a developer to access the
database.’

Conclusion
In this paper, we’ve touched on several of the core integration capabilities that
Oracle offers to users deploying its databases, and using its tools, within Windows-
based environments. It’s worth noting that these capabilities are far from the only
Windows interoperability services that Oracle provides. Oracle’s applications team,
for example, is working with Microsoft’s ‘Office Business Application’ set of APIs to
let customers use Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel and Outlook as
front-end clients to Oracle’s enterprise applications.

Oracle Fusion Middleware also provides strong support of, and interoperability
with, Microsoft products and technologies. The middleware is well integrated with
the Microsoft Windows Server platform and with products, including Microsoft
Active Directory, IIS and Microsoft Cluster Services. It also supports applications
built using .NET and web services, and interoperates with products such as
Microsoft BizTalk Server and SharePoint Server. Fusion Middleware also facilitates

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the effective use of Microsoft Office front-end products with back-end enterprise
applications and solutions.

Another major vehicle for interoperability is Oracle’s Enterprise Manager, which has
evolved to become a broad, heterogeneous systems management framework.
Oracle currently offers Enterprise Manager plug-ins for seven different Microsoft
servers. The vendor also offers a bidirectional connector for integrating Enterprise
Manager with Microsoft’s Systems Center. Furthermore, Enterprise Manager can
access Microsoft’s website to look for new patches to Microsoft’s software, and can
then deploy the patches as necessary.

There are no signs that either Oracle or Microsoft will falter from their respective
positions of industry strength. There may not be much love lost between the two
rivals, but both recognize that there are situations in which co-operation and
integration are preferable to competition. For more than a decade, Oracle has had
a sizable and strong database business in the Windows market, although the
vendor hasn’t always trumpeted this fact very loudly. As it looks to capture more
market share in the promising SMB sector, Oracle is likely to ramp up the volume
when it comes to touting its extensive range of Oracle-on-Windows capabilities. As
we’ve suggested here, it has plenty to talk about.

This paper was commissioned by Oracle.

Ovum Summit is a leading analyst and research firm tracking the evolution of enterprise and
mid-market dynamic computing strategies, including virtualization, SOA, IT management,
and related enabling services. Every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the
information contained in this report. The facts, estimates and opinions stated are based on
information and sources that, while we believe them to be reliable, are not guaranteed.
Ovum Summit maintains final editorial control over its research and does not endorse specific
vendors or offerings. No liability can be accepted by Ovum Europe Limited, its directors or
employees for any loss occasioned to any person or entity acting or failing to act as a result
of anything contained in, or omitted from, the content of this material, or our conclusions as
stated.

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