Re: SQL Server, Oracle or Informix

On Fri, 02 Feb 2001 05:57:25 GMT, "Patrick Dean Rusk" <ruskies_at_mediaone.net> wrote:

>earnest, not to keep a flame war going.
Sure. No worries.

>but not easily searchable. Certainly, there are volumes of Oracle
>information to find on the Net, but it is scattered.
I find the html format of the latest releases quite convenient. But of course, YMMV.

>1) Is there an up-to-date reference on performance tuning that is of the
>quality of the increasingly dated 1996 O'Reilly book?
>

The official sites are reasonable and if you're willing to pay, there is some very good stuff available.

I use www.ixora.com.au quite a lot. Practical, informal information from someone who knows heaps about the subject. From there you can take links to other extremelly useful sites. Tom Kyte's is excellent, so is Jonathan's. All are superb online references, and their books are without equal. On the books subject, I find Guy Harrison's books absolutely indispensable, both of them. The last one in particular is all you need in terms of a quick reference. Until someone puts the entire library in PalmOS format (hint,hint!), it follows me everywhere.

>2) What is a highly regarded and affordable Oracle administration tool? Of
>the shareware ones I've tried out, TOAD and EZSQL seem pretty good, the
>latter being *much* less expensive.

Someone else replied with a good one. I tend to go for command line administration, given that I now work mostly in UNIX and I rely on the tools of that OS for all sorts of on-line and remote monitoring and administration.

One area that I feel someone could make a major difference with NT is to investigate the possibility of using WSH (Windows Script Host or whatever M$ calls it now!) to monitor and manage ORACLE. I've played with it and the possibilities are tremendous. With 8i and its much expanded PL/SQL and Java library, it shouldn't be a great problem getting some really nifty tools sorted out.

Last time I dabbled, I was getting WSH scripts in Javascript (or VBA) dumping monitoring info directly into Excel and Word, using the command automation. It works, just needs someone with the time to sort it out and put a decent look on it. Perheaps you could be the one?

>> Oh! Oracle is an OS now? And Win2K is a database server? Of course,
>> silly me: yet another "redefinition" of the world by M$.
>
> Don't be silly! You've misread that. If you cannot use Windows, you
>can't use SQL Server, because it only runs under Windows. Therefore, use
>Oracle. No one's claiming Oracle is an OS (though they think it's a file
>system now) or that W2K is a database server.
>

I know. I was just applying a bit of "legapullov" if you catch my drift. ;-) Sorry.

>
>Parallel Server (30%)

Bah! Don't need it.

>Partitioning (30%)

I think that one is in-built in 8i.

>Spatial (40%) (This was the potential killer feature that Daniel's GIS
>system might need)

What for? Relational tables are inherently super for GIS stuff anyway, why pay for something that is really not needed?

>Tuning Management Pack (10%)

For weenies. ;-) (and mostly misleading info, too. Let's just say I wouldn't rely on it to tune anything...)

>With the exception of Spatial, functionality in each of these areas *is*
>included in SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition. Of course, I know that most
>Oracle people will say that SS2K's implementations are much less functional;
>I don't know enough about them right now to speak on that point.

I was going to say you'd be lost trying to partition very large DB's in SS2K like you can in 8i, but I'll refrain... Been discussed here before. Let's not even talk about proper PK/FK implementation, without the need to write heaps of triggers to keep it going.

>don't know about? I will be consulted regarding some major Oracle purchases
>in the next few months, so I would gladly avail of any information that
>would bring its prices down.

I'm sure if you have a friendly chat with your local O-rep, you'll find they are quite amenable to reasoning.

>
> I will cheerfully admit that Microsoft's "roll out a new marketing name
>every year for the COM/COM+/DNA/DNA 2000/.NET platform" strategy is
>tiresome. However, all of the MS programmers I've known haven't had problems
>keeping up, and it is very easy to bring in junior programmers and get them
>immediately productive on projects.
>

That is most definitely not my experience. What I've found is that M$-certified people (as opposed to people who claim they know a lot about M$ products) are only so for the current version of whatever. Be it OS, net-related stuff, db. Mostly because M$ training is so expensive and the changes are so many every year that it would cost an absolute *fortune* to keep up to date on their official training schedule.

So, what happens is that people trained on earlier versions will tend to mis-represent themselves as fully up-to-date on the latest stuff. With the result that none of the latest stuff is really applied properly. And the latest, whitest and brightest trainees simply lack any experience of production environments to be really useful. They tend to spend too long on the flowers and very little time preparing the soil, if you pardon the metaphore...

Also, another little problem: the rate of new releases from M$ is so high that there is not enough time on the market to develop a really solid base of experienced and knowledgeable workforce. And no, I'm sorry but someone versed in OLE-1 is not up to scratch to take advantage, say, of ASP. And let's not go into NTLM and AD.

>
> Well, I certainly pity you if you had to spend time on the Microsoft
>platform prior to NT 4, Visual Studio 6, and SQL Server 7. I would not have
>eagerly broght the pre-cursors of any of those into my enterprise.

Precisely. I *did* spend some quality time with those older ones. And the arguments put forward by M$ for people to use them are *exactly* the same as the ones being used now for W2K/SS2K. Once scalded, twice shy.

>Thankfully, I was happily working with NEXSTEP and OpenStep, generally under
>their version of Unix, for most of that time, hitting Sybase 4.x or Oracle
>7.x.

You lucky devil! ;-) (Well, I must admit my passion for UNIX has been on since 84 and with ORACLE since 85, but that's another story).

> However, Windows 2000, SQL Server 2000, and the .NET frameworks are
>going to be formidable competitors in the enterprise going forward. And they
>will compete as they always have: with decent products having dramatically
>lower prices that generate viral marketshare gains for them. And, since
>history usually repeats itself, the giants in their arenas will wait too
>long to respond in kind. Remember any companies called Ashton-Tate,
>WordPerfect, Lotus, Novell, and Netscape? The last, at least, got themselves
>bought while they still commanded a decent price. (And look how well iPlanet
>has done...).

Let's not forget that M$ (first with Sybase, now with SS) has been in the database arena against Oracle for the last 8 years by my reckoning. In this industry, that's eons. So far they failed to make the slightest dent. I don't think that is going to change. In case you haven't noticed, Oracle hasn't been what one would call "quiet" on those fronts either. Their latest stuff is starting to make a lot of sense too. 8i in particular is absolutely stunning and there is no other database anywhere that even compares in functionality and breath of potential applications.
>
> Note, btw, that IBM has recognized this and has priced their DB2
>database competitively with Microsoft's.
>

Don't worry, if it comes to a price war, Oracle can match those too. Right now they don't need, 8i is so far superior to DB2/SS it's not even worth it. But I agree, they will start docking the prices.

> Sorry. I didn't mean for this to be long.

'sOK, my attention span is longer than the proverbial 30 seconds. :-)

>
>
>P.S. I love your Web site.
>

Thanks. It will get better, I just need the time.

Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_bigpond.net.au.nospam
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/the_Den/index.html Received on Fri Feb 02 2001 - 06:13:20 CST