Re: L:ist - Can do/do better in MS SQL than Oracle

My phrase "if you can do it" was meant to imply "if you can meet the needs with them." Not that they are necessarily equivalent to commercial products. For many purposes they work more than adequately. I've no doubt you saw the recent study released that showed MySQL significantly better than almost every database product on the market.

And if your users are still trying to figure out how to use a mouse ... then perhaps a training budget would be far more valuable than the latest upgrade of MS Office. So far I haven't found any sentence I can type in the latest version of Word that can't be typed in any of the previous 10 versions. Or any formula I can reasonably be expected to put into an Excel spreadsheet that wasn't available in Lotus 123 ver 2.01 more than 10 years ago.

There is a time and place for upgrading to the latest ... but that should be determined by the purchaser based on a real need ... not determined by the vendor because they need to keep the stock price up. Our job in IS/IT is to use the right tool for the job. A carpenter doesn't go buy a new tool for every project unless he needs it. We shouldn't either.

Most of the time there is a rational reason to upgrade. I wouldn't use a version of Oracle earlier than 8.1.7 for a project. But in many cases the purchases and upgrades do not serve our company's interests ... only those of the vendor.

Daniel Morgan

Niall Litchfield wrote:

> "damorgan" <damorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message
> news:3CA3B0EB.1B2B7AF9_at_exesolutions.com...
> > Lets be honest here folks. If you can do it in Linux, MySQL, Apache, and
> Star
> > Office you have no business spending money on anything else. To do so is
> > fiscally irresponsible.
> >
>
> Hogwash. Purchasing costs are a tiny fraction of the outlay on software. My
> users have extraordinary trouble using even MS Office properly - and it is
> streets ahead of its competitors in usability. Support, training and
> implementation costs are all higher with open source. It doesn't mean open
> source software doesn't have a place in business in my view it does- but it
> aint always cheaper (though it can be better value for money just as oracle
> can).
>
> --
> Niall Litchfield
> Oracle DBA
> Audit Commission UK
Received on Fri Mar 29 2002 - 10:45:13 CST