Re: Tech Comparison of Oracle versus MS Sqlserver 2000

Norman Dunbar wrote:

> I do enjoy your occasional rants :o)

I was born to rant. ;-)

> The problem in business nowadays is that purchasing decisions are based
> on some bean counter deciding yes or no to any requests.

Very true. I've witnessed how bean counters turned our support & services division from the _best_ in the country (not we that claimed it, but that we was voted by the business comunity as the best), to one that did not even appear among the top 20 support companies year following. I resigned and walked out.

A year later, the _entire_ support division walked (with one or two guys in sales) and created their own company.

> Alternatively, the business chooses Microsoft because that's what
> everyone else is doing.

Again, very true. As Branson said, you sell the brand and not the product.

> Sad but true, the benefits of one over the other are of no interest to
> bean counters, it's the bottom line that counts.

Norman, that would not be a problem if they knew how to determine the bottom line.

There's a book called 'In Search of Exellence' that should be made compulsory reading for bean counters. It shows how 'beanie logic' does not make sense. And putting a single box of supplies in a big truck and driving that 50 miles to a customer in the dead of night to resupply him, paying the driver overtime, makes bottom line sense.

> And who tells them what the TCO is - the marketing bods, so whoever gets
> in with the lowest TCO, usually gets the contract.
> And then, when we technical bods have to sort
> out the mess/problems/inconsistancies/etc the TCO is never anywhere near
> what was quoted, and the company has to put up with it anyway because it
> would be too costly to change now .....

There must be a balance between technical requirements and business requirements. Which is why I ranted about infrastructure and IT/IS skills.

Some years ago I did this Oracle warehouse contract. There were about 10 developers. Some of them around for many years. All excellent people with good and solid skills - it was a joy working with them.

Then decisions were made about new technology. Architecture changes. The IT director did not even bother to listen to his staff. WTF do they know anyway. He listened to the reps and sales people. And decided.

2 years later (after 3 contract extensions) I was the longest serving developer in the company, with the exception of one lady. The rest of the developers all walked.

Permanent staff turn over was incredible. One Oracle DBA lasted not even 2 months before she walked. The newly employed IT manager walked after a year.

Some developers put a sign in the passage. It read 'Whippings will continue until morale improves'.

Management never accepted that there was anything wrong. And attempted to fix the problem with outsourcing - which just furthered the divides there were in IT.

So yeah, I'm not saying that management only, or bean counters only, must make the decision when it comes to technology and architecture. Your techies must be part of the decision.

However, I have yet to see that happen personally. And I have been around. :-)

It is either an idiotic management decision, or a kewl-big-penis-technology decision by a few senior techies.

... and then suckers like us have to make it work.

--
Billy