Comparison thoughts of 5 and 5.5

[Shells]

As we prepare to take the big jump from 4.x to 5.5, I conducted some comparisons on the differences between 5.0 and 5.5. Altho there are quite a few changes in 5.0, there are even more significant changes in 5.5. I haven't yet had the chance to play much with 5.5 other than dinking around with the menus, but that chance is coming soon. With both the DB and OAS server for reports changing to 10.x, we can hope this will bring positive changes to performance and functionality. I am also interested in finding out the performance impact of bringing on the corona vrml viewer and BPEL. If any of you experienced the performance changes brought on with business monitors, the effect wasn't exactly on the positive side at first - esp when users began getting fancy with querys. But as with everything else, it will get fixed - you just sometimes have to take a winding road to get there The final part that takes interest with me is that fact that when OTM releases 5.5 CU2 in Dec 06, they will begin supporting Oracle Application Server as the app server. Just when we all got decent at tuning weblogic, we now get to start on a different path. Not that I'm surprised or upset. In fact - I am pretty much expecting that eventually Weblogic will no longer be supported and OAS will be the required App layer. Of course - I've been wrong before so I probably shouldn' t assume Anyway, I don't really have any questions - just felt the urge to share some thoughts.

VERSION REQUIREMENTS

Weblogic
5.0 8.1 sp4
5.5 8.1 sp4
Oracle DB
5.0 9.2.0.6
5.5 10.2.0.2
Apache
5.0 2.0.53
5.5 2.0.53
Tomcat
5.0 5.5.8
5.5 5.5.8
Oracle AS
5.0 10g (9.0.4)
5.5 10g (10.1.2.0.2)
Windows
5.0 2000 sp4
5.5 xx
Windows
5.0 2003 SP1
5.5 2003 SP1
AIX OS
5.0 5L 5.3
5.5 5L 5.3
Linux OS
5.0 3.x
5.5 4.x

SUPPORTING COMPONENTS

PCMiler
5.0 v 14 - 18
5.5 v 14 - 19
Milemaker
5.0 v 17, 18
5.5 v 17, 18
Map & Guide
5.0 V 9.5
5.5 v 11
FaxMaker
5.0 V 11, 12
5.5 v 12
Rateware
5.0 1.2.329
5.5 1.2.330
Czar Lite
5.0 V 19-24
5.5 V 19-24
Canada Lite
5.0 V 6 - 23
5.5 V 6 - 23
Corona VRML
5.0 XX
5.5 V 4.2 (Web3D Viewer)
BPEL Process Mg
5.0 XX
5.5 Version 10.1.2.0.2
Oracle AS
5.0 xx
5.5 Supported in 5.5 CU2

On a side note, if you haven't checked out Oracle UPK, you should do that sometime. It would make a great e-learning tool for the OTM product should you be interested in doing customized e-training tools. I have noticed that OTM has done a little tinkering with UPK also on 5.5, altho it is compatible with any version of OTM.

[Olumide]

Re: Comparison thoughts of 5 and 5.5

OK. Got it, so that means I can't install on a win XP machine?

[chrisplough]

Re: Comparison thoughts of 5 and 5.5

That is correct, the OTM installer does a check on supported Operating Systems and versions and will refuse to run if not validated. There are ways to fool it (trust me - I had to program that in for QA testing - *grin*), but it's not recommended.

I recommend installing on either Windows 2003 or Red Hat Linux (CentOS also works fine) -- whichever you are able to better support. Just keep in mind that you Java heap sizes are limited on Windows, so it doesn't work well in high-volume environments.

Thanks,
Chris