Hi,

I'm doing a master's thesis which includes some background study on the most
common RMDBS software on the market today.

I was thinking of comparing IBM DB2, Oracle, MS SQL server and ACCESS (in a
separate category).

Since I am pretty new to databases and database properties, I was wondering
if anyone could shed some light to this question: what are the most
important properties of an RDBMS ? There are a lot of white papers in the
dev's home sites, but most of them are unobjective ads, which makes the task
difficult.

Any help appreciated!

rgds
Tero

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 12:30:04 +0200 in comp.databases, "Tero Partanen"
<teropa (AT) paju (DOT) oulu.fi> wrote:

The biggest property you'll find with those 4 is that the first 3 are
client/server architechture and the last one is not, strictly
speaking, it's not a database manager of any kind, it's a front-end
application, it comes bundled with Jet, which is a desktop database
(ISAM based but you can use the SQL language on it). Can be multi user
but for about 10 - 30 people if you're lucky, uses humungus amounts of
network bandwidth. It works fastest if you utilise the ISAM methods of
data retrieval, compared to trying to throw SQL at it, the ISAM
methods are anywhere from about 10 to 10000 times faster (est.).

Although Access does now come with MSDE as well, which is a limited
version of SQL Server, all the features of it's big brother but
limited to 5 query threads and cannot be a replication publisher (can
be a subscriber though) and limited to 2GB database size.

I don't know much about DB2 or Oracle but I suggest you visit the web
sites as well as the people here are not that enthusiastic about doing
your homework for you :-)


--
A)bort, R)etry, I)nfluence with large hammer.

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 12:30:04 +0200, Tero Partanen wrote:

For a formal approach, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relatio...agement_system

A less formal approach:
It clearly depends on what you want to use them for. But generally, I
would say that the following are important parameters:

- how stable and secure the product is, including
how well ACID properties are supported [1]

- how fast the product is [2], including how well it scales on
multiprocessor systems, and perhaps also options for various kinds of
clustering

- how intelligently the optimizer works

- what SQL features are supported [3], and perhaps also:
what non-SQL features are supported (but beware of these: they limit
the portability of your code)

- price, both up-front and various more or less hidden costs - how easy
it is to install and maintain the product (system administration)

- how well drivers (ODBC, JDBC, native) work on relevant
platforms/frameworks


Notes:
1: ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and
Durability - google a bit for further information on these.
2: Unfortunately, several well known DBMSes make you promise
not to publish benchmarks containing the products.
3: I have listed some differences at
http://troels.arvin.dk/db/rdbms/

--
Greetings from Troels Arvin, Copenhagen, Denmark

"Tero Partanen" <teropa (AT) paju (DOT) oulu.fi> wrote

In general:
http://www.dbdebunk.com/page/page/859889.htm

For the physical level:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/tex...iry.asp?isbn=1
558607536&TXT=Y&itm=1

"Tero Partanen" <teropa (AT) paju (DOT) oulu.fi> wrote


It is a very unsatisfactory market.

None of the above are truly RDBMSs, and Access is not a DBMS.

See: "An Introduction to Database Systems" by CJ Date.

What you want is in the first chapters.

Another very interesting book is: "Understanding Relational Databases
with Examples in SQL-92" by Fabian Pascal.

It was edited in 1993, but it is not a problem.


Regards
Alfredo

A fundamental property is the ability to represent things of interest
adequately for your application. For many case, RDBMS are the
appropriate tool. To represent things that have highly variable
relations, see www.xdb1.com for an experimental db.

Great suggestions, guys!

Very much appreciated, thank you!

regards,
Tero

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