Re: Advice on picking a database (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, SQL Server

Matt Larson wrote:
>
> I need some advice on the benefits and drawbacks of Oracle, Sybase,
> Informix, and MS Sql Server. I would also like to know if anyone knows
> of a guide that details which to choose in certain situations, etc.
>
> Please email me with any answers,
> Thanks for your help
>
> Matt Larson
> mdlarson_at_mail.uccs.edu

Matt,

On a recent project we were evaluating Oracle vs Informix. Although Informix had a lot of good things going for it, what made us settle on Oracle was that there was one place in the application where we had a table which used two columns (SITE and NAME) as its primaty key. We needed to start with a particular site and name and select all rows from there to the end of the table. The where clause in our select statement was:
WHERE SITE > START_SITE OR (SITE = START_SITE AND NAME >= START_NAME) Because there was an "OR" in the where clause Informix couldn't figure out that it could use the index and so did a full table scan. Oracle, on the other hand, was able to use the index. There are other things though that I like about Informix better than Oracle (Descending Indexes come to mind).

HTH
Ken Denny Received on Sun Feb 23 1997 - 00:00:00 CST