Re: database market share 2003

From: Serge Rielau <srielau_at_ca.eye-be-em.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 08:29:30 -0400
Message-ID: <ca1n3c$b5f$1@hanover.torolab.ibm.com>

Noons wrote:
> Serge Rielau allegedly said,on my timestamp of 4/06/2004 11:02 AM:
>

>> Well, Blair commented on the language, so I shall refrain from that.

>
>
> Stop posting stupid and idiotic replies (not you!) and it will stop.
> Until then, you get it back in whatever fashion I deem appropriate,
> and there is preciously nothing anyone can do about it.
> Sorry, but that's the way it goes when someone tries to insult
> everyone's intelligence.

I think it' simportant in a medium such as this to be carefully acknowledging that the means of communication channels are very limited. That's why debates such as this fail to throttle themselves as they would face to face. Now, we are all mature, professional unlike the poor kids in this news story below.. Just a thought for reflection. http://sify.com/news/offbeat/fullstory.php?id=13489840 Can we at least try to be better?
>

>> Either way: IBM does NOT know how many customers use which parts of 
>> the i/Series's operation system.

>
>
> Good. Can I quote that WIDELY as a truth finally admitted?
> Just like the "same code base everywhere" three years ago that turned
> out to be "only here and there" after the derision got too loud?
I'm not an IBM spokes person. The interesting part is that you ask IBM to admit not to know something that they, to the best of my knowledge, never _claimed_ to know.
It is a bit like me going out there and asking Mark Townsend to _admit_ that RDB licenses are counted under Oracle's marketshare. Well, I presume they are, and matter of fact, I don't have an issue with it because RDB is a relational DBMS and that's what IDC and Gartner decided to count.

>> What you refer to as DB2 is a surpringly small SQL interface to OS/400.

>
>
> I don't get this: Is it small in user base? Or small in code size?
> Complexity? Or irrelevant to this discussion (as it should have remained)?
Small code size. The point I wanted to make is that the decision what is DB2 and what is OS/400 seems rather arbitrary looking in from the outside. IBM could for all intents and purposes declare that DB2 for i/Series IS the operation system and provides a file-system interface. the name OS/400 would disappear and that would be that. You would simply have to deal with it :-)

> > Customers choose to work with OS/400 filesystem or the SQL interface.
>
> Yes. Therefore and until IBM knows precisely who is using what,
> it is pointless, stupid and inaccurate to claim that ALL AS400 licenses
> are DB2/UDB licenses (implied as being used as such).

>> etc. i/Series is a DBMS with a capital S for SYSTEM. It is what 
>> Microsoft wants to have. One big "magic box" (remember the commercial?).

>
>
> Serge, Serge, Serge: I KNOW what it is. When it came out, it was
> a BIG step ahead in all this OS rubbish. And lauded as such, and the
> customer base responded accordingly by making the AS400 the most
> successful IBM platform EVER! Long before DB2 existed anywhere else other
> than as SQL/DS.

OK, so AS/400 had DBMS marketshare numbers long before DB2 UDB came out. Should these customers ,old and new depending on what you count, now suddenly just fall off because they didn't have a sexy DBMS name for what they were doing?

> What it NEVER was, is NOT and NEVER will be is DB2, or UDB!
> No matter how many times the deranged IBM marketing decides to
> change its name.

Ah.. now we are ot the crux of the matter. We refer to DB2 as a "Family of Products". Just like other vendors have multiple products under the same product line, so does IBM. E.g. where are the DBMS's for mobile devises logged? They are RDBMS and they carry the name Sybase, Oracle and DB2 with them, yet in no case are   they the same codebase as the server based product. If it were for the DBSM vendors these DBMS ought to power your Nokia cell phone making each cell phone sale a DBMS sale (and/or Palm, Windows, ....).

