ClassicConnect

[europa]

Preface

My first real exposure to Sun Microsystems was hearing my mom talk about her experiences running a Solaris workstation and using ArcGIS (called Arc/INFO at the time) at a job working for the local university. I was young enough at the time that I didn't really know what a SPARC or a Sun or even what a Solaris was. All I really knew was that Unix was the thing that Lex was familiar with in Jurassic Park.

Later on, as I delved deeper into my obsession/hobby, I began to explore the world of Unix myself, and found myself falling in love with it just as much as my mom had before me. I told myself that, if I ever got myself a Sun machine, I would run Arc on it and see for myself what it could do, and hopefully make something cool. This also began my interest in GIS as a whole, and I have done what could be considered "GIS by hand," which involved me making a database and cross-referencing it with hard copies of satellite imagery, pictures, and maps.

I bought my first Sun Ultra 5 from a friend in 2022, and it remains, to this day, my primary Unix workstation. Since then, I have had the good fortune of happening across a SPARCstation 5, an Ultra 1, and another Ultra 5, all given to me by generous friends who sought to rehome the machines somewhere where they would be loved and appreciated. I'm happy to provide that home.

This thread will chronicle my journey in getting a setup running, where one of my Ultra 5s runs a database server with Oracle8, and the other one acts as a client running ArcGIS that then accesses the database for its GIS data.



GIS? Database? What're those??

To get some nomenclature out of the way before we proceed, we will need to define two key terms: "database" and "GIS."

A database is, to put it simply, a collection of data. There is also what's known as a DBMS, or database management system, that allows you or other agents (such as applications that access the database) to work with the database. There are different types of databases that exist, and the difference lies in how the data is structured and organized.

We are concerned here with relational databases, because that's what Oracle's database product is. A common database product that you may be familiar with that is a relational database is Microsoft Access. Others that you may be familiar with are Microsoft's SQL Server, IBM's db2 (perhaps we'll look at that one at a later date), MySQL, and SQLite. A relational database stores data into rows and columns in tables, similar to how Excel would work (even though Excel is a spreadsheet and not a database*, it's a similar interface).

*It's also perhaps important to note that the term "database" is also used colloquially to refer to any part of the database system, or the database system itself. For instance, when you talk about "Oracle's database," you're likely not talking about an actual owned by Oracle, but instead Oracle's database system product.

The second term that must be defined is "GIS." GIS stands for "geographic information system" and is a system in which you can work with geographic information on a computer. Many things used in daily life today run on GIS - basically anything with a map functionality does. Through the use of GIS packages like ArcGIS, it is possible to take a database* with spatial data, tie things like satellite imagery to it, and then output the result.

*This may pose a problem later because, as you may remember, Oracle Database is, by default, a relational database, not a spatial one. However, it's also possible that ArcGIS has some way to account for that.



So? What's the plan?

The plan I have for this goes as follows: I will install Oracle8 on one of my Ultra 5s, and ArcGIS on the other one, and then use the latter to access the database stored on the former.

The database client (ArcGIS) machine:

Code:

Sun Ultra 5 - "Shinki" Year: 1998 CPU: UltraSPARC IIi @ 333MHz RAM: 256MB Graphics: Sun PGX24 (ATI 3D RAGE Pro) Hard Drive: 20GB ATA HDD OS: Solaris 9

The database server (Oracle8) machine:

Code:

Sun Ultra 5 - "Yumemi" Year: 1998 CPU: UltraSPARC IIi @ 270MHz RAM: 256MB Graphics: Sun PGX24 (ATI 3D RAGE Pro) Hard Drive: 40GB ATA HDD OS: Solaris 8

The current hurdle is that I don't have access to a FlexLM license file for ArcGIS, which is necessary for the application to run. That being said, I can still ensure that the database server is configured properly, and should do that before trying to do too much on the ArcGIS side of things anyway, so I still have a bit to do before that becomes absolutely necessary.



So, where are we now?

Last week I installed Oracle8 on the designated server machine, in the hopes that I could get ahead of everything and have that step done. Sadly, it turns out that, when I installed Solaris 8 on the computer, I did not account for the fact that Oracle8 requires three database mountpoints. So, I must reinstall Solaris and repartition the disk appropriately. However, after installing the database software once, I do feel more confident in myself to do it a second time, so I would not consider the time spent doing that wasted.


I hope you join me for the ride as I do this!

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Your System ate a SPARC! Gah!

[nick99nack]

Very much looking forward to following this journey. I myself have been wanting to explore Oracle database more, and may repurpose my SunFire V100 as an Oracle server.
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If you like browsing without an ad blocker, you might also like getting rid of your virus scanner, and running around with your pants down. --SomeGuy, 2016

[europa]

That would be pretty awesome! In addition to Oracle, I can also play with db2 on AIX now that I have an IBM machine, which might also be fun. The challenge there would be actually finding it, I think.
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Your System ate a SPARC! Gah!