Re: database market share 2003

Jeroen van den Broek allegedly said,on my timestamp of 8/06/2004 8:38 AM:

> Assuming this has been >10 years back, as MVS/XA has been withdrawn end
> 1992, do you think nothing has changed since, both for the OS as for Oracle?

Actually, I know quite a few places that still ran it in 1996... But no: being IBM, very little would have changed. After all, there is not much one can change in
BALR R14,R15
or is there?
;)

> Why are you getting personal?

Personal? You wish! :D

> As a matter of fact, I work both with DB2 and Oracle (on OS/390) and
> although I am far more familiar with DB2, I am perfectly happy with Oracle
> as well.

Cool.

> The manuals don't explain the OS (lots of IBM-manuals for that), but the
> differences in architecture, administrative procedures, parameters, messages
> etc between the OS/390 version of Oracle and the 'standard' Oracle
> environment.

And remarkably, I can STILL type select * from my_table in MVS/XA, OS390, z/os or anything else this side of a PC and get EXACTLY the same result, eh? I can also type CREATE TABLE zot (f1 NUMBER) tablespace ZOT_TS and have it work ANYWHERE, regardless of whatever bit size the number data type might be in that hardware. And type CREATE TABLESPACE ZOT_TS DATAFILE 'any suitable string' and it will damn WORK anywhere. Not bad for a product that "needs" all those "manuels", eh?

You see, none of them have ANYTHING to do with how you'd write or design the SQL for an app. It's the same, regardless of wherever you might run it. That goes for dml AND ddl.

Now, if you want to claim that a "manuel" is needed to handle Oracle connecting with CICS, sure. And HAC-whatever? Sure. And TSO? Sure. And SAF? Sure. And <insert your flavour of MVS paranoia here>? Sure. You see, those are IBM's own ideas of how to run a computer. NOBODY else uses that sort of stuff other than
MVS/OS390/z/os/whatever/the/flavour/of/the/week/is/at/rebadge/central.

> I am perfectly aware that I am no match for you w.r.t. knowledge about
> Oracle in general, but this doesn't give you the right to act like a VIP and

that is a pity and not what I meant. My apologies.

> I have read more of the current OS/390-specific Oracle-documentation then
> yourself.

That would be a fair assumption. I couldn't care much for that platform, quite frankly. Boring. Been there, done that.

> Maybe you care to read this pdf-file:
> http://shareweb.share.org/proceedings/sh96/data/S0961.PDF
> It contains an 'Introduction to Oracle on OS/390 with OSDI' written by Ken
> Panza from Oracle.

A few comments:

wow! So, Oracle delivered its RDBMS in 1996 for MVS that had been "withdrawn" in 1992, eh? Hmmmmmmmm........

"OS390 cross memory services"?????? Precious! Longest spelling of "shared memory" I've ever seen. Talk about spin... LOL!

"IBM's OS390 supports only 31-bit addressing". Not bad for a "sophisticated" OS. :) Thank God they removed the 16 Mb "line" between MVS and OS390, eh? Oh, bugger...

WTH are there TWO versions of the kernel for a single OS. I can see why, but it should NEVER have been needed. Says a lot for the level of incompatibility of
MVS/OS390/z/os/whatever/the/flavour/of/the/week/is/at/rebadge/central with itself.

One clear point above all: OSDI is not there to make Oracle look different. It is there because
MVS/OS390/z/os/whatever/the/flavour/of/the/week/is/at/rebadge/central is a piece of old garbage that should have been removed from the IT landscape eons ago. But I guess IBM hasn't yet milked enough moolah out of this old technology, eh?

> One final question: if you think Unix is the only viable environment not
> only for Oracle, but for all critical business software, why bother about

No it isn't the only viable environment. But I can guarantee you: neither is MVS/OS390/z/os/whatever/the/flavour/of/the/week/is/at/rebadge/central.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au.nospam