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Re: Oracle vs. Sybase

From: Bryan Warfield <Bryan.Warfield_at_DAL.frb.org>
Date: 1997/06/12
Message-ID: <33A015BD.1CE0@DAL.frb.org>#1/1

Ken Eaton wrote:
>
> A. S. Williams wrote:
> >
> > To some this will appear to be a repost, but please be patient with me. I
> > am trying to justify a choice between these two products for a fully
> > relational database product to use for a large customer base, large user
> > base corporate application with a requirement of high reliability. I would
> > appreciate any comments concerning perceived or known limitations with
> > either product that can be provided. I have heard of some limitations, but
> > am trying to get more details and can't even find a web site with objective
> > reviews of these products. Thanks in advance for your participation...
> >
> > A. S. WilliamsWe recently went through the same analysis. We had a major application
> based on Sybase and some in-house Oracle databases. Oracle came out the
> winner with the key differences being:
> 1) Financial stability of Sybase as a company is questionable.
> Sybase had five quarters of losing money when we did our
> evaluation.
> 2) Broader base of products available that work with it. i.e.
> We were looking to buy a Financial package and Sybase was
> more limiting than Oracle.
> 3) More consulting expertise available with Oracle...
> 4) Questions about the QC process for Sybase that would allow
> version 10 out with major bugs that caused us a lot of
> heartache... Oracle isn't perfect, but appears to release
> cleaner products than Sybase. Version 11 from Sybase looks
> good though...
> FWIW... Sybase is less DBA intensive than Oracle. It is easier to tune
> and manage. They also have good gateway and replication features. Their
> prices are lower than Oracle's although the gap is closing. There were a
> number of other things we looked at, but they didn't lean heavily one
> way or the other.

I've used Sybase 10 & 4.9, but not 11. I prefer Oracle to Sybase. The Oracle redo log architecture is superior to the single log used in Sybase. It seems that the Sybase log always fills and requires 'dump tran with nolog' regardless of how large you make it (at least in transaction-intensive environments). Very annoying. Also, Oracle's row-level locking really is better than page-level locking, preventing most concurrency problems. I agree that Sybase is less DBA-intensive, however, and that's because it's less tunable (i.e., far less control over the database is possible with Sybase, it simply doesn't have dozens of setable parameters & options available). If you don't mind this, then Sybase is okay.



Bryan Warfield Certified Oracle DBA Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas voice: 214-922-5873 E-mail: Bryan.Warfield_at_DAL.frb.org Received on Thu Jun 12 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT

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