Re: RDB Sold to Oracle! Damn!
Date: Thu, 1 Sep 1994 23:17:34 GMT
Message-ID: <1994Sep1.231734.15393_at_goethe.credtech.com>
In article <33srej$ocd_at_info.census.gov> tompenn_at_info.census.gov (Thomas Pennington) writes:
>For those who hold out any long term hope of Rdb, consider that Oracle would
>be insane to sell 2 relational database products, particularly one which is
>CLEARLY inferior, runs only on 1 platform, and would require considerable
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That depends on what you mean by inferior. Rdb V6.0 has by far outperformed any other RDBMS in TPC-A with over 3500 TPS (TPC-A) against a 700GB database. Oracle hasn't come anywhere near that (according to Larry Ellsons (sp?) own numbers at the last DB/CS Expo in Boston).
In general - If you show me someone who says Rdb is slow - I'll show you someone who doesn't know how to use Rdb.
BTW - Is it YOUR budget that pays for Oracle and all the so-called "options" that you need just to get your database up and running? Oracle was the first vendor I called when I started evaluating other RDBMS vendors - and they basically priced themselves right out of the ballpark. I think it's great that Oracle is so portable - but I don't care if they support PR1ME, WANG, HONEYWELL, or Nintendo: I'll never consider porting there (the platforms that matter to us are HP-UX, VMS, OSF/1, AIX, and SUN - and even VMS has been on the way out here for a while). Oracle quoted me a price a few years ago for over 1.5 million (US) - which was more than all our combined hardware cost, and double that of any other vendor. And, at the time they wouldn't even allow us an evaluation period! We desired to become and we want to STAY profitable.
I'm not even going to go into the predatory sales tactics. We had a VERY BAD experience with them...
Multi-media is free with Rdb development. Blob support is free with Rdb development. Precompilers are free with Rdb development. Deployment is runtime free (on VMS) - and other licenses (that support physical reorganizations etc are a fraction of the cheapest Oracle development licenses).
Rdb is very advanced and very competitve in many ways. It's optimizer is one of the most mature and advanced in the industry. Rdb's performance monitoring and debugging tools are extremely thorough (and unlike Sybase - it can easily handle VLDB deployments that it'll be years before Sybase is realistically deploy). The On-line monitor (RMU) makes most other RDBMS stock monitors pale by comparison (I admit that I haven't seen ALL of them :-).
Rdb has had full referencial integrity for many years - something Oracle discovered just a few years ago.
Rdb AUTOMATICALLY extends it's storage areas at runtime so your system doesn't just grind to a halt. Rdb also supports hashed indexes, record clustering (either hashed OR sorted), and even allows you the ability to tune the node sizes of sorted indexes that allow you to reduce the number of index levels (thereby cutting the numbers of IOs to satisfy the transaction request) - or increase the number of levels to reduce lock contention. Rdb has been doing this for YEARS. The options available for physical design in Rdb usually bring a smile to the face of anyone who works with other vendors products.
Rdb also has record versioning features. This means that you don't have to unload and reload your tables to add or drop column(s).
>effort to maintain. DEC never completed the port of Rdb, so I do not think
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Untrue. Version of Rdb 6.1 for OSF/1 and NT are in field test. The common
operating system interface is complete, and ports to other systems should
be trivial.
>Oracle or any other company will invest any substantail money into it. They
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This would be unfortunate - because the way you make friends and future customers isn't by pissing them off. This approach would be gaurenteed to lose potential customers. There is a huge amount of VMS and Rdb out there - and forcing a quick exit would be rather destructive.
>will most likely offer a trade up deal like the PC vendors do, and Rdb will
>quietly go away. It could have been a great product, but DEC never fully
>committed the resources to it, so it never maintained competativness with the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Digital has spent more money on Rdb development in the past few years than ever before.
>likes of Oracle and Sybase. Hope you don't have lots of add on products which
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oh come on now - I've got a lot of colleagues that use Sybase, and this is a joke (Oracle is more of a competitor - and is far more robust than Sybase is likely to be for a long time - in fact, Oracle is as survivable and recoverable as Rdb is). Sybase scales very poorly. VLDB support is nonexistant. Sybase also has a bunch of undocumented utilities that their support people use when they dial in (as opposed to documenting them so your users can do it themselves). When I'm out with my Sybase friends and we're talking shop - they usually end up drooling over the basic features and tools that come with Rdb - standard!.
Rdb tech support is VERY good.
>use Rdb, it could be a difficult port.
Not anymore.
If Oracle ends up buying Rdb, then you can believe that sooner or later the thoroughly engineered features will start working their way into Oracle - and all Oracle users will benefit bigtime. I don't know how many of you out there deal directly with vendors - But the Oracle rep I dealt with was unbelieveable. I deal with vendors as a part of my job all the time - and I avoid the bad ones like the plague (and this one was one of the very worst). For my money - an honest vendor is worth a few more dollars if I get what I want the first time, without surprises.
Our Digital Representatives (Poineer Standard) called me today to talk about Oracle and why we objected to them as a potential vendor. I gave him a list of substantial reasons, and he's going to look into them. At this time I have plans to evaluate Informix as an alternative RDBMS - but if our guy at Poineer (as an Oracle reseller) can make us a good deal, then I'll make plans to evaluate Oracle in addition to the others.
There are features in Oracle that I wish Rdb had - but not so many that I'd dump Rdb instantly because it just isn't worth it. For what Oracle costs (as of the last quotes) we can buy enough Rdb capacity to support our business into the next century (even sustaining our current growth!).
Just look at how much it all costs - and look at the security and robustness of VMS (and even price/performance with the ALPHA machines). I am a UNIX guy - but if UNIX weren't around then VMS would be my OS of choice without question. Rdb is a big bang for the buck.
Cheers -
Chris
>
>--
>| /\ |Tom Pennington tompenn_at_info.census.gov|
>| /\ / \ /\ |======================================|
>| /\ / \/ \/ \ |"Of all the things I have lost in my |
>|/ \/ / \ \| life, I miss my mind the most" |
-- ++ Christopher Twombly ++++++++++[\]+++++++ Standard Disclaimer ++++++++++++ ++ Credit Technologies, Inc. ++ E-mail : twombly_at_credtech.com ++ ++ 281 Winter St., Suite 100 ++ Voice : 617-890-2000, ext 4036 ++ ++ Waltham, MA 02154 USA ++++++++++++++ FAX : 617-890-2681 ++++++++++Received on Fri Sep 02 1994 - 01:17:34 CEST