Re: database market share 2003

Noons wrote:
> Serge Rielau allegedly said,on my timestamp of 10/06/2004 1:02 AM:
>
>> I disagree. Everyone equates Oracle (no qualifier) with the Relational
>> database, yet the same name is used for Apps, and of course the mobile
>> database offering.
>
>
> and quite wrongly, IMHO. Been one of my old grudges with Oracle,
> as a matter of fact. It's as stupid as it gets and only confuses people.
> Let's not go into what it does to the heads of competition's marketeers.
> (the expression "major meltdown" springs to mind...)
>
> The names were originally Oracle Financials for the apps and Oracle RDBMS
> for the database. Which would equate to IBM "this" or IBM "that", given
> that Oracle is the name of the company. NOT the name of the product.
> Somewhere in the last 12 years it all became mixed up, with dire
> consequences for intelligible conversation.
The rub, I think, is that brands are in companies hands. It has flipsides, too. E.g. IBM is a "hardware company" DB2 is a "mainframe product". As much as using DB2 (or Oracle) may help on one side, it hurts on another.
It is a rather amusing twist that "UDB" is perceived as being DB2 for LUW. It's a sign of popularity, IMHO. DB2 UDB for LUW has stepped out of DB2 for z/OS shadow.
>
>> The lastest crime is "for Muliplatforms" which sounds like Milla
>> Jovovich in the "5. Element" and is largely ignored.
> Et tu, Brutus? ;)

I tried. Gave up when I figured I'm standing alone and noone nows what I'm talking about. Back to LUW, it's prettier anyway: DB2 for "love" :-)

>> We had similar problems with "SQL Procedural Langage" (SQL PL) which
>> isn't a language at all, really.. It's just SQL.
>
>
> Yeah, that sounded always like a major twist of PL/SQL... :)
> I never understood why not just call it what it is: ANSI SQL.
> After all, IBM always called Cobol as ANSI Cobol...
We tried exactly that. But how do tell a customer that: IBM Rep (eager): "DB2 UDB V7.1 for LUW now supports procedures written in SQL"
Customer(oblivious): "You mean: "EXEC SQL SELECT c1 INTO var FROM T;"? What's new about that?"
IBM Rep (excited): "No! No C or Java, just SQL!" Customer: "But how to I do procedural logic ???" "In SQL!"
"???*blink*"
Reason: SQL is "perceived" to deal with queries only. So we settled for SQL "Procedural Language" statements to classify IF, WHILE etc. and SQL PL is the obvious acronym to use.

>> Things need short memorisable names, the market demands it, and if
>> there is none chaos prevails.
>> It's an IBM blindspot.
>
>
> Not just IBM...

Possibly, I never worked for another company.

-- 
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab