Re: Company thought DB2 will be better than Oracle.

Larry Edelstein wrote:

>Peter,
>
>I cannot answer your questions on the details on what specific features of DB2 ISVs like Siebel, SAP,
>Peoplesoft, etc. use. Perhaps someone in vendor relations or at the lab can shed more light on this. But
>the point is this: there is no way that companies of that size would bet their business on a database
>that is not solid, stable, bulletproof, and competitive. Not only do they use DB2 as their reference
>platform, but they use it to run their own internal systems. They have a choice. Why don't they use
>Oracle or SQL Server?
>
And someone posted here in the last day or two the question ... why aren't there any classes currently being offered by SAP on DB2 but offered on Oracle. Anyone can pick any single thing, hold it over their head, point to it, and then try to leverage it into a claim that A is better than B because .... blah blah blah blah blah blah balh ... Who cares?

Is this really going to change anyone's mind? Do you really believe what someone uses as a reference platform is going to make the CFO of a company write a big check? Change their infrastructure? Migrate their existing applications? Get a major university to start offering courses? Maybe they use it as a reference platform because they were cut a sweetheart deal? How can anyone possibly know what decision was made on the 17th hole after a few martinis and a pair of tickets to the World Series or the SuperBowl?

The truth is that if there was a significant difference ... one that was pure black and white ... this discussion would have ended long ago and everyone would be in one camp or the other. The fact that little things such as cited in this thread are being grabbed and put forward like they are some divine revelation means the differences are shades of gray.

About the only interesting thing here is that if one compares the content of the usenet groups for each of the major RDBMS products ... The Oracle group almost never contains a word, certainly a negative word, about DB2 that didn't start off being posted in a DB2 or Informix group and cross-posted. And the one person that kept posting negative stuff about SQL Server got shouted down and hasn't reposted it in a long time. The Sybase people act like everyone else just about doesn't exist and focus on their product and their customers. The MS SQL Server group occassionally makes mention of Oracle or another product in relation to migration projects but other than that they seem to do a pretty good job of sticking to their product and trying to be helpful to those asking questions.

It seems to me there is a vein of insecurity in the DB2 group that is continually mined by people heck-bent on inflating their egos, or curing their sense of inadequacy, by putting down another product. Knock it off. If your product was signicantly better you'd be building better applications, better web sites, and others would look at your work and say "Oh wow that's great." I think it is time to stop trying to climb out of whatever emotional pit you are in on the back of other vendors and see if you can collectively help each other to produce something of value that will make other sit up and take notice. That something is not a TCP benchmark. That something is not so-and-so uses it as a reference platform.

Take a look at what the local DB2 user group in my region of the US offers as evidence of their capability:
http://www.db2seattle.org/
Not even so much as a hot link. Not even so much as an email address. Definitely not a real-time interface with a database.

I've worked for years in DB2 and quite frankly I find this level of discourse here embarrasing:
I would hope many of you would too.
And then do something about it.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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