Re: Oracle vs. Sybase

Bryan Warfield wrote:
>
> 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
Try System 11 before drawing the above conclusions.

matt townsend Received on Thu Jun 12 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT