Re: How to determine database market share?

Paul wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have been having a debate recently on another forum about database
> market penetration and how to measure it.

Your life must be exceedingly boring.

> My point of view would be that even for companies which *_only_*
> produce databases (Oracle until recently, MySQL, say now), it is
> impossible from their financial filings to determine how many

Your statement is incorrect on its face. Orcle has been producing many products for more than a decade. Your ignorance is not Oracle's lack of product offerings: You should not equate the two.

> a) paid for installs there are
>
> and
>
> b) if an install is paid for, how much was paid (VAR, Corporate
> resellers, OEM agreements, <insert contractual agreement of your
> choice>).

Apparently you have never read a license agreement and never heard of a site license. I would suggest that before you engage in a debate on a topic you familiarize yourself with it.

Is 1 $10,000 license for product A worth 1 $2,500 license for product B? Is it worth 4X as much? What if one is a per user license and the other a per CPU license? A site license? What is one system is connected to users via client-server and the other to an application server connected to the internet?

My guess is that Amazon.com has one Oracle license agreement. My guess is that eBay does too. Two licenses? What if part of the license cost is an agreement to share services? Of what relevance is the license's dollar cost?

> TIA.
>
> Paul....

You might want to go back to watching American Idol. ;-)

Basically I've said what Billy said but with more words.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)