Re: Oracle vs SQL Server

On 10/01/2006 01:34:41 PM, Sandra Becker wrote:
> My boss believes that if Oracle can't come down in price to that of SQL
> Server, we should just switch. I have never used SQL Server so I had
> nothing to draw on other than what I've heard. We're a small company with
> limited financial resources, but I believe the decision should be based on
> more than strictly price. To that end I have three questions.

Actually, in my opinion, the decision should be based strictly on price. The only question is how to calculate the price. Oracle is much more feature rich then SQL Server and if you need features like standby database, replication, fault tolerance or availability of good people, Oracle is actually cheaper.

>
> 1. Is there an article comparing either 9i or 10g (currently on 9i Standard
> One Edition preparing to migrate to 10g Standard Edition) with SQL Server
> 2005? We run on RHEL3 and will be moving to RHEL4 within then next
> month or so on a Dell 64 bit dual core server. I have reviewed the articles
> mentioned on Tom Kyte's website, but nothing did a comparison of Oracle
> and SQL Server 2005, which is the release my boss is considering.

Most of those articles are biased and ordered by either Microsoft or Oracle, so the comparison is always slanted toward the guys who signed the check. Oracle has had some recent coding blunders and their outsourcing to Elbonia impacted the quality of their products in an extremely negative way (SQL being executed in a WRONG SCHEMA? WTF?). On the other hand, MS is much worse which is something that can be read in any computer newspaper. They constantly list the complexity of their code as an excuse. Neither of the companies is very good at the moment. If you really want to be a hero, my advice would be to consider other alternatives, like PostgreSQL.

-- 
Mladen Gogala
http://www.mladen-gogala.com

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