Re: Oracle comparison

"Howard J. Rogers" wrote:
>
> "Generic Poster" <nospam_at_nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:3D0E5499.67AFFB6_at_nospam.com...
> > Hello, at the risk of flamebait, I would like to ask you to comment on
> > how or why you think Oracle compares favorably with other db products,
> > both commercial and free. We do web development, and were recently
> > contacted by a client who wants us to design a db for him on the web,
> > which would be like a data warehouse for, say, up to 100 little
> > webstores. We do not know a tremendous amount about the db field,
> > though we can make them just fine. We recommended at first MySQL, then
> > decided on PostgreSQL.
>
> Your recommendations confirm what you wrote in the previous sentence. <g>

Well, FWIW, we know quite a few folks who are running MySQL as a small database, and they were quite happy with it. Plus, it is getting very popular as a web database......it's use is really exploding. I think if it really sucked, so many people would not be using it so enthusiastically. Also, it is very very fast. However, we felt MySQL did not scale well, and once the db started getting large, it was not very robust. Also, it has only a subset of SQL. We found that PostgreSQL addressed these MySQL issues well, as it a lot of of SQL in it, and it is a lot more robust. It is also becoming very popular. But, we thought, there are these commercial db's.......I wonder what the advantage would be of using them. We could not come up with much but that was why I came in here. I figured they must have some strong points....
>
> I'm not going to go into knocking one product or boosting another:

That's quite all right. Go ahead and tell me why you think Oracle is better than the rest.....

 I'm just
> intrigued as to why you made these recommendations, because that would
> determine a lot of the content of other responses you might get here.

See above....actually, MySQL and PosgreSQL are becoming very popular recommendations with web development consultants.....
>
> Is it that they were free?

This was very important......

 Was cost the prime factor here?

Yes, also we liked the portability (we were told that code in MySQL ported well to PostgreSQL), the integration with PHP Perl, Linux and Apache, the speed, their rapid, ongoing, open-source development.....
>
> Is it that you or your client won't be running Windows servers?

He is not running anything. This is all for the host. We are recommending Linux (or Unix) on the server and Apache as the webserver. The project would be tied together with PHP and Perl scripting. We recommended against a Windows server (basically a political matter on my part but I could not see any advantage anyway). We recommended against the Access, NT, IIS, ASP, VBScript. He had wanted to go in this direction.
>
> >The question also came up whether a commercial
> > db would be the answer. We felt that at less than 4 TB, open source
> > would do well but that more than that, commercial might be the way to
> > go.
>
> Even more intriguing. What possible reasoning process led you to conclude
> that there was a 4Tb watershed beyond which the likes of Oracle would be
> suitable for, but before which, these others would do sterling service?
Well, it was from an article on the web (the only one I could find about advantages of commercial vs. open-source db's) from which I quote:

"Scalability. It's easy to run a single database instance on a single machine with a moderate amount of data. When your needs grow beyond this simple setup, however, you'll need software that can grow with you.

It's not uncommon for enterprises to host databases that are several terabytes in size. Typically, open-source databases handle large amounts of information poorly, sometimes limiting individual records to just a few kilobytes."

I know you didn't mean to flamebait, but this is such a wacky line of
> reasoning that, prima facie, it looks like a joke.

Ok, so it is a dumb thing to say. Thanks. I will stop saying it. I guess I got it from the "several TB" phrase in the quote above.
>
> For what it's worth, Oracle (and SQL Server and DB2) are perfectly competent
> products that would be entirely suitable for the suggested purpose,
> regardless of size.

Oh, we were well aware of that. We were just wondering what the advantage would be, such that one would spend $, versus getting something for free.

 Cost might be an issue, and if the proposed database was
> going to be 1Gb or so, maybe they'd be overkill.

Ahh, ok. Thanks.

 But you should really
> consider things like concurrency, scalability, reliability, platform/OS
> independence, multi-versioning, read-consistency, performance and so on.

Yes but you are speaking another language. Can you point me to a website where I can make sense of this? Not sure you want to explain it all.....

 The
> three products I mentioned address all these issues in their own way. Some
> address some of the issues better than others. I happen to think Oracle
> addresses them all superbly. But then, I'm biased. You mention none of these
> issues as factors "informing" your recommendation for the likes of MySQL,

We felt that MySQL was reliable, performed well (especially speed) and had good platform/OS independence.

 so
> it's impossible to know why you thought that and its ilk would be
> suitable -and there is therefore no basis for comparison.

Oh, I am sure it and its ilk would be suitable but we were uncertain what advantages we would get for spending the $ on the commercial stuff. Received on Mon Jun 17 2002 - 23:50:59 CDT