Oracle FAQ Your Portal to the Oracle Knowledge Grid
HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US
 

Home -> Community -> Usenet -> c.d.o.server -> Re: Sybase vs Oracle - which is better?

Re: Sybase vs Oracle - which is better?

From: <kennedyleigh_at_yahoo.com>
Date: 1998/11/20
Message-ID: <7341v7$o08$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>

In article <7318fh$4uk1_at_news.uscg.mil>,
  "P. Larsen" <plarsen_at_ballston.uscg.mil> wrote:

>
> I do find some of your claims to be wrong though ...
>
> kennedyleigh_at_yahoo.com wrote in message <72rn7e$fpb$1_at_nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>
 

> >It doesn't have anymore functionality though - sybase far fewer, more
 powerful
> >toos (ie: Sybase Central).
>
> Hmm .. I don't know what Sybase Central is - but if it's like Enterprise
> manager, that's part of the standard client tools for Oracle. Enterprise
 ...
>
> From the name "Sybase Central" it seems we are talking about some of the
> same functionality?

The enterprise manager (at least on NT) looks a bit disjoint to me. It does not support the ability to start and stop oracle processes as far as I can tell. Sybase central is more that just a tool for Sybase databases. It has a plug-in architecture (similar to netscape) which supports managing of All sybase products (ie: Adaptive Server Enterprise, Replication server, IQ Server, etc.).

> Huh?? BADLY WRITTEN applications use cursors? According to my RDBMS
> teorectically knowledge, even C.J. Date refers to Cursors as the only access
> you have doing SQL. Internally every SQL you do (at least in Oracle) is done
> by a cursor. Using the cursor command only differenciates between implicit
> and explicit cursors. Using host languages as Cobol or C, I need to use
> cursors to access data too.

Date ? Don't start me off on Mr "I love IBM" Date (Sorry, just a pet hate of mine !)
It sounds like Sybase and Oracle's internal implementations are radically different. Sybase doesn't use cursors internally in that way.

> PLEASE ...
> "Oracle cannot support more than one database in a server" ???
> Where did you get that statement from? Any server (one machine) can run as
> many instances of databases as you have memory and CPU power to run. I've
> seen very FEW installations with only ONE instance per box.

You are confused by terminology here. By Server I mean OS Process. The Sybase term 'Server' is the same as the Oracle term 'Instance'. What I was saying, was One Oracle Instance (ie: OS Process) can only have one Oracle Database, where as one Sybase Server (ie: OS Process) can have many Databases. Obviously you can run multiple OS processes, but that isn't very efficient as you are Duplicating System catalog, and other common resources.

> Agree! Oracle was one of the last vendors to implement constraints. However,
> the implementation they made seems to me, superior to anything I've seen
> elsewhere?? (I'll like to swap knowledge on this part).

How does oracle implement constraints ?

>
> One thing that I always find talking to Oracle's advantage is it's
> scalability. You can start your database on a local palmtop, and migrate it
> all to a 1TB database on a distributed unix installation without even
> changing one line of code. I know of no other database vendor who has this
> ability? The flexibility also allows smaller systems to be integrated with
> the larger, hence allowing traveling sales people to upload their palmtop
> databases to Oracle - by just using the internal replication manager
> software (Portable agents). What is Sybase doing in this field?

Sybase is the Market leader in Mobile and Embedded computing. Sybase's Ultralite edition of Adaptive server Anywhere runs in 50kb of memory and runs on Palmpilots, Windows CE, PSION and QNX embedded systems. This is far smaller than Oracle lite, even there new Palmpilot edition, which I believe is over 200k.

Adaptive Server Anywhere is 99% compatible with Adaptive Server Enterprise. It is possible to run the same code on both as you can with Oracle. I don't have any knowledge of Oracle replication, but Sybase supports bidirectional replication such as you discribe with SQL Remote. This suports the traditional types of replication as well as less conventional types such as via E-mail.

> Hmm .. that's how you define "suitable" :)) But Sybase do have some
> advantages - however choosing a database must not be done by looking at
> todays technology but tomorrows. Everyone knows about Larry Ellions vision
> about networked computing - what role does Sybase have in a world based on
> thin clients? When the silence comes over the screaming match between Bill
> Gates and Larry Ellioson I'll like to hear the visions from the other
> vendors out there. Do they share or agree with either of the above CEO's or
> do they have their own vision (niche) they are following?

Sybase are an Open Systems company. They believe that Customers should be choosing the Techology they use, not a couple of idiots involved in a public slanging match (and you have to admit, Larry Ellison & bill Gates both say some stupid things sometimes). Sybases approach it to provide interoperability between both camps - Sybase products such as the Enterprise Application Server support, Corba, Java, COM, DCOM etc. and allow them all to co-exist happily. Sybase was the first vendor to bring out pure java JDBC drivers (ie; they do not rely on any underlying protoctols such as odbc or SQL-NET), and they sell two of the leading client development tools in both camps; Powerbuilder is the second most popular Windows development tool after Visual Basic, and PowerJ is one of the leading Java development tools.

>
> Hehe - sounds interesting. I cannot image accessing data in BLOCK mode when
> it comes to transactional based systems. Datawarehousing is another matter -
> but SAP is not a datawarehouse.
>
> - Peter Larsen

I get the impression from you statements that Oracle is so different architecturally the original issue may not be comparible between the two.

Regards,
Leigh Kennedy.

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Fri Nov 20 1998 - 00:00:00 CST

Original text of this message

HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US