Re: *****SPAM***** RE: Differences between Oracle and Progress, actually starting point for considering any migration from Oracle to anything else...

On 3/20/07, Powell, Mark D <mark.powell_at_eds.com> wrote:

>
> While using a physical stopwatch is a valid end to end timing method
> (from customer enter to response), this method definitely lacks
> precision for timing individual database operations. I can see some
> humor in running across this recommendation.

I tend to agree, whilst it's an absurdly amateurish approach, it does at least have the benefit of doing the right thing, the section this comes from essentially boils down to

1. Determine the transactions that matter to your business.
2. Measure the response time
3. create baseline
4. monitor against baseline Now that is clearly ripe for maturing into a method R type approach. The measurement device is inappropriate and the granularity appears to be the entire transaction, but at least it is the right general idea.

Unfortunately the lack of granularity is probably responsible for the next bit that starts

"Always analyze problems starting with the slowest resource and moving to the fastest. Thus, the first place to start is disks, then memory, and finally CPU efficiency."
Hmmm - because I've never seen a system starved of CPU with idle disks, no sir not me.

Mind you IIRC this thread started with a question about the relative merits of Oracle and Progress for some existing systems, it seems to me that in this context the right place to start is not relative performance, but wether the application will run at all. My guess is that many/most Oracle apps will not run without considerable effort on Progress and vice-versa - and the ones that do are probably platform agnostic and perform badly everywhere anyway.

I'd much rather take the point of view that we are in the business of supporting applications, not databases and that the right database choice is driven by the application which in turn is driven by business need. A bit like the reason that so many corporations run windows - not because of a love of microsoft, but because the applications that they need run on it.

> --
> Niall Litchfield
> Oracle DBA
> http://www.orawin.info

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