Re: MS SQL Server Evaluation

Niall Litchfield wrote:
>
> I see a lot of this sort of remark from advocates of RAC (or indeed many
> other new technologies). The selling point of RAC is that it gives near
> linear scalability and reliability no matter what your application - that is
> how it is sold.

I know. Oracle's marketing is doing Oracle no service by mischaracterizing RAC ... and for that matter GRID. They are creating misunderstandings that only hurt the product's acceptance and the very sales they think they are enhancing.

  If the reality is (and I honestly think that it is) that
> your average off the shelf business software solution (think
> SAP,Peoplesoft,SIEBEL etc) will actually suffer under RAC, then the reality
> is that buying RAC would be a poor idea.

That depends on more things than just the software developer's name. And it depends on why RAC is being purchased because there are three entirely different reasons for buying it.

1. High availability
2. Scalability
3. Failover

The criteria of what will and will not benefit are different.

  I'd actually be interested to see
> how well Oracle Financials (say from 2 or 3 point releases ago) runs on RAC.
>
> RAC seems aimed (as does EE) at the Amazon's and BellSouth's of this world.
> Which is fine for them but makes it marginal technology. Amazon or Boeing
> are not typical cases.

Once again ... it depends on why you are buying it. Some applications are, as Tom Kyte has called them, RAC killers. They are just not going to ever run on RAC and probably on any similar technology. But for many others it can be a wonderful way to implement tremendous cost savings by building out rather than up.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
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