Re: Does anyone have serious databases on NT?

A recent poll on the Team DBA web site showed that over 70% of the respondents where using Oracle on NT. However, the overwhelming majority of those who said that had not used Oracle on NT claimed they would never do so.

I maintain databases on both NT and Unix, and the difference is scale. Big databases go on Unix. Small to medium databases go on NT. Unix (Solaris) is significantly more stable, but the hardware is more expensive and the personnel needed to administer these databases or servers command higher salaries. NT is cheaper!!!!!! The Oracle claims concerning a lower cost of ownership are misleading because these assume large databases in a distributed environment. For the **majority** of databases (< 4GB and < 50 users), NT is the best choice for both cost and ease of management.

Contrary to what many people say, Oracle on NT is by far the easiest to set up, maintain, and monitor. Oracle on NT seems to run best from my experience using service pack 5 and service pack 3.

Performance-wise, SQL Server 7.0 is within 10% of Oracle on NT at less than 1/5th the cost for software. On a large SMP Xeon box (Compaq for example), NT is a pretty serious contender. I believe that NT on the Merced will pose a very serious challenge to many Unix installations.

Commercial Unix is overkill for the majority of databases. However, for small platforms, Linux is an untested entity, and Linux might shake NT's dominance in the small to medium market. Performance numbers vary between NT and Linux. However, Linux is free, Linux is easy for Unix administrators to learn, and Linux is improving. Since both Oracle and Sybase have stable releases, Linux is a contender. Linux also scales to SMP on both Intel and Alpha. Dell is producing solid Linux workstations. When Dell starts producing high-end 6300's with Linux, Linux will become a serious Oracle platform/OS.

For the near future, I couldn't imagine running a large database (>100Gb and
>100 users) on NT. However, it is often cheaper to break up large databases
onto small NT boxes, depending on the number of users.

Christopher Weiss
Professional Services Division
Compuware Corporation

<mkx_at_excite.com> wrote in message
news:37a18698.4811097_at_news.supernews.com...
> After reading many, many articles, press releases, and marketing
> propaganda about the fight for the dominant position on NT, I seem to
> see something missing: Any direct evidence that anyone is using the
> major databases on NT (other than Microsoft's SQL Server). Most
> serious (non-mainframe) projects always seem to go on Unix, AS/400,
> etc. I understand why this is - many organizations are hesitant to go
> "Enterprise on NT".
>
> All of the statistics I have seen wrap the UNIX/NT market segments
> together. Thus the "leader in license revenue" may have gotten there
> on UNIX, without selling that much on NT.
>
> I simply am interested in seeing where the major work is being done on
> NT specifically, and if it is done elsewhere than MS SQL.
>
>
>
Received on Fri Jul 30 1999 - 09:37:16 CDT