Re: db2 vs oracle

Interesting viewpoints about Oracle vs IBM.

I recently scanned through the autobiography about Larry Ellison called "SOFTWAR", at my local bookstore. Very interesting book, and full of a lot of interesting information, and lots of innaccuracies. The telling point at least to me was about Larry and what the company is all about. ( You can find it in the business book section under "arrogance" 8-)

In the book they mention that Oracle is more about applications than the database. If you have an application that requires Oracle, you will indeed have to use Oracle. But I would caution against using Oracle as a database choice especially in light of where your people are in skills. In Larry's own words they indicate the direction of the company has less to do with being a database company and more to do with applications. Larry is in his own words more interesting in winning than providing a product that is indicative of being a good technology choice. Certainly the grid is interesting, but it is not necessarily clustering, nor is it really even applicable to a lot of business requirements. Oracle will be a big nut to crack in an organization that has never used a relational database.

IBM has an excellent set of databases, and the company can also sell you a complete end-to-end solution, meaning hardware as well as software. I have seen the latest results on benchmarks and both Oracle and DB2 are at the top. IBM will dominate the landscape with Power5 hardware, and Power6, etc. with loads of innovation that I do not see coming from any other vendor.

It is indeed important to make the choice in the right context as others have indicated. Should it really be Oracle vs DB2 as a database choice? Or in your case DB2 vs SQL-Server or Ingres or MySQL or Informix? These are database products that would probably be more suited to a comparison today. Incidentally Oracle has not had a major architectural change in its engine since V7, and that was what, 10+ yrs ago? SQL-Server hasn't had a major upgrade in what 6 yrs? DB2 has been changing rapidly to meet the market, and so are a few of the others. Go with the latest not the late. Interesting too that DB2 is morphing very rapidly, responding to what customers want. This should be a big checkbox no matter what your choice. You won't need the grid unless you're part of the SETI project.

Daniel Morgan wrote:

>> You're using a wrong approach to determine the RDBMS that will suit
>> your need. The kind of application you're thinking of running should
>> be the first concern. Are you goning to be running OLTP, DDS or
>> datawarehouse application. I don't think Oracle will bet UDB, Sybase
>> or SQL Server when it comes to OLTP application. As far as
>> datawarehouse is concern, Sybase has a specific product that is design
>> for that specific application called Sybase IQ.

>> The mistake organization make when picking database platform is the
>> same kind I am seeing from the approach you're taken.  If you running
>> mission critical application, then you should be concern about backup
>> and recovery. Oracle backup and recovery is too complicated otherwise
>> they won't need a 4 days training seesion on the topic. It takes a
>> couple of hours to teach the same function in other platform. My point
>> is that you have to think of what is important in the application
>> you're running.