RE: Senior Oracle DBA now Learning Informix by Request

Is training dollars spent a valid comparison? Every version of Oracle seems to require new training classes (above and beyond the "new features class" whose purpose appears to be a sales pitch for other classes)..... It appears that as Oracle changes versions, it changes so much as to require more training dollars spent even for experienced oracle DBAs. Going from Informix 5 to 7 required training (just 1 class, the internals class), but going from 7 to 9 did not.... oh, yeah, I requested to go to informix internals because I was jealous of the training the oracle people kept going to. I'm willing to bet informix 10 won't require training for existing informix dba's unless they just really want to get out of the office. I believe I have gone to more Oracle training in the last 3 years than I gone to informix training in the last 10 years. And it's not because there is a lack of informix classes, it's based on student need. Norma Jean Sebastian ERP Support Administration GIS- Enterprise Technical Services -----Original Message----- From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Mark Townsend Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 8:34 AM To: informix-list@iiug.org Subject: Re: Senior Oracle DBA now Learning Informix by Request Obnoxio The Clown wrote: > Mark Townsend said: >> So name a few. Name of company, number of instances, versions, number of >> DBAs. Proof is king. > > And a prospecting list for a hungry Oracle salesman. > > We all know Informix is easier to run than Oracle. Why don't YOU open your > kimono first? Why don't you show us why we're wrong? > Establish a valid comparison metric and I will have ago. Nbr of DBAs doesn't work, as usage patterns may be different between different environments. Nbr of Databases per DBA might work, but needs to be qualified by the version of software, deployment architecture, and the usage again. Nbr of DBAs per Gig of data managed doesn't work, as data warehouses would skew the results for OTLP environments. Nbr of days training offered doesn't work, as it more likely reflects the training org or even the capability of the curriculum developers. Seriously - this is my point. "Easier to manage" is extremely difficult to prove. Unlike performance where there are benchmarks that record transactions per minutes in fully audited environments; or HA, where there can be a measurement of wall clock time since last outage, there is no real unit of measurement for ease of management. The Edison guys have tried to establish a benchmark of sorts - nbr of steps, and the time required, to perform basic DBA tasks, on a given implementation. So basically a time and motion study. But to date they have only put DB2, SQL Server and Oracle through the mixer. And many of the vendors don't like the results, and argue them, so even that is problematic. So I stand by my statement "It's never been proven that Informix is easier to own or operate than Oracle." And I doubt that until there is a formally agreed benchmark for manageability in the industry, it is unlikely to ever be. _______________________________________________ Informix-list mailing list Informix-list@iiug.org http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list ============================================================ The information contained in this message may be privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reproduction, dissemination or distribution of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Thank you. Tellabs ============================================================

Sebastian, Norma J. wrote: > Is training dollars spent a valid comparison? > I think so and in fact used to use this as a comparison metric (and still do). But to get around any vendor skew I would compare the DBA training offered by third party companies such as SAP, PeopleSoft etc for the different database vendors. And there was never any difference in the amount or cost of training courses for any one database environment over another. Frequency of delivery was always another thing, however.