Re: How to determine database market share?

Paul wrote:
> Hi all,
>

>
> The thrust of my argument has been that, in the absence of any other
> reliable metrics, an analysis of job adverts in a particular market
> (say country) is *_AS GOOD A WAY AS ANY_* to determine market
> penetration (if no absolute revenue or number of (paid for) installs
> is available - normally the case - and even then, they are potentially
> misleading).

No, that would be a measure of the froth in the job market. It is highly skewed towards whatever is hot at the moment, and even more so because a company will put out a req, then several headhunters will post that as a job advert. And some in the HR profession will say that most high level positions aren't advertised.

>
>
> Can anyone think of or does anyone know of a better metric for
> measuring db penetration than job ads? They don't *_always_* mention
> the db they are targetting, but *_usually_* there is some mention of
> the particular implementation (be it Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase,
> Informix, DB2.... whatever).

The best info we have is Gartner group type studies and the vendor's press releases. Mostly crap in the opinion of many, but it is the best we have. I think it isn't too unreasonable to assume the crap percentage is more or less constant among such things (and isn't 100%), so they can be compared. And when they differ about the same product, that is a metric of crap ratio.

jg

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