database market share 2003
rkusenet
Interesting to see that database sales for windows is more than
Unix.
Hans Forbrich
In the industry, we've been through these statistics battles before. I
wonder which variant on statistics and sample techniques they used to
'prove' this one.
(Such numbers no longer mean anything except to people who have no idea what
numbers mean. And for those people, I found a wonderful new book: The
complete idiot's guide to statistics.)
/Hans
Mark A
news:2hmh03F...@uni-berlin.de...
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040526/tech_database_marketshare_1.html
>
> Interesting to see that database sales for windows is more than
> Unix.
>
databases. MS SQL Server only runs on Windows.
rkusenet
"Hans Forbrich" <forb...@yahoo.net>
> In the industry, we've been through these statistics battles before. I
> wonder which variant on statistics and sample techniques they used to
> 'prove' this one.
I am referring to all RDBMS sales in windows, not MS alone.
The RDBMS market for 2003 was 7 billion, out of which Windows
had a share of 2.79 billion. Unix was next at 2.34 billion
and Linux at 299 million. I assume the rest must be in
non unix proprietary operating system like that of IBM.
Whichever way I look at it, it is not insignificant
that Windows is at # 1 as an operating system.
Blair Adamache
JEDIDIAH
MySQL should run on any OS that can support the GNU toolchain.
This includes Win32.
This probably includes QNX and the like.
--
The public has a right to free music. It's part of the bargain that
was originally made with musicians and publishers. It's time that the |||
debate was shifted to reflect that. Robber Barons and their Toadies / | \
are distracting us from the original facts of the situation.
Howard J. Rogers
>
> Interesting to see that database sales for windows is more than
> Unix.
Interesting, but not entirely surprising, surely?
Very few databases on the planet would require the sort of O/S feature set
that Unix/Linux brings to the party, and even fewer DBAs would be familiar
with the Unix/Linux environment (the ubiquitous nature of Windows on the
desktop takes care of the 'comfort' factor, however short-sighted that might
be). "Good enough" is often just what the customer needs (I had one just the
other week running a 100MB+ database in Access. Not much chance of them ever
investing in Oracle, I suspect).
The interesting snippet for me in that article was that Oracle has a 69%
share of the Linux database market and 300%+ growth. Where the real exciting
action is, Microsoft is nowhere to be seen, of course.
Regards
HJR
Jarmo
news:40b6450a$0$13784$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>
> "rkusenet" <rkus...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:2hmh03F...@uni-berlin.de...
> > http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040526/tech_database_marketshare_1.html
> >
>
> share of the Linux database market and 300%+ growth. Where the real
exciting
> action is, Microsoft is nowhere to be seen, of course.
>
> Regards
> HJR
Define "exciting". Perhaps Microsoft finds it more "exciting" to make money
than to throw $200m at a nascent market doing only $116m in 2002.
Mark A
news:c95bfd$e16$1...@hanover.torolab.ibm.com...
> Oh, does MySQL run on Windows?
>
share, especially since it is freeware. I suppose from IBM's point of view
it is considered to be competition.
Howard J. Rogers
"Jarmo" <ja...@jarmo.com> wrote in message
news:40b65370$0$20515$ed9e...@reading.news.pipex.net...
I smell a flame war. And you're welcome to it, but you'll have to play on
your own.
Exciting means any market that is growing at 300% plus a year.
HJR
sumGirl
> that Windows is at # 1 as an operating system.
Its also not insignifigant that if you want to run a business with any
thing akin to stability, you have to by your servers in multiples and
cluster them. If everyone running Informix on Unix had to buy two (or
more) of everything just to do one systems amount of work in a
reliable fasion, how differnt would these numbers look?
But hey, thats just my cynical opinion.
Blair Adamache
always publishing in May. I would assume they have methodologies that
are somewhat reliable, repeatable and consistent. They never seem to
quite agree, but the changes in share are a few points per year, which
lends credibility. Since Gartner and IDC sell their research to
customers, and earn a fair amount of money, their research might have
some sort of proven track record.
Fernando Nunes
it's available for windows as both a binary distribution and also as
source code for VC++ 6.0:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.0.html
Regards.
Blair Adamache
who knows?
Mark Townsend
> Define "exciting". Perhaps Microsoft finds it more "exciting" to make money
> than to throw $200m at a nascent market doing only $116m in 2002.
>
Certainly gotta be better than spending $1 billion on a 3% market
share that's generating only $170 m in rev and dropping by over 15%
each year.
Daniel Morgan
Tell me it isn't so. Maybe they'll buy Sybase and Advanced Revelation.
Then they'll have a far larger market share than those puny companies
like Oracle and Microsoft.
