Re: MS SQL Server vs Oracle vs DB2 (&Sybase too)

Norris wrote:

> In MSSQL, I can create a database maintainance plan in about 5 minutes using a
> wizard that includes database consistency check and daily backup schedule of
> about 50 databases.

Yes, we use it.

Just wait 'til the SQL Agent screws you. Change the sa password, or do something to your exchange server. Not only will the MAPI break, the SQL Agent might get jammed. Worse, we changed the sa pwd, & it stopped doing backups. But it kept mailing us telling us "SUCCESS."

And it wouldn't work right, even when we rebuilt the maint. plans. Even when I manually wrote jobs, step by step. So back to the old pwd.

Worse, that MS SQL Agent only sends alerts to ONE e-mail address. That's it. Just one. And maint. plans only do BACKUPs or TRAN LOG dumps but not DIFFERENTIAL backups. What happened there? Did someone leave DIFF's out of the spec? Hello?

That SQL Agent breaks its MAPI interface twice a month. Sometimes the only sol'n is to cycle the server. MS could've used the xp_sendmail that's part of MS SQL 4.x up to 7. But no, sendmail's open standard, much less reliable. So SQL 7 used the Windoze Mail API. IMO, that SQL Agent is the most amaturish P-O-S I've seen.

No, wait, the DB2 6.2 GUI control center also travels faster than the speed of suck too. But at least the DB2 GUI CC isn't responsible for fouling up your backups.

> It really saves a lot of administrative effort and time and
> I can concentrate on development as a Web Developer.

I think you just, unknowingly, hit the nail on the head. MS SQL is _more_ for developers & NT admins than it is for DBAs. MS has knowingly built MS SQL to fit the small to midsize shop where the developer and/or NT admin is also wearing a DBA hat. That's 90% of the apps. MS is going for the markets that Intel can tackle successfully, w/ 32-bit & bridged PCI limitations.

MS focuses more on it's client tools & it shows. Its OLE-DB interfaces out to the rest of the world is pretty good. A lot of people like SQL Server's DTS ( I don't) & replication. But MS SQL 7 is still constrained by the limitations of Windows & MS's developer-centric approach.

Look where I sit: I'm running a state-wide data center for Texas state gov't. MS SQL is for our small apps. Sybase for our ERP PeopleSoft apps & medium-sized apps. Thank God I have DB2 to help me deal with this VLDB 12 gigabyte-per-week throughput on one database & a data warehousing & mart project _starting_ at a terabyte. Neither SYbase nor MS SQL could keep up with the thruput.

I have a choice on the 1st project: 4 NT servers that'd cost $500k OR 1 RS/6000 Unix (AIX) box that'll cost $500k. The NT boxen (Compaqs) will have 1/3rd the power w/ the same amt of RAM. If we get more RAM for them, they might come out ahead slightly. But then there's the crappy volume mgmt of Windows. It becomes impossible to tune disk subsystems when all you have for volume names is D-Z.

>
>
> In comp.databases.sybase leebert <*GNOSPAM*leebert_at_mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Someone else wrote:
 

> >> What's your take on administering DB2 vs. Oracle ?
 

> > My info on that is 3rd-hand... from what Meta Group told us (for their $100k worth of opinion), Oracle is 2x - 3x the admin. overhead of DB2 (& DB2 is no walk in
> > the park!). Other hearsay is that takes 2x the # of DBA's to run an Oracle shop. I guess people have money to burn. And with Oracle, you better have plenty 'o
> > money to burn anyway... <g>
 

> >>Is the training effort significant ?
 

> > Obviously there's DB2 training, very much worth it if you are using it. But the admin learning curve is a good 4 months for someone w/ MS SQL or Sybase
> > experience.
 

> > But if you have ever done Xbase programming, I think DB2 makes the most sense. You have control over table spaces, buffer pools and external storage (DB2 managed
> > RAM disks for Linux & NT w/ process address limits) that Sybase doesn't give you.
 

> > Not to dys Sybase. Just DB2 makes more sense from the ground up. I think the mainframe legacy has something to do w/ DB2 being a more structured & tunable
> > environment than Sybase. Mainframers demand that kind of tweak & tune capability.
 

> >>Are there 3rd pty tools such as DBArtisan/Embarcadero for DB2
 

> > Yeh I think DBArtisan has finally caught up w/ DB2 v. 6 as well as MS SQL 7.
 

> > DBArtisan is a bit dangerous if you do 'migrations' from server to server. It'll SNAFU badly on Schema-BCP migrations. It's better to stage the schema extract
> > w/out the FK / RI , bcp manually & then slap on the FK's last.
 

> >>How about backup and recovery and locking/contention.
> >>And does one scale better than the other ?
 

> > W/ Oracle, readers never block writers and writers never block readers. This is b/c of the row versioning engine ( visa vi Borland Interbase & Postgres ). So
> > concurrency issues are gone forever, great for OLTP. The upshot is that for smaller stuff, Oracle won't be as fast as MS SQL or Sybase, but for truely huge
> > stuff, Oracle will keep right on chugging w/out concurrency problems.
 

> > Last think I heard from one of MS's in-house consultant was that DB2 is still faster at queries than Oracle. Moreover, DB2 AS/400 has Encoded Vector Indexing -
> > this is an awesome tech: low cardinality columns are now optimizable w/ *very* compact EVI indexes. These aren't "compressed" indexes like Oracle or Informix or
> > Red Brick, this is a new technology. DB2 does in-RAM dynamic vector-hash bitmaps, so it doesn't need prep'd bitmaps that you have to maintain. It's all generally
> > applicable, not an arcane maintenance problem. Hopefully DB2 UDB will see EVI's on NT & Un*x sooner than later.
 

> > /lee
 

> > +-----[ http://leebert.home.mindspring.com ] --------+
> > It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows. -- Epictetus (c.55-c.135)
>
> --
> http://www.cooper.com.hk

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