Re: lies damn lies and benchmarks

"Daniel Morgan" <dmorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message news:3CDA95F8.CBD3353B_at_exesolutions.com...
> Pablo Sanchez wrote:
>
> >
> > > > 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 am talking about the Microsoft employees in Redmond WA not the
Sybase
> team.

I understood that was your point and my point is the same: the 'underlying engine' wasn't built by microsoft, it was a branch of the Sybase SQL Server code. Therefore I can't reconcile your assertion that there were some core Microsoft employees who developed the 'underlying engine' that have since left.

Let me try a different tact: what pieces of SQL Server do you believe these employees develop? Let me know also if you believe that the core team of Oracle kernel developers are still there who developed, let's say, read consistency.

> 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.

I believe you're wrong on both these points. Clearly the TPC-C's show that SQL Server/Sybase don't have scalability issues. Both SQL Server and Sybase have row-level locking. What's your perceived issue with that?

Multiversioning doesn't give you scalability. A well designed application gives you scalability. Period.

> 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.

I agree on the security issues but any one who has deployed an application in an industrial environment will deploy it using a firewall. If not, you're only asking for trouble. Regardless of whether it's on Unix or Windows.

Side note: I dislike working on Windows, I much prefer a Unix environment.

--
Pablo Sanchez, High-Performance Database Engineering
mailto:pablo_at_hpdbe.com
http://www.hpdbe.com
Available for short-term and long-term contracts