Specifications

Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Oracle Solaris Porting Guide

Applications storing data that is shared between platforms can handle the endianness issues in one of

the following two ways:

• Store data in an application-defined, endian-neutral format using text files and strings.

• Choose either the big-endian or little-endian convention and do byte swapping (potentially using

enabling technology such as XDR) when necessary.

The need for cross-platform compatibility is so well understood that major applications have been

available on big-endian and little-endian Oracle Solaris environments for years without problems. They

range from personal productivity applications to major database management systems from vendors

including Oracle, Informix, and Sybase.

While there are many similarities between a database running on RHEL and one running on Oracle

Solaris, simply moving a database from one platform to the other usually requires some data

transformation. If the database product is available on both platforms from the same vendor, this task

might become as simple as exporting the database running on RHEL to a standardized file format and

then importing it into a new database on Oracle Solaris. When the port also involves a change in

database vendors, more extensive data transformations might be required.

Most enterprise applications rely on information stored in databases to satisfy user requests. At a

broader level, databases can be classified in two categories:

• Open source databases

• Proprietary databases

The database choice is driven by application needs, cost, and business needs. If the same database

vendor can be maintained on both platforms, the migration process is much simpler and

straightforward. Fortunately, most of the databases in both the categories are available on both Linux

and Oracle Solaris.

Here is a list of the most popular open source and proprietary databases and their availability on both

platforms.

TABLE 2-1. DATABASE SUPPORT

DATABASE LATEST VERSION RHEL ORACLE SOLARIS

POPULAR OPEN-SOURCE DATABASES

MySQL 5.6.x √ √

PostgreSQL 9.1.x √ √

SQLLite 3.7.x √ √

Ingres 10.x √ √

Berkeley DB 5.x √ √