You seem to rub yourself on the definition of DB2. It seem like you don't like that "your" definition of what DB2 should be comprised of isn't Gartners, and IBMs. However DB2 is a brand-name. It is defined as "DB2 Information Management" and comprises DB2 Record Manager, DB2 Everyplace, DB2 Content Manager, DB2 for Unix, Windows and Linux, DB2 for z/OS and DB2 for i/Series (I may have forgotten a couple).. and also the Informix products, which are part of the group, but don't carry the name.
The title UDB stands for Universal Dabase. It's a title reserved for the DB2 products which support a certain set of basic OR functionality such as distinct types, LOBs, functions and procedures, ... Similarly IBM has other titles, such as Express which require a products to support certain criteria for maintenance and installation to name a few. Now, some of these DB2 Information Management products may not be counted as relational. DB2 for i/Series (which's code is part and parcel of OS/400) is relational and hence, obviously Gartner decides to count it. If you have an issue with that, I'm sure Gartner can roughly state how much of the numbers are DB2 for i/Series number. Gartner is an independent Reasearch firm, they will do what they feel right, not necessarily what IBM (or you) think. If you ask nicely and are willing to pay more than the $100 US they ask for, maybe they let you peek deeper into these numbers.

>> It is IMPOSSIBLE to separate DB2 function from OS/400 function. 

> But like you said above: many customers decide what to use.
> Amazing how those customers can be more discerning than IBM's own
> people...
>

>> when we discuss new "DB2" features I get: "Oh we do this through the 
>> filesystem interface like that since n-years".

>
>
> Bingo.
>

>> If a customers use OS/400 but not the SQL Interface, are they not 
>> using DB2?   If customers are using Oracle through XQuery are they not 
>> using
>> Oracle the database system? Should they not be counted? Does Oracle know? 

> Serge, when will you "folks" just wake up from the marketing
> bullshit you're fed every day? Can't you even spot the cretin
> abuse of language that is such an argument?
>
> Here is a clue: Oracle does not bundle Oracle licenses with
> other totally inappropriate products. They only sell Oracle.
> Therefore, what they sell cannot be other than Oracle licenses.
> A more clear example, in case you have not clicked yet:
> NO ONE goes to Oracle to buy a coffee grinder and ends up with an
> Oracle license (as much as it may hurt Larry's over-sensitive pocket).
I'm not sure how that works if I buy Oracle collaboration suite or one of the Apps. The later made quite a point of running only on Oracle DB though. So you end up with an Oracle license just the same merely by running Oracle Financials or whatever... and I have no problem with that.
> However, in IBM's case it is perfectly possible to buy an AS400 -
> or whatever IBM calls coffee grinders now - with a bunch of inherited
> and badly ported 3rd party System 38 packages and end up counted as a
> DB2/UDB(this last one is even more cretin!...) "user".
When you decide to by a Griddle and BBQ from Hamilton-Beach. Is it immoral for Hamilton Beach to say they sold a Griddle? You KNEW you would be buying a combination. If you wanted to buy only a table BBQ you could have done so. And you could have done so cheaper. If I a buy a Ferrari, but only use it in a traffic calming zone, is it not a sports car any more? Good luck trying that with your insurance :-)

> In Microsoft's and IBM's case, the onus is on the maker to
> PROVE they are not just churning numbers.
> And IBM's poor excuse of "we do not know how many" is at best
> a poor attempt to get their arses off the firing line.

> Got it now? Do you understand why I consider this kind of
> semantics (by Gartner, IBM or whomever!) an offensive abuse of
> anyone's patience and intelligence? Or do I have to use smaller
> words to explain myself?

Unless we agree to disagree which is OK. The doesn't need to be a winner. There never is in these debates anyway.
>
> Cripes, you people have some really smart cookies around, maybe
> you should bounce these moronic marketing campaigns off them
> every once in a while?

*lol* The last thing our smart cookies want to deal with is marketing. That is on eof IBMs bigger problems :-)

>> Brace yourself, because that whole "relational" DBMS categorization is 
>> going to get pretty meaningless anyway as MS, Oracle and IBM bury XML 
>> deep into their "engines" and Information Integration and Content 
>> Management gets bigger and bigger.

> I've been braced for it since, let me see: around 1997.
Well teh OR stuff was still mapped to Relational if that's what you mean, but XML has a lot more "umpf" to it.
>

>> It's all data. Your favorite email repository, text, image, XML, 
>> network router for crying out lout.

>
>
> Did I ever say it wasn't?

Then why do you care so much about whether IBM labels a sale in data a DB2 sale or a
*funnwordhere*-sale. Neither for a customer, nor for a stockholder, nor for an IBM employee should it matter.

Cheers
Serge

-- 
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab

Received on Mon Jun 07 2004 - 07:29:30 CDT