Re: Advice on picking a database (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, SQL Server

Matt Larson wrote: > > I need some advice on the benefits and drawbacks of Oracle, Sybase, > Informix, and MS Sql Server. I would also like to know if anyone knows > of a guide that details which to choose in certain situations, etc. > > Please email me with any answers, > Thanks for your help > > Matt Larson > mdlarson@mail.uccs.edu Matt, On a recent project we were evaluating Oracle vs Informix. Although Informix had a lot of good things going for it, what made us settle on Oracle was that there was one place in the application where we had a table which used two columns (SITE and NAME) as its primaty key. We needed to start with a particular site and name and select all rows from there to the end of the table. The where clause in our select statement was: WHERE SITE > START_SITE OR (SITE = START_SITE AND NAME >= START_NAME) Because there was an "OR" in the where clause Informix couldn't figure out that it could use the index and so did a full table scan. Oracle, on the other hand, was able to use the index. There are other things though that I like about Informix better than Oracle (Descending Indexes come to mind). HTH Ken Denny