Re: Support for Front Ends (was: FLAME Re: What about the Oracle vs Sybase Ads?)

In article <1993Feb24.062525.14525_at_qiclab.scn.rain.com> tcox_at_qiclab.scn.rain.com (Thomas Cox) writes:

>des_at_helix.nih.gov (David E. Scheim) writes:
>>>>The Microsoft/Sybase DBMS engine has more front-end tool support than any
>>>>other, which is the real-world benefit of a standard.
 

>>>Wrong. Factually not true. It ain't so. I'm happy to prove this.
>>>Give me your definition of "more front-end tool support" and I will
>>>demonstrate the falsity of your position. (Always has been, BTW,
>>>despite Microsoft advertising to the contrary.)
 

>>>In fact, give me as many definitions as you like, and I'll prove your
>>>assertion false for all of them, for any point or period of time.
 

>>I think to anyone following the trade press this may indicate that you don't
>>have an objective view of the DBMS market.
 

>Ooh. Proof by blatant assertion, with appeal to 'anyone'. Good
>freshman tactics. You lose.
 

>I think to anyone with a clue, it would indicate that I know something
>you don't.
 

>Specifically, I have the hard copy lists of the ISV tools that Microsoft
>and Oracle each support. Oracle's got well over 2x as many tools as
>MicroSoft SQL Server.
 

>Furthermore, there are very few tools that support only Sybase/MicroSoft
>and not Oracle, while there are a number of tools that support Oracle
>and not Sybase/Microsoft.
 

>Some people may recall advertising from a year ago, by Microsoft,
>showing two stacks of disks, and claiming Microsoft SQL Server had 'more
>front ends' than Oracle Server for OS/2, its perceived competitor of the
>time.
 

>Turns out Microsoft was apparently counting things like Gupta SQL
>Windows and its attendant network connectivity widget as two products.
>Given that kind of counting, the correct count for Oracle would have
>been in the hundreds.
 

>[Before we go yet another round on this one, I should confess that my
>job title last year was "senior industry analyst", so I'm perhaps a bit
>more awash in such trivia than the average person might be.]
 

>If people really care about this, I could go count all the tools and
>give you the numbers for each. Or should I assume that you Sybase
>bigots have lost interest?
 

>Note please that Oracle and Sybase/Microsoft have, between them, far
>more tools than anybody *else*, so if you're keen on having a zillion
>front end tools from which to choose, these RDBMSs are good candidates.
 

> -Tom
 

>--
>Thomas Cox DoD #1776 '91 CB 750 Nighthawk tcox_at_qiclab.scn.rain.com
> The Platinum Rule: "Do Unto Others As They Want To Be Done Unto"

I'm afraid it's very difficult to give a quantitative assessment on the number of useful tools available for each server. You certainly cannot count vaporware -- only delivered products. Also, I would find one major development tool more useful than a minor tool, for example, with 20 vertical market products built on it counted as separate tools. It's certainly not possible to rely on either vendor to be paragons of accuracy in their advertising. I don't really see any other way to get a weighted count of useful tool support for each engine other than rely upon an educated reader to follow the coverage in the trade press.

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