Thoughts On Running Oracle 10g On Apple OSX Server
May 31st, 2004 by Mark Rittman
With Oracle Database 10g nearing release date for Apple OSX Server, Oracle
and Apple are
running a series of joint seminars in Reston, Cupertino, London, Paris and
Tokyo to introduce this first supported release of the Oracle RDBMS on the Apple
platform.
All I need now is some kind company to loan me a Mac G5 to put it through
it’s paces 
Seriously, I’d love to get a Mac but at around 3000 for a
reasonable setup, it’s just too expensive. Whilst Oracle 10g on OSX Server is
probably aimed at organisations looking to use the G5 XServe (which pound for
pound stacks up better against commodity Intel hardware) it’s a shame that G5
towers cost so much compared to comparable machines from companies like Dell.
As an aside, I was looking at used G4 towers on Ebay, which with dual 1.00
Ghz processors, a 17" studio display and around 512MB of RAM are going for
around 1000 (US$1832). How well do these run OSX and how much of improvement
are the new G5 towers? Are they still very noisy? Would you run Oracle 10g on
them? Any advice would be appreciated.
May 31st, 2004 at 9:22 pm
As far as I know the G4 towers will run Mac OSX perfectly. You may need to buy an upgrade though as I don’t believe they shipped with the latest release (10.3 or Panther)
The differences between Mac OSX plain and server aren’t that great and I suspect that Oracle will mainly be relying on the underlying BSD core. I’m going to attempt to run it on my iBook when it’s released although I wouldn’t do that for anything other than evaluation and prototyping.
May 31st, 2004 at 9:29 pm
Hi Andy,
Did you go for one of the new G5 towers? Do you still think it’s worth the money, compared to getting an older G4?
Thought you might reply, as you’ve purchase a new Mac recently
One of the problems with Apple is that, if you take a full-spec G5 tower, and compare it to a similar spec Intel machine, it’s not that much more expensive. It’s just that usually you wouldn’t buy an Intel machine that powerful, you’d normally go for something a bit cheaper, and there aren’t really any 1000-mark G5 towers you can buy.
I’m trying to convince the wife that I really must get hold of a Mac, but it’s hard to justify 3000 on a new computer, hence the looking at older G4 dual processor towers. I guess what I was curious about was whether OSX would run too slow on the older towers, as I heard it ran slow *anyway*, which would tend to suggest buying the most expensive hardware you can get (although I also heard Panther was considerably faster)
Mark
June 1st, 2004 at 5:31 am
“dual 1.00 Mhz processors”? I knew Macs are slow, but…
June 1st, 2004 at 8:13 am
aha! changed it now. Sounded like I had two ZX-81’s stuffed in the case…
June 1st, 2004 at 9:21 am
Hi Mark,
I am not sure where you are based; but I have a Dual 1.25Ghz mac on my desk at the moment at TVP 520 Reading. Drop us a call if you want to come in and have a play.
Regards
Gerard Davison
JDeveloper
June 1st, 2004 at 9:31 am
Mark,
I’ve got a 12″ iBook with a 1.25Ghz G4 and it runs like a dream. Not exactly a tower, but there you go.
I’m also trying to convince the financial committee to spare the funds for a desktop machine. You are right that the Macs look expensive I believe it’s because they are aimed at people whose primary jobs are processor intensive (like graphics designers).
In my opinion a G4 tower would run Oracle fine.
By observation Macs are as fast (if not faster) than wintel boxes of comparable prices, and I’ve been developing on Windows for most of my professional life. Of course, YMMV
June 1st, 2004 at 4:45 pm
Couple of notes. First, I bought a used G4 400Mhz Powermac, 384MB Ram, 120GB Harddrive, and it’s currently running the developer preview of Oracle 9i fine. It’s also running 10.3 server, is acting as my firewall/NAT box, and handling all of this load. It’s of course not the fastest machine in the world, but it seems to be working pretty well.
In other words, it sounds like a dual 1ghz box would work GREAT. Just get lots of ram - that’s the big kicker on OS X.
Last note on the speed difference between G5’s and G4’s. There isn’t that huge of a difference. I mean, there is for some applications, but for a lot of things, it’s not a huge performance boost. Check this link out:
http://www.barefeats.com/pvp.html
June 4th, 2004 at 2:47 pm
Hi Mark,
Since 10g DB is coming out for MacOS X, I wonder if there are any plans to bring out 10gDS, as well? I’d really love to run Disco Admin and Desktop on my own machine. 
Hope this helps!
I came across your site while looking for information at work (I work at Oracle in Sydney, Australia), and I thought I’d chime in on this discussion.
A dual 1GHz G4 tower would run MacOS X very well. I used to have a single 400MHz G4, which struggled under load, but for normal use, was fine. Of course, a dual G5 will whoop it, but it depends on how much money you want to spend. You quoted 3000 pounds for a new system, and I can see where you get that from. I selected a Dual 2GHz G5 and with the 17″ display it’s over 3000… Ouch. But, the machine you get is a monster!
It depends on what amount of load you’re going to put on the machine, as well. A dual 1GHz would do fine, normally… You could always go for a Dual 1.8GHz instead of the 2.0GHz, which would save money. Rumour is (and it’s long overdue), that there are new PowerMac G5s coming out at the end of June, and Apple will probably have promotions to get old stock out of inventory (like bundling RAM and displays), so if you were going to buy one, the time is now.
June 5th, 2004 at 2:13 pm
Hi Jeremy,
thanks for the advice about the G4 Mac - cheers.
With regard to 10gDS coming out for the Mac, here’s my take: You can already run JDeveloper on MacOSX, but it’s unsupported. I think it’s unlikely Oracle will bring out the rest of the java tools (or even JDev) on a supported basis for MacOSX, as it’s actually OSX Server that they’re supporting for Oracle 10g (i.e. not OSX regular). Apart from that, I don’t ever think Disco Admin or Desktop will be ported to OSX, as Oracle haven’t even ported then to Linux - Disco Admin and Desktop are Win32 applications, with no java equivalents (Disco Plus is an applet that runs in your browser, not standalone like Desktop). Therefore, although you’ll probably get an unsupported JDev for OSX, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a full DS port to arrive.
Mark
June 15th, 2004 at 9:31 pm
Before spending money on a Mac you plan running Oracle on it might be worth checking if 10g will be a G5 (64 bit) release only. I haven’t seen this information released from Oracle, but perhaps someone who attended the 10g/OSX seminar would know ?
Sten Rognes
June 17th, 2004 at 12:12 pm
I was at the London presentation yesterday and they stated that it would be available for G4.