Oracle use with Solaris, Linux, AIX, HP/UX and Windows Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

 

Oracle became the world's dominant database management system for many reasons, but foremost is the fact that Oracle runs on more than 60 platforms, everything from a mainframe to a Macintosh.

The x86 platforms offered with Itanium processors offer up only two real OS choices for Oracle. Linux and Windows.  While these new servers are amazing, as of 2007, the vast majority of Oracle data resides in "legacy" environments, AIX, Solaris and HP/UX.  Linux and Windows are making advances, but Sun, IBM and HP remain the world's commonest production operating environment.

Of course, that is expected to change rapidly . . .

The IOUG 2006 Oracle survey, sampled 812 respondents, a large enough sample size to be representative and statistically valid, and it made the following observations.  Note that most shops have multiple OS's with Oracle:

49 percent of sites use Solaris
37 percent for Linux,
40 percent for Windows 2000 Server,
37 percent for Windows Server 2003,
31 percent for HP-UX,
23 percent for AIX
19 percent for Windows NT

Some people have suggested sampling from internet web sites to get an idea of the actual usage of operating systems in the market, but there are caveats and assumptions:

1 - Ceteris Parabus, help wanted ads no not accurately reflect the current OS usage of the population. Legacy operating systems have "lifers", senior DBA's who will not be replaced until they retire. 

2 - Large shops possess a multitude of OS environments, and that's why you got confused and condemned the survey as unreliable  "Unless someone can find more reliable figures from Oracle themselves".   As you now know, in multivariate statistics, percentages do not always add-up to 100.

3 - Surveys and job site counts cannot tell us about the volume of data stored within each OS.  I still maintain that HP/UX, Solaris and AIX host  of Oracle data, and that while adoption of Linux and Windows is on the uptake, they are being used for smaller, non mission-critical databases.  For example, eBay has Linux, but they use Solaris for the auction site.

4 - The vast majority of large Oracle shops have at all of the big-five operating systems.  Add-in VMWARE, and things get even more ambiguous.

 

Here in America, DICE is a major player with 96,000 job postings.  Here is my informal survey:

"oracle dba Solaris" = 357 jobs

"oracle dba Linux" = 539 jobs

"oracle dba HPUX|HP/UX" = 52 jobs

"oracle DBA AIX" = 215 jobs

"oracle DBA Windows" = 503 jobs