Who uses Oracle with DSpace? Anyone interested in helping retain/maintain Oracle support?

[Tim Donohue]

All,

I wanted to let the entire DSpace Community be aware of developer discussions regarding our ability to continue supporting Oracle database backends in DSpace.

Below, you'll find an email I sent to our DSpace Developer mailing list (dspace...@googlegroups.com) in mid-November requesting volunteers to help us with Oracle support activities. After 3 weeks, I've yet to find any developer volunteers and none of our current core developers or committers have Oracle expertise or use Oracle at their institutions.

If your institution currently uses DSpace with an Oracle database backend and is interested in helping ensure DSpace can continue to support Oracle, please get in touch. Without Oracle volunteers, we may need to drop support for Oracle databases and recommend all existing Oracle-based sites migrate to PostgreSQL (by using a third-party migration tool like Ora2Pg or similar).  

(Additionally, if any of you have successfully migrated a DSpace site from Oracle to PostgreSQL, I'd be interested to hear of any tips you may have. It may help us start to document Oracle to PostgreSQL migration tips for others who wish to do the same.)

Obviously, we'll send out a formal announcement if any Oracle support changes are made.

Thanks,

Tim

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From: Tim Donohue <tim.d...@lyrasis.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2021 5:25 PM
To: DSpace Developers <dspace...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Who uses Oracle with DSpace? Anyone interested in helping retain/maintain Oracle support?

 

All,

I'm curious who on this developer list may use an Oracle database for their Production installation of DSpace.

I've been noticing that it has become more difficult to locate any DSpace developers with decent Oracle experience to help us debug or fix Oracle-related issues (e.g. https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/8008 and https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/7958 and testing PR https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/8028).

So, if you are using Oracle in Production, and would be interested in helping review, debug or test Orace related fixes/issues, please get in touch.

If we are unable to find Oracle developer help soon, I feel we must consider recommending (to DSpace Steering) that we stop support for Oracle databases (effective immediately).  It's increasingly obvious that most DSpace sites do not use Oracle.  It's also obvious that we've not been successful in testing/stabilizing DSpace upgrades or new features on Oracle backends.  Plus, as we all know, Oracle databases have never aligned with our open-source licensing (in that it requires a paid license to use in Production).  So, it may be time to admit that Oracle support may no longer be necessary or reasonable for DSpace.

Thoughts welcome! Please do get in touch if continued Oracle support is of interest to you.

Tim

--

Tim Donohue

Technical Lead, DSpace

tim.d...@lyrasis.org

Lyrasis.org | DSpace.org

[Karlen Chase]

Hi, Tim:

We use Oracle here at the State University of New York at Buffalo (AKA University at Buffalo) because DSpace infrastructure is managed by central IT, and they do not support PostgreSQL. We have had DSpace since 2009 and both our dev and prod sites have always been on Oracle for the DB piece. I am the current DSpace administrator and work in the University Libraries. Because of the Flyway migration bug in v.6.x forward, we are stuck on v.5.10, and we have no in-house developers who can edit the source release code to allow us to upgrade beyond that. (See the comment I logged 2018-10-10 on: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/1954)

I would very much like to know if I need to begin advocating or pushing for PostgreSQL via my leadership if this bug is not going to be fixed, as we are sort of stuck. It is extremely difficult to get central IT to support something only one unit at the entire university uses, and I was told we are an Oracle shop and that was our only option for the DB piece.

In summary, we are a concerned Oracle DSpace stakeholder but have no in-house developers to offer support for Oracle, which is why we are beholden to the DSpace source release and are currently stuck on 5.10.

Thanks very much,

Karlen Chase

Head of Institutional Repository Services

University at Buffalo

[Tim Donohue]

Hi Karlen and all,

To be completely transparent about developer discussions.. as of today, I don't know what the future of Oracle support is for DSpace. So far, in all my outreach, I've had just two responses -- yours and a private response from a service provider (who doesn't want to be named yet) who might be able to help some in mid to late 2022. This lack of response implies to me that very few institutions may be using DSpace + Oracle these days.

So, in all honesty, if I were in your shoes, I'd start to advocate for migrating to PostgreSQL *or* advocate for someone to help DSpace fix its Oracle support.

Currently, DSpace doesn't have great Oracle support simply because I've been unable to find anyone to help maintain/support/fix it.  I don't have a developer team, and I'm fully reliant on community volunteers and/or service providers to help improve & maintain DSpace. The community developers who used to help us maintain Oracle support left the DSpace community years ago (all moved on to new roles/responsibilities). While the remaining team of volunteers has done their best to keep Oracle support "working", it's obvious we're not great at it (based on Oracle-specific issues like the one you point out in both DSpace 6.x and now 7.x). 

In other words, all currently active DSpace developers use PostgreSQL. None of our active developers use Oracle or have Oracle support expertise.  This means that Oracle-specific bugs take much much longer to resolve, as I have no one available to help resolve them.

I wish I had better news for those who still use Oracle. But, without help, I'm not sure whether DSpace can continue to support Oracle going forward.

Nonetheless, no final decision has been made as of yet by our DSpace Steering Group. So, if anyone out there is interested in helping, please do reach out. It may be the deciding factor in what comes next for DSpace's Oracle support.

Tim

[Tim Donohue]

All,

Per this thread from December 2021...

As of today, the DSpace Steering group has voted to deprecate Oracle support in the upcoming DSpace 7.3 release. Oracle Support will be removed from DSpace one year later (in mid-2023).

More details can be found in this new Oracle deprecation ticket: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/8214

If anyone has any questions,  let us know, or add your questions to that ticket.

Thanks,

Tim Donohue

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From: Tim Donohue <tim.d...@lyrasis.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 9, 2021 2:59 PM
To: DSpace Community <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com>; DSpace Technical Support <dspac...@googlegroups.com>