Re: RDBMS-based Intranet groupware products vs Notes : RDBMS vs proprietary doc. storage

Jean-Philippe JAVEL <jpjavel_at_worldnet.fr> wrote:

>I am currently evaluating Intranet groupware products, competitors to Lotus Notes, for a
>2000 user project.
 

>Such products, for example recently launched Oracle Interoffice or OpenText Livelink
>Intranet, are usually based on a RDBMS such as Oracle7. Document files (Word etc.) are
>stored in BLOB long rows of the relational DBMS. Such an architecture seems to require a
>powerful (and expensive) server : for example, at least a bi-processor Sun Ultra 2, 256
>Mo RAM for about 200 concurrent users.
>OpenText France recommands to have the HTTPd running on one server and the RDBMS on
>another more powerful one.
>Implementing replication like for Notes would reduce a major benefit of Intranet
>architectures : the capacity for a single server to serve (well) several sites.
 

>so, RDBMS vs proprietary (such as Notes) document storage ?
 

>Has anyone experience of RDBMS Intranet products (InterOffice, Livelink etc.) handling
>hundreds of concurrent users efficiently on a single server ? Are RDBMS such as Oracle 7
>Universal Server mature enough for managing thousands of Word, Excel etc. files ?
>What hardware is required for the HTTPd and RDBMS compared to Lotus Notes 4 ?

I don't have any solid answers, my guess is that it depends on what the specific situation is. I will make a couple of points:

First I'd like to mention that RDBMS's are "proprietary" formats as well. you access them via a "common" command set, namely SQL (as you can Notes), but the On-Disk structures of an Oracle DB are different from those of say a Sybase DB (as both are different from the Notes DB structure).

Then there is the issue of whether an RDBMS is the right product for what you describe above. I think not, Notes excells at manitaining a dattabase of documents, and that is what you seem to be describing, trying to fit "thousands of Word, Excel etc. files" into an RDBMS might work, but the amount of work it would take to get them into the DB might be more trouble that it is worth.

Next is cost, Lotus has done a study on Notes vs. Intranets, I'm pretty sure that it is on ther web site. I wouldn't take it as gospel, but it is a place to start. As you can guess, their study shows that Notes is a cheaper solution, especially when you count the administration time/personnel factors, it also points out the advantages of using a unified solution like Notes vs. pulling together an assortment of products which may or may not work together.

One last thing, I don't have the figures, but I'm willing to bet large amounts of money that "a bi-processor Sun Ultra 2, 256 Mo RAM" would be able to handle a LOT more than 200 Notes users.

--Danny Lawrence, Tiassa Technologies
  Lotus Notes Configuration, Development and Managment   Tiassa _at_ ix.Netcom.Com
 "Tiassa Dreams and plots are born" --Steven Brust Received on Sun Jun 30 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST