Re: Oracle vs DB2 vs MySQL - Which should I use?

I think you need to decide on what aspects are important for your site, and then review the database choices.

When you have established the priority order for the following (plus anything else important to you) then you can get a more meaningful evaluation.

• SQL performance in read-only environments
• SQL performance in predominately update environments
• SQL performance in mixed read and update environment
• Transaction support (Can a failed transaction roll-back all changes - how fast is this - what impact on other work?)
• Data integrity (do users ever report the DBMS has lost data?)
• Backup capabilities (is online backup possible, or must you take the DBMS down to do a backup?)
• Recovery capabilities (can you recover to any point in time, or only to a backup?)
• Database import/load time (important if you have large batches of data to import)
• Management tools, both vendor and third party, to create and change database objects
• Monitor tools, vendor & 3rd party, to 'see' what is happening inside the DBMS
• Availability (23x6 or 24x365? do users support vendor claims?)
• 3rd party application support (can you run your favorite 4GL?)
• Maximum object size (can the DBMS support your largest planned object)
• SQL scalability (If you incrase object size by 10, will your response also increase by 10 - or will it be more - or can parallelism help keep your response constant)
• Infrastructure scalability (If you increase database size by 10, what impact does this have on your hardware - will costs increase by 10 - more? - less?)
• Web connectivity (Support of transaction processing in web environment)
• Object support
• XML support
• SQL standards support
• Vendor pricing policy (by seat, by web connection, by server?)
• 5-year cost of ownership
• Stability of vendor
• Technical support (vendor, 3rd party, internet fora, etc)

etc etc etc. Depending on how you rank these, you will get a different answer as to the best DBMS for you. If all you want is a few hundred rows that are mainly read-only, a handful of users, and have an open mind about data integrity, try MS-Access. If you are thinking of more than 100 Gb and more than 100 users, just look at DB2 or Oracle (and maybe Sybase or Informix if you think they have vendor stability).

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All information given is a personal opinion.
You are responsible for any changes to your environment.


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