Re: Oracle TPC-A Benchmarks

In article <24b4op$1hi_at_news.mic.ucla.edu> ddruker_at_agsm.ucla.edu (Daniel Druker) writes:

>In article <248859$9jr_at_infochi.com> rfinkel_at_infochi.com (Richard Finkelstein) writes:
>>It is very disappointing to see Oracle revert back to its old marketing
>>and sales practices. Oracle's use of the TPC-A benchmark and its discrete
>>transaction in its advertisements goes to the heart of the Standish Report
>>and Oracle's subsequent lawsuit against Standish. The issue is whether
>>Oracle is being deceptive in its presentation of the facts.
>>
>these capabilities of Oracle. 4) Your own pet database, Sybase,
>cannot do this. (By the way, I think Sybase is GREAT for lots of
>stuff, and very innovative, but not on the high end -IMHO) 5) Oracle
>grew by something like $400 Million in revenue last year; doesn't
>sound to me like they're in a desperate financial/technological position
>that you imply above.

If you've followed Richard Finkelstein's postings on other forums and his seminars, he's been highly critical of various features of the Sybase database engine. All in all, however, Rich reflects the consensus of most technical experts that Sybase is a superior product for most applications, while Oracle's ratio of hype to technical performance is just a bit too high for most analysts. I've found this myself after using both; in fact there's about a 5-to-1 ratio of production applications at the NIH of Sybase to Oracle despite a much earlier and stronger marketing push by the latter, which I believe reflects the superiority of Sybase in production, especially for client-server applications.

In short, I think you are totally off the mark in characterizing Rich Finkelstein as a Sybase affectionado -- he is a leading analyst of relational databases who reflects mainstream technical opinion. You certainly have a right to a differing view. Perhaps after you leave graduate school and start consulting for hundreds of firms, you may change your opinion -- unless your goal is to be hired by one particular database vendor. -- David Scheim

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