Re: Informix vs. Sybase vs. Oracle vs. (gasp) MS SQL Server

From: Steve Phelan <stevep_at_pmcgettigan.demon.co.uk>
Date: 1997/04/15
Message-ID: <3353AB7E.CB778B2F_at_pmcgettigan.demon.co.uk>#1/1


Reid Fleming wrote:

> Larry Stephenson <larrst_at_digital.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >Igor Chudov _at_ home wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I have been asked to do a comparison of captioned database
 engines,
> >> to choose a database server for a medium size database (less than
 2GB,
> >> about 60-100 tables).
> >>
> >> I would appreciate both pointers to professionally done
 comparisons, as
> >> well as your personal opinions on performance and reliabiilty of
 these
> >> systems.
> >>
> >> There is a special emphasis made on reliability, so your accounts
 of
> >> problems and crashes will be much appreciated. Oh yes, the
 hardware
> >> will likely be Sun or IBM RS6000.
> >>
> >> Thank you.
> >>
> >> igor
> >
> I've worked with all three. IMHO, they each have their own points:
>
> Sybase - great environment for administering or developing. The
> weakest point was its 'page-level locking'. That means that if you
> have a lot of users trying to get at the same tables, you'll often
> have users locked out. If they got this problem fixed, I'd
> recommend
> it the most.
>
> Informix - great use of processing power on SMP computers. Fast
> loads and indexing, and the OLTP seems to function well. I really
> liked the stability and reliability as well. I recommend this
> database be used for your situation.
>
> Oracle - lots of people use this. It has some strengths, such as
> row level locking, but the environment for developers and
> administrators are a little kludgy. It doesn't have some utilities
> found in Informix or Sybase, like a fast 'unload' utility for
> getting
> data out of tables. ( I hear there are some third party products
> that
> will do this). Overall very solid performance....just needs a few
> more bells and whistles.
>
> By the way, I'd highly recommend that you go with Suns over the
> RS6000. I've had experience with these databases on the RS6000's,
> the Sun servers, and HP 9000's. You really need a box that's more
> scalable than the RS6000 if you think of increasing your DB size or
> the number of users. The multi-machine approach that IBM takes
> to scalability does not work as well as a big, single box that can
> take up to 12 processors. I think the databases are just not
> written
> in a way that take advantage of them.
>
> Hope this helps

 Not quite sure what you mean by 'The multi-machine approach that IBM takes
to scalability does not work as well as a big, single box that can take up to 12 processors. I think the databases are just not written in a way that take advantage of them.'?

The IBM RS6000 J30 and R30 models can take 2, 4, 6 or 8 processors in an SMP environment which Oracle 7 will fully exploit. How would an Sun or HP SMP server differ?

Steve Phelan. Received on Tue Apr 15 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST

Original text of this message