Comparison of DB2 and Oracle?

#41

Daniel,

what do you do at the University of Washington ?

nothing to do with education ?

Regards
Michael Newport

#42

michael newport wrote:

Quote:

development and maintenance costs are human factors.

Yes! And they are onging.

To reduce the total cost of a project over several years,

Reduce development and maintenance costs,
By writing and maintaining LESS code,
By having more capability in the vendor's product,
By using that capability.

/Hans

#43

michael newport wrote:

Quote:

So why buy Oracle when Ingres is free.

If you use Oracle like you use Ingres, you are absolutely correct.

The implication is that accounting and shareholders or stakeholders (or
wife) have not had a review of where time and money are going. Which is
more toward keeping old technology alive than improving the business.

Which makes me worry about management and the viability of the organization.
(Suggest you keep your resume polished ...)

Simplest example I can think of - Catalog the CD library & make it
accessible using browsers:

- Get Oracle DB (list price personal = US$400)
- Install DB (1 hour, 'cause I read the instructions)
- Install free HTML DB from companion disk (1 hour)
- use HTML DB to create tables, Web pages (1 hour)
for a tutorial, see http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/index.html

Steps in Ingres? Unless something sigificant has changed in the past 7
years (last time I looked at it seriously) I suspect it takes a few
additional pieces of software, including PERL ('cause we want to stay
free), and a few additional hours.

Of course, you _could_ use Oracle the same way as Ingres and code the
solution in PERL or otherwise. But my wife prefers I send time with her
instead of the computer, and these days I prefer to listen to the CDs than
to code the catalog. (I listened when they said 'get a life' <g>)

/Hans

#44

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.databases.oracle.server.]
On 2004-10-20, Hans Forbrich <news.hans (AT) telus (DOT) net> wrote:

Quote:

Mikito Harakiri wrote:

Hans Forbrich <news.hans (AT) telus (DOT) net> wrote in message
news:<h3Scd.18205$cr4.15935@edtnps84>...
...functionality that I see required in many
apps such as: workflow, message queueing, replication, subqueries, direct
http request/response capability, security, backup/recovery, admin &
management tools, job scheduler (akin to cron, but inside the DB), DB
initiated callouts to OS shared libraries, DB initiated mail & page, DB
initiated TCP calls, and so on.

I alway wondered what is the true value of those bells and whistles.
Let's not forget that RDBMS essentially is a SQL execution engine, and
everything else should be judged from the perspective how well does it
fit into that primary purpose. Therefore, let's go through your list
itemized:

The value is simply in having a wheel around that doesn't need to be
re-invented and maintained.

No, it just sounds like suitable products need to be selected for
each of these tasks rather than just taking an Microsoft Office approach
to architecting the system.

Quote:

No matter how much one explains these away with "isn't it just ...",
developers always seme to be reinventing these "justs". What you call
"bells and whistles" seem to be a base requirement in 90% of the projects
I've seen in the past 3 years - only the developer's don't realize the
bells are already there so they either build or buy a completely new set.

If that wasn't true, JMS, MQ Series Queuing and Workflow (oh, sorry - it's
WebSphere now), and the like would not have a reason for being.

These products have a reason for being because each product represents
a specialization in it's own right. If given the choice between a specialist
product such as MQ over some element of Oracle bundleware, I would be inclined
to go for the IBM product simply because I know that I can count on it to be
a discrete component that isn't going to be unecessarily tied to another
Oracle product.

Quote:

Or are you saying - let's get back to commoditizing the SQL engine so we can
recover some of the revenue from these capabilities? Or continue stretching
project timelines to accomplish stuff that already exists? <g

--
Negligence will never equal intent, no matter how you
attempt to distort reality to do so. This is what separates |||
the real butchers from average Joes (or Fritzes) caught up in / | \
events not in their control.

#45

michael newport wrote:

Quote:

http://tpc.org/information/other/articles/TopTen.asp

The performance of databases is one issue, pricing is another. (Ingres
is FREE)

TPC results should not be used as a substitute for benchmarking of
one's own application if performance is a critical decision criteria

Michael

And MySQL is the same price and far better with respect to performance,
scalability, and job potential.

Today, October 25th at http://www.dice.com
Oracle 7,926 jobs
Access 7,198 jobs
DB2 1,785 jobs
Sybase 1,389 jobs
COBOL 914 jobs
Informix 272 jobs
MySQL 247 jobs
FoxPro 58 jobs
PostgreSQL 31 jobs
Ingres 18 jobs
Paradox 10 jobs
dBASE 10 jobs
Advanced Rev. 3 jobs

So there you go ... a product so valuable that in the entire
U.S. there are almost twice as many jobs available as for those
whose expertise is in dBASE. Less than 2% of the job market of COBOL.
And fewer jobs offerings than the other "free" products. Where can I
sign up?

Even when it is free Ingres isn't worth anything.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)

#46

michael newport wrote:

Quote:

I am now (1 year) working with Oracle and my work involves doing the
same stuff that I did with Ingres (see previous post).

That's not the fault of the product. That direct and proximate
responsibility falls on you for being a dinosaur. How much code have
you implemented with bulk binding? How much with the model clause?
How much with analytic functions? How many materialized views with
refresh logs?

Why not just admit that you have reached the point in your life
where you want technology to stop and let you keep doing what you
did in neolithic times.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)

#47

michael newport wrote:

Quote:

Daniel,

what do you do at the University of Washington ?

nothing to do with education ?

Regards
Michael Newport

Teach databases something that might have interested you
once in your life.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)

#48

"michael newport" <michaelnewport (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

Quote:

http://tpc.org/information/other/articles/TopTen.asp

The performance of databases is one issue, pricing is another. (Ingres
is FREE)

TPC results should not be used as a substitute for benchmarking of
one's own application if performance is a critical decision criteria

Michael
If this is the same Ingres I used awhile ago I wouldn't touch it with a ten

foot pole even if you paid me. The concurrency model sucks, start a
transaction, insert a record, lock 95% of the table if it has a primary
key - because the page locks on the index locks most of the pages. NO ONE
ELSE COULD GET ANY WORK DONE, unless you threw out the transaction model and
went to auto commit. POS.
Jim

#49

Jim,

you said this before, but I have not had the problem.

Regards
Michael Newport

#50

Hans,

Quote:

development and maintenance costs are human factors.

Yes! And they are onging.

If the analysis and /or programming is bad then these costs will be higher.
And do not forget, Oracle will charge you for a licence, this is ongoing.

Quote:

To reduce the total cost of a project over several years,

Reduce development and maintenance costs,
Human.
By writing and maintaining LESS code,
Human.
By having more capability in the vendor's product,
The database market is saturated with capable products.

What does RMAN do that the OS does not ?

Quote:

By using that capability.
Human.