Re: Sybase or Oracle? (No flame wars please)

Ken,

After working for 4 years with Sybase (DBA, SQL and C++ code writing using DBLib) and after 2 years using Oracle (DBA, SQL & C++ development) my impression is that Sybase and Oracle are pretty much similar. All functionality is there, obviously, in both cases.

With Oracle you find some funny unexpected things, like, for instance, stored procedures could not return rows (at least in version 6). With Sybase, on the other hand, you all the time hit error messages not listed in the manual.

Tech support handsomely sucks, obviously, in both cases :-) I have a lot of horror stories about Oracle & Sybase tech support - i can share them upon request.

User interface with Sybase is much less consistent (all those arguments to their sp's are completely different from one sp to another different order etc - if you are a DBA you know what i mean :-) Oracle is a bit more polished from this point of view - but it smells VMS so heavily that i just get kinda irritated sometimes.

Generally, Oracle requires less support/attention - until your database becomes really big - and with Oracle it's easier (a bit) to figure out what to do; with Sybase, when i just started, i was going crazy with all those dump with truncate_only etc.

Anyways, if you are runnign any serious application with more than a gig worth of data - get ready to hire a full time DBA :-)

The bottom line is - if your app is not that heavy duty - go with Oracle. If your app is heavy duty - look for some other job :-) - you'll have troubles with any RDBMS (never used Informix - but i have this gut feeling :-)

The most important thing though: since your objective is CLEAN CODE - go to our web page http://www.webvalue.com. We have THE BEST Oracle C++ classes in town. They are based directly upon OCI and you can take a look at the sample application at the above URL to see some REALLY CLEAN CODE. Hope this helps

Ken Mcdonald wrote:
>
> OK, I realize that this is going to be a provocative subject, but
> I really would appreciate advice. Our group has to decide on a
> database soon, and we don't know whether to go with Sybase or
> Oracle. Clearly Oracle has the lead in the marketplace--but is
> it a better product?
>
> Of course, each product will have its strengths and weaknesses, so
> I realize I'm asking a pretty loaded question. Other things being
> equal (and I assume that performance and the like for the two
> databases are reasonably similar), what is probably most important
> for us is the ability to write clean code. Things such as having
> a database spread across different sites, or having a huge number
> of users, are not particularly important.
>
> So, if you know enough about certain features of Sybase vs. Oracle
> to comment on them, and feel strongly that one is better than the
> other in some way, please drop me a line. Thanks for the advice!
>
> Thanks,
> Ken McDonald
> email: kmcdona_at_watson.wustl.edu
> --
> ========================================
> Kenneth McDonald
> Genome Sequencing Center
> Washington University School of Medicine
>
> Phone: 314-286-1831
> ========================================
 

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                  he who hesitates is probably right

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