Exploring Windows (and a little Oracle)
March 14th, 2004 by HenIn the latest DDJ, I received a Unix->Windows education CD with a copy of Windows 2003 Server. Why not I thought.
So I installed the 6 month trial of Win2k3 and was impressed with the install. It was all quite easy to do, there was only the one section with questions [I left the machine alone until the next day and was surprised to see that it was ready for login] and it had a nice manage-your-server application that opened immediately.
I was impressed that nothing was turned on by default, and I installed IIS relatively easily.
So… all pretty good so far. MS finally matching the ease of use of a SuSE install and the manage your server app must match the OS X Server equivalent [not that I’ve tried it].
From this point on, it was all downhillMy aim was to learn IIS, SQL Server and Exchange. I’ve played with SQL Sever 2000 before and found it pretty easy, much easier than a recent install of Oracle on Linux.
IIS. Pain in the arse management application. Very tricky to comprehend. Despite much experience of Apache and other servers, the GUI console was not simple and I’m pretty sure I’ll have to grab a book or something to figure out how to do things. Like create a web-site.
Exchange. A lot of time spent downloading [again MS beat Oracle, whose download sites were down] and an installation that once I’d battled through the odd checkbox install sheet, preparing the system, discovered that my Windows machine had to be in a domain. So no Exchange until I figure out wtf domains are all about and how to setup a primary domain controller [I’ve heard people mention the phrase].
SQL Server 2000. No go. It doesn’t run on the latest Windows server.
So…products that cost far more appear to be…far more painful. More money equals better marketing departments?
Oracle stuff works today, so I’m downloading Linux 10g [there is no Windows version of 10g preview], which will hopefully be installable unlike Linux 9i. When the Installer needs half a dozen patches to get it onto its main target platform [Red Hat ES…], I dread to think how hard it is to work anywhere else. Attempt is to see if JDeveloper is worth any effort.