Re: ORACLE VS. SYBASE

On Tuesday 25 September 2001 02:15, Maya Kenner wrote:
>
> Sybase...
> - 11.9.2 is beating Oracle's database in Tpc tests. See the TPC-C
> tests at www.tpc.org and sort by Hardware Vendor. A recent TPC-C
> benchmark of Sybase ASE 12.0..0.2 on Sun E-10000 beat Oracle on
> the same platform by 36%. (Cost per transaction (156,873 tpmC) was
> $48.81 vs. Oracle's (115,395 tpmC) of $105.63). This is the fastest
> TPC benchmark ever recorded (as of 12/2000) for a SMP environment.
>

TPC is not useful for comparing database vendors. So what if database X is faster than database Y in some specialized configuration? Very few customers will ever try to push the database that hard.

We're all familiar with the phrase 'with flexibility comes complexity'.

Well, Oracle is a very complex beast, capable of doing just about anything you wish it to do. It might be a little slower, it might be a little faster, who cares.

As far as the $$ per transaction, the only possible purpose that serves is to catch the attention of bean counters. It's a phony number. $$ per transaction is as dependent on your organization as it is on the HW and SW.

> - Sybase is far less Expensive than Oracle. Arbitrarily, Oracle charges
> per megahertz on the CPU, a Universal Power Unit. UPU=number of processors
> multiplied by processor speed, multiplied by $100 (the current price per
> UPU). This has problems two ways; a PC chip works at far higher megahertz
> speeds than a Sun Ultrachip, meaning a far more powerful server costs far
> less than a PC-based server. Secondly, users are charged for capacity over
> an entire server, even if Oracle is not the only software running.
> Additional features are always additional cost in Oracle; Sybase builds in
> all features to its entine.

Sure it is. The Sybase feature set is nowhere near as rich as Oracle's.

> - Oracle's Tech support is inferior compared to Sybase's. Online case
> management and updating, instant reponse times.

Actually, I've usually had pretty good success with Oracle Support. It's been a *long* time since I've actually had to open a TAR.

> - Sybase is cheaper to administer, from a DBA standpoint. Mgrs report
> that one Sybase DBA can do what 2-3 Oracle DBA's do.

That's a crock. I've taken the Sybase classes. There just isn't as much to do, because it does less. Does spending all your time running dbcc count?

> - Sybase's Customization and Tuning is simple (one text file contains
> hundreds of database server options) compared to tuning Oracle. It is
> far easier to administer, install, operate Sybase. Very easy to create
> databases versus instances.

Not true. Oracle is easier. Been there, done it.

>
> - Disaster Recovery; with inline backup utilities, Sybase can back itself
> up on the fly w/o taking tablespaces offline. Replication server
> creates a warm standby for 100% uptime. Oracle can do neither.

Replication Server is indeed very powerful. However, you *will* need a consultant to set it up. Trust me, if you don't have a lot of experience with it, you'll make a mess.

OK, out of time.

Jared

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Author: Jared Still
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