Re: Informix vs. Sybase vs. Oracle vs. (gasp) MS SQL Server

Anthony Mandic wrote: > > Perry Dillard wrote: > > > I'll admit that page level locking has its place, but row level is > > absolutely essential. I wouldn't go as far as essential but it certainly helps. I would guess that most applications do not have serious concurrency problems caused by locking, but for those that do the fact that a single row update locks one row as against many rows must help. I can't speak about Informix, but the Sybase locking model where readers block writers is probably more of a constraint (compared to Oracle ) than the page/row difference. > > Since when? The level of locking should be transparent to > well written applications. It only becomes an issue with > poorly written ones. This is the techie answer which frequently comes up with Sybase. An alternative reading is that you have to code round limitations. You have to do that with any system of course (except for my new application development tool Magic(tm)), but it seems to come up more often with Sybase. Either way, if you always have to employ top-flight programmers, then that increases the cost of ownership. Jim Smith