Installing 10g on Windows XP Pro.

Question

I very recently downloaded Oracle 10g. I would like to install it on my external USB2 hard drive and be able to access it from both my laptop PC and my desktop PC.
I presume installing it from one of my PC's would be straigthforward. But what do I need to do on the other PC to be able to access it from there as well? I can plug my external USB2 hard drive into either PC.
I am very experienced in mainframe databases but very much a novice in Oracle. Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated.
TIA
Gunny

Answer 1

This is unusual, but it may be doable. I have the equipment myself to attempt it, so I'll give it a try. Essentially, you would have to perform the install on each machine with the target filesystem pointing to the location on the USB drive that you wish to use. Once the install has been run to create identical environments on both machines, you could create databases to run from that same USB drive.
I could not vouch for performance, and there are probably formidable problems attendant to this approach, but it may just work. It might be a fun thing to try too, but don't use it for anything important.
Here's the gotcha: You will have to make sure that every Oracle process is stopped before you will be able to remove the USB drive from the system prior to moving it. Otherwise, the Safely Remove Hardware tool will refuse to let the drive go. You should also be aware that if you just disconnect a USB drive from a system when a bunch of files are open on it, your system may hang or crash. You will probably also corrupt the open files. Although Oracle is usually pretty good about recovery in various unusual crash scenarios, there is no predicting what it would do in this situation.
Here is the scenario that I think may work:
1. Connect the USB disk device to the first machine.
2. Run the Oracle 10G Install on the first machine with the USB drive as the target. (Note that some things will be installed in Program Files.) (Be sure to record the name and path of the Oracle Home so that you can use it on the second machine.)
3. Close all Oracle processes that get created in Windows Services. (I recommend setting the services you want to use to Manual so that they will not attempt to start automtically and setting Oracle services you do not intend to use to Disabled.)
4. Use the Safely Remove Hardware tool to remove the device from the machine.
5. Connect the device to the second machine being sure that it has the same drive letter.
6. In the USB drive's file system, delete the 10G Oracle Home folder that was created by the install on the first machine.
7. Install Oracle 10G on the second machine being sure to use the same name and path for the Oracle Home.
The drive letter for the USB drive must be the same on both machines because any databases that you create in this setup will have hard paths to datafiles mapped in their control files. If the drive letters differed between the machines or if they changed over time, the database would not start.
This looks like an interesting experiment, but actual use may prove more difficult than it is worth. I will certainly try this soon to see if it actually works. If it works well, I might be able to put it to good use myself.
Kind regards,
Russ Cannon