Re: a comparison of different databases

rkwan@unixg.ubc.ca (Raymond Wan) wrote: >Phil Edwards (news-uk@dircon.co.uk) wrote: >: David Williams wrote: >: > Phil Edwards wrote: >: > >Technically Oracle is ahead of the field. What you need to consider is >: > >whether this means a more stable product or simply one with lots of >: > >additional features. >: > What makes you say Oracle is ahead of the field?? >: Slightly longer answer: in my previous job I conducted an evaluation of >: Oracle against Sybase, Informix and Ingres (not DB2); Oracle came out way >: ahead. Also (for the DB2 crowd), there was a discussion about Oracle vs >: DB2/400 on the AS/400 newsgroup recently. The consensus seemed to be "OK >: so Oracle's ahead, _but_..." (you don't need all those features/it's not >: as stable). > Well, I'm new to databases, but I have a better yet much less >scientific answer. I think Oracle is ahead or up there in the front >because the oracle newsgroup seems to have the most traffic and in most >bookstores around here, there seems to be more oracle books than any >others. Maybe not an indication of being "ahead of the field", but at >least, quite popular... >Raymond Wan > Raymond, I largely agree with your observation. There is, however, the frequently overlooked issues of maintainability as well as ease of administration and development. I have experience developing against Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase SQL Server, Informix and Oracle. I find PL/SQL and the Oracle tools old-fashioned, esoteric and stylistically incompatible with other leading databases. Also, the product I had most difficulty with during installation and development ... Oracle! Maybe the popularity of newsgroups should be interpreted as a result of product usage AND usage problems. If I were responsible for the choice of a corporate database strategy, I would rather take the slower database with good administration/ development support (within reason) and throw more hardware at it. Furthermore, bad programming would make ANY database seem bad. Thorough knowledge of a database system in conjunction with good development practice would make a good system out of any reasonable back-end. Dion