Re: >Oracle's future

In a recent append, ddargo_at_us.oracle.com (Dave Dargo) writes...
>verma_at_eclipse.torolab.ibm.com (Surendra K. Verma) writes:
>>I don't know how you can classify DB2/6000 to be any more "proprietary"
>>than Oracle. Just because it was released on the RS/6000 before any
>>other platform?
>
>First, DB2/6000 was not released on the RS/6000 before any other platform.
>DB2/6000 is IBM's Workstation RDBMS and is a port of the DB2/2 product.
>It was released on OS/2 first and is just the next release of the OS/2 EE
>Datamanager.

Although it is ultimately true that DB2/6000 shares code with DB2/2, it is not strictly accurate to say it is "just the next release of OS/2 EE".

An awful lot of people worked for well over a year writing and rewriting code, fixing bugs, improving performance, and adding features to the product. It was by no means "just a port". In addition, AIX is the development environment for the workstation database family. If anything, we "ported" to OS/2.

While I realize you are just trying to disparage DB2/6000 because you work for Oracle, a few things are worth repeating.

1, DB2/x is no more proprietary than Oracle. We have a beta version of

   DB2/HP available today. I was at Uniforum yesterday and the guy giving    the demo in the HP booth said it would be generally available for sale    "in June". We (IBM) have explicitly stated many times that we will port    DB2/x to whatever platform will make us money. Right now, we are just    the new guy on the block and that is why we aren't on a lot of platforms    yet. But we will be.   

2, In release 1.0 of DB2/6000, we don't have as much function as Oracle

   v7. This is true. We do have a bulletproof engine and pretty darn good    performance. We have increased our development effort for release 2.0    and now include large parts of IBM Research, working directly on    DB2/6000. We aren't just sitting around. Like I said before, we are the    new guy on the block. But we are moving fast.

3, I've heard several comments saying "DB2/6000 ain't DB2". I'd say this

   is pretty darn observant. DB2/6000 was designed from the ground up    to run as a client/server database on workstations. It doesn't run on    MVS. In the future, you'll probably see IBM consolidating its database    family. SQL/DS will probably become DB2/VM. The AS/400 database will    become DB2/400. And it isn't that just the names are changing. All the    products will be converging in function. Again, right now DB2/6000 ain't    DB2. But we will be.

Pat Gainer Received on Thu Mar 24 1994 - 19:29:14 CET