Re: Oracle versus MS Sql Server

In a valiant and sublime effort,Jason
frowned, dipped a thumb in soot and doodled:

>Michael,
>involved in creating such a database, it is complicit with what I perceive
>as a growing systems management perspective today which is why pay a
>professional who actually understands computers and knows how to think for
>him/herself when I can get a monkey to point and click for a fraction of the
>cost?

<warning: long-winded, soapbox reply, requires a longer span of attention than a TV commercial>

That is unfortunately the case. And the people who recommend this sort of attitude are EXACTLY the same that recommend outsourcing to IBM-GSA or other huge IT-services companies.

Who in turn charge clients absolutely obscene rates as if they were supplying knowledgeable employees (the so-called "professionals" that apparently "only exist" in these big companies...), when all they're supplying is the cheapest trainee they can find, preferably 10000 miles away so they don't have to pay them any social security or employee benefits.

But all this is supposed to be cost-effective. That's probably also why I still have to see ONE SINGLE PROJECT delivered by this type of approach, on-time, on-budget.

I'm sure there is a lot of "creative accounting" taking place for this state of affairs to persist. But I'm also sure that the current IT slump world-wide is a DIRECT consequence of this sort of attitude. It has to have a major detrimental effect, simply not sustainable. And it's only starting...

This BTW has absolutely nothing to do with Windows, Unix, mainframes or whatever. It's across the board in IT. And it's not exclusively the fault of big companies: customers bought into this state of affairs of their own will, so they shouldn't complain now. They received plenty of warning from many professionals that this was a stupid and non-sustainable approach and they'd be ripped off.

Having said that, I have to agree with some of Michael's points. Since ORACLE started the Java tools thing, these have not been friendly even for technical-minded people. It's about time ORACLE improved the stability of this approach. Some time spent on the doco wouldn't go astray either.

IME, most problems with the Java tools have been related to the environment for Java not being correctly setup or of the right version. There is NO REASON why there shouldn't be a better verification of the user's environment before the tool screens start to cark all over the place. It's common practice in any environment, why not also in Windows/Java?

Sometimes I get the feeling that whoever tests these installs does NOT start from a pristine system. Of course, if their system is setup ONCE properly for Java, no problems will show up on subsequent installs (or less problems...). Unfortunately, that is NOT the way to test Java software installs. Or any software, for that matter.

De-installs are another very shaky area. It is inexcusable in the Windows environment that I have to spend 5 minutes de-installing ORACLE via Java and 1 hour after that cleaning up the registry because someone forgot to code the cleanup into the ORACLE de-install. Not kosher at all!

This was my interpretation of one of the points Michael was bringing across, with which I have to agree.

<end soapbox mode>

Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam Received on Wed Oct 24 2001 - 07:00:13 CDT