Ingres vs. Oracle

We are a long-time Ingres user, but Ingres has been restricted to low-profile applications because all our mission-critical stuff runs on a fault-tolerant Tandem system. Our notion of what is mission critical has recently been revised, and we are now looking at introducing a new database system to use everywhere that the Tandem is not necessary. Obviously Ingres has an inside track here, but we are still doing a fair and objective review of available products. After some initial research and a preliminary selection process we have added Oracle to our short-list.

We are satisfied that Ingres and Oracle both provide the kind of facilities and performance that we want, so a big item for us now is a subjective assessment of programmer productivity using the two systems. If we choose Ingres, we expect to be using Windows4GL for application development. Can anyone with experience with BOTH Oracle and Ingres comment on programmer productivity? (I heard a rumour recently that Oracle has introduced a new development tool for windows, from a third-party. Any info on this?)

Roy Hann
Senior Analyst, Information Systems
University of Alberta Hospitals rhh_at_tachy.uah.ualberta.ca WMC 2C2.21, 8440-112th Street,

Edmonton, Alberta                          Tel: (403)492-4367
T6G 0N4                                    FAX: (403)492-3090