Re: Oracle Vs. SQL Server

In article <odysscci.6.0007A2E3_at_teleport.com>, odysscci_at_teleport.com (Jim Kennedy) writes:
|> One real big difference between Oracle and SQL Server is the connections
|> problem. SQL Server makes you open a new connection for every cursor you want
|> to use. Thus if you need to get to three tables or queries at the same time
|> you must have at least 3 connections to SQL Server. Thus a client is using up
|> 3 seats. In other words, when SQL Server allows 32 users it means 32
|> connections. If each user needs 4 tables open at a time you really only have
|> a 8 user system! With Oracle (same scenerio) I can have 32 users and each of
|> them can access 4 tables at a time. (more than that actually).

Actually, there isn't a correlation between server connections and how many users you are licensed for in SQL-Server. Connections is a server configuration value that is limited only by resources such as memory and file descriptors (on a unix box). This was something that confused me too for quite a while when I first ran into it.

|> [stuff deleted]
|>
|> In an complex application we found Oracle to be faster than SQL Server.
|> While our application is not the ultimate in benchmarks, with the same data
|> the data retrieval and updates were about 20% faster with Oracle overall.
|> The SQL Server was running on a pentium 90 with 32 meg under NT 3.5.
|> The Oracle running under netware on a pentium 66 with 48 meg.
|> The disk drives were the same type and size.

But couldn't some of the 20% faster be because there was more memory on the Oracle box? Typically, DBMS' are not cpu bound; they are IO bound. So more memory means less swapping. Just guessing here as I am not a hardware guru by any stretch.

I have worked with both Oracle and Sybase and have found them both to be robust and powerful products that have their good points and their bad. So this is not an effort to undermine either. It sounds like this evaluation was overall as fair as an individual benchmark can be.

                                Teresa Larson

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| Teresa A. Larson - Hughes STX Corporation                            |
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