Re: Sybase vs Oracle - which is better?

One major difference between the DBMSs seems to be the way they use the operating system's shared memory. Sybase appears to do everything inside of one Unix process (the dataserver process), while Oracle and Informix spawn multiple Unix processes to perform tasks. For this reason, Sybase requires you to define a huge chunk of shared memory on the Unix platform (2/3 to 3/4 of the total physical memory), and allocate most of it to Sybase. Oracle and Informix require a shared memory pool that is only 20-25% of the total memory.

Incidently, there doesn't seem to be any useable documentation anywhere on what settings to use for SHMMAX, although you can hose your system really badly if it is set too high or too low. I don't know why Sybase doesn't address this issue in any of its documentation.

Also, does anyone know the history of why Sybase is architected like this?

Thanks!

• Larry

In article <72p0am$j5n$1_at_imsp009a.netvigator.com>,   paulkcng_at_news.netvigator.com (Ng K C Paul) wrote:
> I can explain that sometimes Sybase holds the fastest tpc and sometimes
> Oracle and sometimes DB2.
>
> Sybase vs Oracle is like Unix vs VMS , ls vs dir
>
> Karl Zdero (zderok_at_viaginterkom.de) wrote:
> : The usual techie debate continues,
> : Is Sybase better than Oracle or is Oracle better than Sybase?
> :
> : When it comes to benchmarks, the www.sybase.com site says that Sybase
> : holds the world record, but www.oracle.com says it holds the record. I
> : see in www.tpc.org that the fastest tpc is with Oracle!
> :
> : Now apart from benchmarks, what makes either database better?
> :
> : I like Oracle as I've used it the most, heres why.
> : + sqlplus is superior than isql, at least I can check return error
> : codes.
> : + PL/SQL is more powerful than TRANSACT/SQL
> : + I can see qll SQL activity for a particular session (SQLAREA),
> : can't do it in Sybase?
> : + Oracle comes standard with many utilities, whereas Sybase doesn't
> : + Oracle has more options with triggers than Sybase. e.g. per row
> : triggers and per statement
> : (In Sybase you must write a cursor loop to action a multiple row
> : insert for example)
> : + Monitors are standard with Oracle. (Sybase dont think so)
> : + Row level locking been for years in Oracle, only recently in
> : Sybase.
> : + Oracle can select data from another database on another server
> : (dblink) Can Sybase?
> :
> :
>

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