Re: How to choose a DB

Ah ... but DB2 UDB does support both requirements from one code base!

Art S. Kagel wrote:

> Miguel Cruz wrote:
> >
> > Anat Maoz <anatmaoz_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > I need to choose a database which serve my server.
> >
> > I have a similar need. I'm wondering if there are any good sites or other
> > resources that do side-by-side comparisons of the major heavy-duty database
> > platforms, so I can balance my recommendation using aspects I may not have
> > considered in my own evaluations.
>
> Unfortunately no such resource.
>
> > At the moment I'm looking most closely at Informix and Oracle because they
> > are supported natively (sans-ODBC) by PHP. Key features for our application
> > include transparent (or near-transparent) clustering and flexible fulltext
> > indexing across selected fields.
>
> The problem is that for both Oracle and Informix your two requirements,
> transparent cluster support and fulltext indexing, are both supported but by
> separate products. Oracle Cluster Server does not support DataBlades which
> would be needed for full-text indexing and searching and Oracle 8i does not
> support clusters. Similarly Informix Extended Parallel Server, a more
> advanced product that OCS incidentally, does not support DataBlades either
> and Informix IDS.2000 does not support spreading a database/table across a
> cluster the way that XPS can. Informix is reportedly working to merge the
> XPS and IDS code bases in the same way that the recent release of IDS.2000
> merged the code base from the basic IDS engine with that of the Informix
> Universal Data Option product to create a Universal Server that has the
> features and performance of Informix's full blown OLTP engine (actually it
> is reported to be faster). So you will have to decide what features you
> want most.
>
> Actually, it is my understanding that OCS only adds the ability to share
> disks between cluster members and actually implements spreading a table over
> cluster members using SYNONYMS and VIEWS UNIONing the various pieces of the
> table back together. This is in contrast with Informix XPS which is shared
> nothing (except when one of the cluster members crashes) and actually treats
> the database as residing on ALL members of the cluster invisibly querying
> all co-server table fragments in parallel. There is no reason one could not
> manually implement the Oracle style pseudo-coserver scheme using IDS.2000 or
> Oracle 8i and take advantage of those servers more advanced data support.
>
> Art S. Kagel
Received on Wed Dec 29 1999 - 00:00:00 CET