Are any of you using RE 7.6 and/or FE 7.2 with Oracle instead of Microsoft SQL? We're currently on RE 7.5 / FE 7.1, and we are looking at our options for migration. Since we may soon have an Oracle server for a different software package, we are considering using Oracle for the Blackbaud products. I'd very much appreciate any comments about using Oracle with Blackbaud products. Advantages/disadvantages? Technical hurdles? Financial hurdles? Thanks, Ryan

Ryan, We've been an Oracle shop for several years, so when we purchased RE last year, compatibility with Oracle was a key requirement. In general, we are pleased with RE7.6. Versions prior to 7.6 had substantial differences from the SQL Server app functionality, so we ran into significant issues, mostly with custom queries/reports. BB's Oracle tech support is excellent. The 7.6 codebase seems much closer in functionality to the versions for other DBMS's. For some of our custom queries, we had to ask for help from BB to construct them so that they would finish in minutes or hours instead of days. We could not afford their data warehouse product (available only on SQL Server). Carefully analyze the demands of the two applications you plan to run against your Oracle server. BB recommends a dedicated Oracle box for RE. We are running several apps against one Oracle box, with RE custom queries being the resource munchers. When the other apps start using more resources, we'll have to plan for another machine. So far, we are not constrained on the queries. Data entry is very efficient so that's not an issue. Tim Levatich Cornell Lab of Ornithology