Re: MS SQL Server Evaluation

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 09:34:45 -0800
Message-ID: <1079112892.570278@yasure>

Howard J. Rogers wrote:

> "Niall Litchfield" <n-litchfield_at_audit-commission.gov.uk> wrote in message
> news:4051a939$0$3307$ed9e5944_at_reading.news.pipex.net...
> [snip]
>

>>>However, almost all of the advanced features that are available in
>>>Oracle, you won't find in SQL Server.  Don't even look for anything
>>>like RAC.
>>
>>*No-one* has anything like RAC. On the other hand even Mr Ellison at the
>>launch of 10g spoke of having 'hundreds' of customers world wide on RAC.

>
>
> You sure he wasn't just talking about his yachts?
>
>

>>Until this figure gets into the thousands I can't get myself over excited
>>about it. In the meantime competive products run stable secure highly
>>available apps for non-Oracle customers. Sure RAC is nice (especially if

>
> you
>

>>run expensive RISC hardware) it isn't essential for most people.

>
>
> I couldn't agree with you more, Niall. RAC is over-hyped, and as a 'dead
> sexy' technology, it's being adopted for a lot of wrong reasons. I flatter
> myself that of all the RAC students I've had, about 80% have come away from
> the three days saying 'Nah, RAC's not for us after all. Let's sign up for
> the Data Guard course'. Which is the right response most of the time for
> most of the people.
>
> I'd lay a small bet that people adopt RAC for the high availability features
> mostly, because most boxes are not under strain, and the scale-up it (might)
> provide (with a following wind) is not needed. And speed-up isn't going to
> happen in an OLTP environment anyway.
>
> But there are better, cheaper and easier high availability solutions out
> there.
>
> 'Course, if you truly need scale-up, speed-up AND high availability, there's
> nothing to touch it... but the number of sites that genuinely need two of
> the three are (I would say) vanishingly small.
>
> As for Grid, forget it. Unless your annual turnover is in excess of
> $100million, I doubt you'll even think of it as an option for years and
> years.
>
> Regards
> HJR
I think you are wrong on several counts. The main reason I see for RAC is build-out rather than build-up. It can save a boatload of money building a 16CPU machine with 8 x 2CPU Intel machines rather than talking to HP, Sun, or IBM about a 16CPU box. And with that boatload of money both Larry and his customers can buy their boats.

Failover will become a larger part of the equation when Oracle makes good its promise in a later release of 10g to make Oracle Forms, etc. failover which means we will finally be able to have failover with Oracle's own apps.

And grid? If you have 10g what is the extra cost for grid? I'm better it gets very wide implementation if the DBAs get off their hind quarters and stop treating Oracle like it is still v8.0 out of laziness and ignorance.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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Received on Fri Mar 12 2004 - 11:34:45 CST