Re: Oracle vs SQL server

Masjid1 wrote in message <19990505112119.17135.00002363_at_ng18.aol.com>...

>My question is what area (mainly the 5%) is beyond SQL server's
>abilities.

Lack of scalability I think says it all. Two issues at stake here IMHO.

Firstly. SQL-Server is tied to Windows-NT. Windows-NT does not scale as well as high-end UNIX SMP platforms. Neither is Windows-NT's support for clustering anywhere near the capability of UNIX MPP (massive parallel processing) platforms.

Secondly. SQL-Server itself can scale as well as Oracle. Oracle has been proven many times in real life installations - its ability to support VLD's and high volume transaction based systems on 24x7 basis. The only VLD showcase Microsoft has is it's "terra database" which does not meet the requirements of a VLD in my mind. Even at over a terabyte, it contains far less than a 100 million rows in its largest table. Physical size is a dealt with hardware - volume (as in number of rows) are handled by the database engine.

Coming back to the article though, I disagree that there is 5% that can not be done by SQL-Server. I would be reluctant to assign any kind of percentage to what a database system can do and can not do. Where does "how well it does it" feature in these percentages?

regards,
Billy Received on Thu May 06 1999 - 02:50:25 CDT