Re: Sybase v/s Oracle

Srikanth Goli wrote:

> Use SQL server from Microsoft. It is cheap. Does the job for the
> kind of concurrent users you are talking about. Their 6.5 has
> lot of new features too including web support, distribution
> transaction controller.
>
> sri.

I would tend to agree here. MS-SQL Server is a good workgroup/transactional RDBMS. If you go over 100-150 users, have a lot of batch/reporting and can't have a separate server for reporting alone, or have a VLDB, then I'd recommend Oracle for it's better handling of the following: locks - in MS-SQL readers block writers (as in sybase) which brings about the recomendation for a separate report box. Transaction/redo logs - MS-SQL has one monolithic logfile that, if it fills, halts the DB until such a time as it is dumped to null. Oracle goes round-robin between as many logs as you please, moving old ones to an archival location (if you are in archivelog mode). Granted, you can get around the way MS_SQL handles this, but it's extra overhead that in a large system would tend to enhance the chances of a blowup, IMO. Lastly, corruption - I have not directly seen MS-SQL corrupt, but have seen several posts, and our main corporate ofice experienced a MS-SQL corruption fairly recently. I have only seen Oracle corrupt once as an internal problem, and one drive badspot that was truly a unix problem. Going on this, it seems to me in a rough qualitative sense that Oracle is more resistant to corruption. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the server will down if it hits any sort of moderately serious error, whereas MS-SQL seems to just sort of log it and go on. I'd rather explain downtime than clean corruption, but that's just me. HTH and wasn't _too_ much ranting <g>

-- 
Jason Salem
Database Administrator
DATASTORM Technologies, Inc./Quarterdeck Communications Division