Re: Informix vs. Sybase vs. Oracle vs. (gasp) MS SQL Server

Pablo Sanchez wrote:

>
>
> I have yet to see you refute any of my points regarding row
> level vs page level locking. For a well written
> application, and isn't that what you strive for?, it simply
> doesn't matter.
>

Gee, well, I guess you talked me in to this.

Try writing a hotel reservation system for a major national hotel chain. Read: Hyatt or something like that. ;-)

Try booking a reservation in a major city like New York. (Multiple properties, multiple nights and multiple rates.) Oh, and lets not forget the multiple DSRs (Dumb Shit Receptionists) who are trying to access this system..... ;-)

Now I am sure that you can do a work around, to COMPENSATE for page locking, but why? Row level locking is a much simpler solution. Of course it would be nice to allow for locking within a nested transaction, and even allow for nesting of transactions. But hey that's beyond the immeadiate question.

Lets also look at other applications where row level locking is important.

Hmmm, OK, how about in the financial industry? In a mortgage generation application ?

Or how about in a travel industry application like a flight reservation system? Or in the telecommunication industry?
Or in a realtime inventory control / POS system?

True, you can write these with page level locks, however you won't get the performance, and you will have to write extra code to compensate.

Sorry Pablo, defend Sybase on another point. Surely there are things that Sybase does that Informix can't right? I mean, take Oracle for instance. They have some neat indexing techniques that Informix lacks.

-Just food for thought. Received on Mon Dec 01 1997 - 00:00:00 CET