Re: lies damn lies and benchmarks

From: Daniel Morgan <dmorgan_at_exesolutions.com>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 15:30:10 GMT
Message-ID: <3CDA95F8.CBD3353B@exesolutions.com>

Pablo Sanchez wrote:

> "Mike Ault" <mikerault_at_earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:37fab3ab.0205081336.4fcd5e8f_at_posting.google.com...
> > Daniel Morgan <dmorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message
> news:<3CD9456B.B0451C0F_at_exesolutions.com>...
> > > Pablo Sanchez wrote:
> > >
> > > > "Nuno Souto" <nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam> wrote in message
> > > > news:3cd8f1c4$0$15474$afc38c87_at_news.optusnet.com.au...
> > > > > > MSSQL is a serious competitor in this market and not just
> because
> > > MS
> > > > > > marketing is better than Oracle marketing. They are pushing
> a good
> > > product.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Doubt it. The good product bit. Only reason people use it is
> > > because MS
> > > > > makes it so easy and cheap to use in NT. Nothing else.
> > > >
> > > > I'm curious, why do you doubt it? Why do you think it's not a
> good
> > > > product?
> > > > --
> > >
> > > One reason one might doubt it is that part of the development team
> that
> > > built the underlying engine left Microsoft three years ago and
> started
> > > their own company. Their choice was Oracle on Linux for their own
> company.

>

> MS SQL is based on Sybase SQL Server 4.x (.1? I can't recall
> exactly). I'm not clear on what you mean by 'the development team
> that built the underlying engine' because of that fact.

>

> > > But I do think SQL Server is a decent product. The important thing
> is that
> > > one must understand its limitations and try to use it in
> situations where
> > > it is clearly out of its league: A common mistake.

>

> What are some of its limitations that you perceive? Sure it doesn't
> have read consistency but clearly that's not an imperative for an
> RDBMS. It has a cost associated with it which, arguably, can be
> counter-weighted by in-memory locking schemes.

>


> > MYSQL is not fully relational, it is not ACID compliant. Sorry, I

> > don't feel it is ready for prime time. It is not an enterprise level
> > database.

>

> I'm not sure why you brought up MYSQL, we were talking about MS SQL.
> Reading error?
> --
> Pablo Sanchez, High-Performance Database Engineering
> mailto:pablo_at_hpdbe.com
> http://www.hpdbe.com
> Available for short-term and long-term contracts

I am talking about the Microsoft employees in Redmond WA not the Sybase team.

The limitations can be summed up in two words ... multiversioning and locking. SQL Server doesn't have the first and has a less than adequate handling of the second. These affect scalability and stability to things that are far more important than minor performance issues. Then, of course, there are the weakesses in the Windows operating system which is its sole platform so it is hard, if not meaningless, to try to determine if the security weaknesses are those of the RDBMS or the OS.

And I didn't bring up MYSQL ... someone else did.

Daniel Morgan Received on Thu May 09 2002 - 10:30:10 CDT