Re: Feedback on please

"Angie" <angie_kong_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<OWDE9.28936$hi6.3773_at_nwrddc02.gnilink.net>...
> I was at Oracle World over a week back and got a free cup of coffee with the
> following URL http://www.microsoft.com/sql/getmore which is mostly
> uninteresting marketing stuff. One thing that did catch my eye was the paper
> on RAC http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/compare/oracle-rac.asp.
>
> Would appreciate your thoughts on this so that we may decide if we need to
> alter our 2003 plans. I know it's hard but please keep to the facts and save
> the slams for another day (yes, we all enjoy them but please, not today,
> thanks). We use several databases apart from Oracle and biased opinions
> doesn't help us at all. Really appreciate your time on this.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --AK

The referenced article is very biased in many of its leading comments.  It does however have a fair amount of truth in its underlying assertions. Though I do believe they overstate the cost of Oracle for most configurations. Oracle version 9.2 has built most OLAP features into the kernal so I do not see any need to buy anthing extra. An OLTP system would definitely not need anything beyond the Enterprise edition and the cost quoted above was EE using per CPU pricing.

The fact is I have been told from someone I consider a true expert that RAC is not that hard to break (bog down), but the competing MPP model shown also has its own fair share of bottlenecks. We run OPS on a system not built for OPS and we have managed to make it work pretty well. So RAC should offer significant benefits to us and any shop that uses OPS.

The article ignores any requirement to have a spare machine for diaster recovery purposes and many of company operates under this requirement. In a case like that where you have a second machine capable of handling the system load sitting idle then converting it to RAC offers nearly immediate failover for new sessions. Fully automatic application fairover is still a dream and developing for existing failover features is very expensive to code for under anyone's system, but at least with RAC you get some use from the spare hardware.

Oracle has over-claimed the capabilities of RAC of that there should be no doubt, but perhaps MS has been quilty of the same sin a few times.

IMHO -- Mark D Powell -- Received on Tue Nov 26 2002 - 10:14:38 CST