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

>>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.
 

>Quite the contrary. It's surprisingly easy to get a quantitative
>assessment. I've done it. You can do it to, with a few phone calls,
>most of them to toll-free 800 numbers. (Sorry, international readers.)

If the lists of tools you refer to for Oracle and Sybase/MS SQL Server are those provided by the vendors, including vaporware and verticle market permutations of products, then your making my point. I believe that to make a useful comparison takes more thorough checking, which I admit, I have not done. I base my impression on the fact that some of the most significant tools, such as Matesys Objectview, were initially released supporting MS SQL server but not Oracle.

I do agree, however, that at this stage of the game the main tools support both platforms, and it's somewhat of a moot issue.

>Shall we belabor the difference in public relations dollars spent by
>Sybase and Microsoft (two masters of the art) compared to the pitiful
>bumblings of Oracle in dealing with the PC press (witness the Infoworld
>1989 coverage, or the SCO Magazine review of Oracle-versus-Informix, for
>two examples of extremely bad PR by Oracle resulting in warped press
>coverage)?

The noteworthy Infoworld review (1989? 1990?) of Oracle SQL server had a caustic edge to its technically poor findings not because of a lack of marketing zeal on the part of Oracle. Infoworld complained of the excessive advice of Oracle contacts to keep tinkering with its product setup to obtain maximal performance. Infoworld was more interested in production-style testing in which each product is installed and run as specified in product documentation. I believe that Oracle's persistence in sales and public relations has always exceeded the technical quality of its products. This is not to say that Microsoft and Sybase may not fall into the same trap now that their server product is becoming increasingly popular, nor that Oracle may not reform somewhat from the worst excesses of the past decade.

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