Heck by now Ballmer might even be ready to sell Fox and then how could
you ever hope to compete. ;-)
--
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damo...@x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
Data Goob
options available for database clustering in general.
MySQL just announced shared-nothing clustering, however, it
is still in its infancy. Computer Associates just announced
their Ingres for Linux, and sadly seem to be following the
Oracle path in terms of how they will cluster.
IBM DB2 has probably the best clustering options available,
and is doing the right thing in pushing into small iron
compared with SQL-Server which typically requires big iron.
Yukon, the upcoming release will most likely be forced to
maintain some backwards compatibility simply because of the
sheer volume of MS customers. Yukon is indeed the Chevy
of database engines, and will have minions of slobbering
Microsoft followers using it as soon as it is released or
probably using the beta as production, as is so often the
case with Microsoft people.
We have worked with and purchased SQL-Server on big iron
( 16 CPUs ) and DB2 on small iron ( 4 CPUs ) on Linux, and
have seen a profoundly positive difference in performance.
The DB2 cluster smokes SQL-Server on several fronts, on 25%
of the hardware resources, utilizing the same disk drives,
and 10% of the cost of the 16-CPU system. This also begs
the question on what is happening in MySQL, and we are
taking a close look at that one too.
The key is in understanding how DB2 partitioning works, and
how to force parallelism with smaller servers, whether they
are 32-bit or 64-bit. Big iron systems are dead, clustering
is in. The closest thing Informix has is in XPS, but nobody
even cares about it, and there's no knowing if XPS works
well with smaller 2-CPU systems, or even 1-CPU systems. We
plan on using DB2 with 4-CPU systems in the near term but for
new hardware actually deploying it on 2-CPU systems. ( Ironic
that Informix pushed divide-and-conquer in the '90's yet they
never made XPS mainstream. )
You can also buy into the grid which is yet another distraction
coming from Oracle, ( small iron still shared disk ) and not a
lot of evidence to support that it even works or scales. Oracle
is once again depending on market ignorance similar to Microsoft
with what could be described as masquerade-clustering. It is also
important to note that 'the grid' is not the same as shared-nothing
sans XPS or DB2. It's more like the SETI screen saver, appropriate
analogy I think. ;-)
Informix people should start taking a closer look at DB2, and
actually evaluate it, it will be most enlightening for you to
see how DB2 partitioning works. Even though it lacks some of
the bells and whistles 9.x has it would be good for you to see
where the future is in database engines. The simplicity is
marvelous.
"sumGirl" <eme...@netscape.net> wrote in message news:a5e13cff.04052...@posting.google.com...
Serge Rielau
I don't think we get away that easily....
The numbers are based on $ figures, not on the number of installations.
Apparently customers drop more dollars into DBMS on Windows than on any
other platform. I trust that customers are well aware of TCO, so if the
grand total of Wintel + DBMS of your choice + magic number in
maintenance and cost of downtime is believed to be cheaper than on
another box there goes.
The fact that I can pick my Windows Admins of colleges by the thousands
certainly helps a lot (and we likely all have Windows at home, ...)
I still acn't belive (in hindsight) that no-one but Microsoft saw it
coming that whatever people have at home will end up in the business
sooner or later.
Be it an OS, a DBMS, spreadsheet or a coffee machine.
Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab
nobody
definitely a market need for RDBMS that run on Windows.
Considering that the bulk of the RDBMSs and their applications are small
and straight forward, you could run them on a windows server.
So it should be no shock that you will see all major vendors writing for
that platform.
Mark A
news:40B7A5F4...@devnull.org...
> Its been proven that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop. So there's
> definitely a market need for RDBMS that run on Windows.
>
> Considering that the bulk of the RDBMSs and their applications are small
> and straight forward, you could run them on a windows server.
>
> So it should be no shock that you will see all major vendors writing for
> that platform.
>
Daniel Morgan
> Obviously you don't understand the different clustering
> options available for database clustering in general.
>
> MySQL just announced shared-nothing clustering, however, it
> is still in its infancy. Computer Associates just announced
> their Ingres for Linux, and sadly seem to be following the
> Oracle path in terms of how they will cluster.
>
> IBM DB2 has probably the best clustering options available,
> and is doing the right thing in pushing into small iron
> compared with SQL-Server which typically requires big iron.
I'm not sure you should be questioning other people's understanding
of clustering. And if you read what I wrote ... you might note that
I made no reference to clustering at all.
But that said the statement: "IBM DB2 has probably the best clustering
options available" only makes sense if one notes that the IBM DB2
clustering is identical to that of Oracle. If one happens to have
a couple of mainframes laying around.
Daniel Morgan
As, it should be noted, does Sybase.
rkusenet
"Daniel Morgan" <damo...@x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1085789813.699741@yasure...
