While preparing a “reference” Oracle server for my client I decided that I would try to replace Oracle HTTP Server that was once shipped on “Oracle10g Companion Disk”, with Oracle HTTP version 11g (for Windows x64).
In the expected spirit of “viva la bloatware”, I submitted to the said fact that Oracle HTTP server 10g with “mere” 435MB in Oracle Home, will now take 1.9GB. Oracle never fails to disappoint me with their “engineering” abilities.
Make a little experiment: compare 1.14 GB installation “media” from Oracle with mere 6.2 MB MSI installer from Apache website and try not to cry at the same time. And please don’t give me standard BS: “you’re comparing apples to oranges”….no, no, no, I’m actually comparing apples to melons ;-). Enough said, back to technicalities….

Steps that I followed installing OracleHTTP 11.1.1.2.0 on Windows Server 2008 R2-SP1:

1) downloaded Oracle Fusion Middleware Web Tier Utilities 11g (11.1.1.2.0) for Microsoft Windows (x64) from OTN

At the time of this writing the description of “OFM Web Tier Utilities” looks like this:

2) Unzip archive in some temporary directory and start installer from Disk1

3) Installation is as usual guided by OUI:

4) Configuration Web Tier Instance

At any time you can configure another Web Tier Instance by following instructions in OUI, you’ll find the shortcut in Oracle Web Tier 11g – Home1 :

Perhaps you noticed on the last screenshot “Oracle – OH1465697113”, I’m not sure if this is part of Oracle standard “engineering” effort, or simply a bug. In either case the crap like this should not be there – I hope Oracle will fix this.

After you configured and started OHS instance, you can check with Task Manager that apache.exe is indeed running as 64-bit application:

Since Oracle HTTP server is badly needed by one of our application and migrating to 64-bit Oracle HTTP server was only a question of time, I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that this “engineering bloatware” from Oracle is now (sadly) part of our infrastructure. Sometimes I wonder if Oracle programmers are perhaps paid by gigabytes that they produce!?