Re: Call for an API standard for SQL statements

From: Marshall Spight <mspight_at_dnai.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 05:13:29 GMT
Message-ID: <ZX%ed.301553$MQ5.176102_at_attbi_s52>


"Fredrik Bertilsson" <fredrik_bertilsson_at_passagen.se> wrote in message news:31f7e57d.0410242056.69f64d4f_at_posting.google.com...
> "Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote:
> > > > I don't think customers *actually* need DBMS independence
> > > > nearly as much as they think they do.
> > >
> > > I strongly disagree again. The request for database vendor
> > > independence have a strong motivation. Normally it takes many weeks of
> > > expensive formal training to educate a database administraitor. If a
> > > company decide to use lets say SQL Server, of course they just want to
> > > buy software that runs with SQL Server. Using multiple database
> > > vendors will make all their backup and maintainance work much more
> > > difficult. The next customer might have choosen DB2, so a software
> > > vendor have to make an application that works on all major databases.
> >
> > This paragraph had nothing to do with what I said. I was talking
> > about intra-customer issues, and you're talking about vendors, or about
> > inter-customer issues.
>
> Yes I am talking about vendors, because we are discussing how vendords
> should build their applications to meet customer requests. If
> different customers requests support for different databases, the
> vendor need to make the application database vendor independent. Do
> you have another solution??

Perhaps *you* were confining your consideration to vendor issues, but I was not. And back when it first came up, I readily stipulated that the situation for vendors *did* make database independence useful. We're mostly running in circles here, I think.

> > In your estimation, how often to medium-to-large sized customers
> > with significant investment in custom, in-house applications change
> > the databases those applications work with, on average? At what
> > rate do they actually migrate.
> Because their applications mostly are not database vendor independent,
> they never do it. But if the applications there database vendor
> independent I think that most application would of course never be
> migrated, but some applications would be migrated one or two times
> during their lifecycle.

That was pretty much my estimate as well.

> But you are talking about a specialized field of applications here. I
> don't know about your country, but the trend in Sweden is that most
> companies sell their software development units and prefer to buy the
> applications from software vendors that sell the same application to
> multiple customers.

I suppose that is an option for any company whose software is not a strategic resource. If you're just buying HR software, say, which is applicable at virtually every company, then there is no particular strategic value to the company to have the software, and they might as well buy it, since HR is likely not a core competence, but rather a legal requirement of doing business.

For any company that believes it can gain strategic advantage from software, it would be foolish to outsource that software. I make to claims as to what percentage of the market may have strategic advantage from software. (Although I know *I* wouldn't want to work anywhere that didn't!)

Marshall Received on Mon Oct 25 2004 - 07:13:29 CEST

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