Re: Evaluation of databases

Deborah Dawicki wrote:

> Hi, We are performing a database evaluation between Oracle, DB2, Sybase
> and SQL Server and we are a historical publisher.. If you have performed
> an evaluation recently amongst all or part of these databases, please
> send your results to
> debor19071_at_aol.com.. Thanks very much in advance.

Other than attempting to incite a flame-war what you have asked is totally meaningless.

Which product is better depends on a very large number of factors. For example if your in-house expertise is Microsoft products and you can't afford to hire a good Oracle DBA and UNIX sysadmin and you have very small to moderate volumes of data I would favor SQL Server. If your in-house expertise is UNIX and you have very large transaction volumes and large amounts of data it would favor Oracle (or DB/2 if you have mainframes).

Without a huge amount of important information related to in-house expertise, dollar range you can afford, security requirements, stability requirements, size of data, number of transactions per time period, and lots of other factors all you are going to get are ill-formed opinions from likely uninformed practitioners. Lets face it ... we all like what we know. Ask this question in an Informix group and they will tell you Informix. Ask it in Redmond WA and they will tell you SQL Server. I think the question is ridiculous because I have personally worked in multiple environments and know that all have their place in the real world. And add to that opinions from people of unknown credentials and experience on the internet are worth exactly what you paid for them.

So my advise to you is to get someone who knows multiple solutions to come in, be interviewed, gather your requirements, and evaluate them. If you don't you'll get exactly what you deserve. And if you can't afford it ... then just get SQL Server because you obviously can not afford the cost of any other solution or will implement it so poorly you'll complain about it for a decade.

Daniel A. Morgan Received on Wed May 30 2001 - 00:54:10 CDT