Re: Is Ingres the wave of the future?

In article <1993Aug4.172239.5530_at_proactive.com> vsr_at_proactive.com (Victor S. Rethy) writes:
>In article <23n1ph$f78_at_news.mic.ucla.edu> ddruker_at_agsm.ucla.edu (Daniel Druker) writes:
>>In article <CB79C4.6r0_at_nvl.army.mil> bajones@sparta (Ebeth Jones) writes:
>>[Stuff about Oracle being about to go out of business and Ingres
>>conquering the DBMS market]
>>
>>Elizabeth,
>>
>...
>
>>I think Ingres has the most uncertain future of the big 4. Will it

[other stuff deleted]

>>
>>Good Luck,
>>
>>- Dan
>
> Here's my 2 cents. Let me note that I am a former ASK
> employee, but my comments may be somewhat out of date and I
> make no representation as to their accuracy.

I am also a former Relational Technology and then Ingres employee. I left right before the sellout/buyout. I am now in a Marketing position at Oracle. Incidentally, everyone I know of in Marketing positions at Oracle are engineers, not MBA's.

[Stuff deleted]

>
> Here are some general comments on Ingres. In a nutshell, the
> common wisdom is that Oracle has the biggest market share,
> Sybase has the best performance, Informix has the best engine,
> and Ingres has the best tools. Ingres is also known for haveing

I see this is where you have gone out of date. Sybase does not have the best performance. There is no common wisdom that Informix has the best engine. The "common wisdom" is that Informix costs the least of the big 4, but that is of course not true in many (most?) cases. The common wisdom is that Oracle or Sybase have the best engines.

I would say that 5 years ago, Ingres had the best tools, although many people certainly preferred Informix's tools. Today, Ingres tools are weak:

• no CASE tools
• no code-generator for bit-mapped product
• no reporting tool for bit-mapped environment
• many different 4GL's to learn
• no upward compatibility from one generation to the next (i.e. ABF to W4GL)
• no end-user tools
• very limited portability (i.e. Macintosh, char/bit-mapped, etc.)

I've never heard of anyone who liked Sybase's tools. Some people like Informix's tools, and some like Oracle's, especially with the new CDE release.

[stuff about Ingres engine deleted]

>
> In terms of database administration, however, Ingres is the
> clear winner. If were running an MIS department, I wouldn't

Another example of the dated nature of this information.

> let an Oracle rep within 50 feet. An instance of the server for
> each database? Users assigned to specific tablespaces? A bunch
> of scripts to manually create the system catalog views for
> every database? Having to actually query system catalog tables
> and insert rows to do certain tasks? Oracle system
> administration is a joke. On the other hand, it gives you more
> physical control over the files that implement the database
> than any others I've seen.

Oracle certainly gives you more control if you want it -- and this is necessary for very large databases, very high performance systems, etc. However, if you don't want to use that level of control, you don't have to.

>
> In general, the Ingres administration tools are far superior
> to what the rest of the big 4 has to offer. Their 4GL is nicer
> as well.

Not true.

>
> In terms of the market share comments, I agree; Oracle is not
> going away. It has been and still is the market leader. Ingres
> is the market leader in Europe; their U.S. market seems to be
> falling off.

Ingres is not the market leader in Europe. That claim was made once, and attributed to an industry analyst who forced Ingres to withdraw that completely spurious claim. I believe Ingres is #4 (of Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Ingres) in the US, and #3 in Europe. Oracle is #1 in both markets.

[stuff deleted]

> Oracle or Ingres development tools? Do you develop X-Windows
> applications (no one can touch Ingres' Windows4GL) (yet)? You

This is simply not true. Oracle's tools, PowerSoft's tools (MS-Windows only), Gupta's tools (MS-Windows only), and others are easily superior to Windows4GL when it comes to many (most?) evaluation criteria -- CASE, code generation, reporting, performance, support for third party tools, end-user support, resource utilization, portability, support for character mode devices, support for multimedia, support for hypertext, etc.

[stuff deleted]

> Vic

• Dennis Moore, my own opinions, etcetcetc