> Data Goob wrote:
> > Obviously you don't understand the different clustering
> > options available for database clustering in general.
> >
> > MySQL just announced shared-nothing clustering, however, it
> > is still in its infancy. Computer Associates just announced
> > their Ingres for Linux, and sadly seem to be following the
> > Oracle path in terms of how they will cluster.
> >
> > IBM DB2 has probably the best clustering options available,
> > and is doing the right thing in pushing into small iron
> > compared with SQL-Server which typically requires big iron.
>
> I'm not sure you should be questioning other people's understanding
> of clustering. And if you read what I wrote ... you might note that
> I made no reference to clustering at all.
>
> But that said the statement: "IBM DB2 has probably the best clustering
> options available" only makes sense if one notes that the IBM DB2
> clustering is identical to that of Oracle. If one happens to have
> a couple of mainframes laying around.
Data Goob is most likely referring to DB2/UDB clustering.
Few days back someone told me that he is working with a 64node
DB2/UDB EEE and the performance is awesome. 64 node!!!!!
rk-
Daniel Morgan
Makes sense to me. And how many CPUs per node? ;-)
rkusenet
> > Data Goob is most likely referring to DB2/UDB clustering.
> > Few days back someone told me that he is working with a 64node
> > DB2/UDB EEE and the performance is awesome. 64 node!!!!!
> >
> > rk-
>
> Makes sense to me. And how many CPUs per node? ;-)
do u think Oracle can scale above 4 nodes. Wasn't there a post in
oracle newsgroup by Howard Rogers (or someone from Australia)
saying that from one node to 2 there is a linear scale, after that
it tapers off, and adding any nodes after 4 starts degrading the
performance.
Data Goob
Take note, the DLM conzept actually came from IBM, and interestingly
enough, Ingres for Linux will be using it. Look at who is pushing
the DLM, it's OpenDLM from IBM!
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1599317,00.asp
http://oss.software.ibm.com/dlm/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opendlm
http://opendlm.sourceforge.net/
Oracle came about, if we look at history, from Larry seizing the dbms
opportunity that IBM did not. So, it could be said that Oracle is a
delta of DB2 on the mainframe, in its own incantation, pushed into UNIX.
Incidentally, DB2 on the mainframe also uses shared-disk, invented by
IBM for DB2 on the mainframe. So you can see where we're going here.
Oracle is not that original of an engine when one considers its origins.
Nothing wrong with the Oracle engine if you want an old, aging techology
that typically requires lots of hardware, lots of CPU, and lots of people.
The idea that it will perform well in the small iron space remains to be seen.
Even IBM will note the unscalable aspects of shared-disk and the
distributed lock manager, which must coordinate n-times the more
DLMs that appear in the cluster. This is why it actually gets
more complex over n-servers and cannot scale, from what we're hearing,
beyond 8 servers. Shared-nothing on the other hand is not coordinating
locks on the same drives so it is not concerned with distributed locks.
This theory has already been proven, shared-nothing scales ad infinitum,
shared-disk-dlm does not. It's not a bad thing, Oracle pushes a lot of
HA sales out of their paradigm, but it is also old school, thus the grid
now appears. They have to have something new to sell. But the grid is not
something that has a track record in business so it really remains to be
seen how it will actually fare over time. The licensing is still not
cheap despite the advertising.
In the meantime **today** you can get all the benefits of XPS out of DB2,
in an elegantly simple construction in DB2. It is tunable for OLTP or DSS,
you make the call. You can even start out without shared-nothing, no clusters
at all with DB2, play with it in the same configuration as Oracle if you
want to compare it, and then kick in shared-nothing, and watch the profound
difference in speed as you increase partitioning and adding servers to the
cluster. I can show children DB2 and get them to understand the concepts, it's
really that simple. Which is why it is so perfect for our environment of
SQL-Server people who are, well, children when it comes to understanding
what a real database engine really is. Dare I say Informix is crude and
primitive compared to DB2--Once you start taking a hard look at DB2 you will
understand what I mean.
"rkusenet" <rkus...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:2hrobfF...@uni-berlin.de...
rkusenet
"Data Goob" <data...@hotmail.com> wrote
> Dare I say Informix is crude and
> primitive compared to DB2--Once you start taking a hard look at DB2 you will
> understand what I mean.
It may very well be true, but if you want any of us to take your
comments seriously, you have to reveal your identity. Do you work
for IBM :-)
Please do not mind. I think your contribution is much valued,
but that jboss incident had made me a cynic in this regard.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1595280,00.asp?kc=ewnws051904dtx1k0000599
cheers.
ravi
Data Goob
newsgroups are all about.
If you understand the Informix world, you'll understand
my statement, especially in the context of the Informix
newsgroup. Informix people have had several servers to
choose from over the years, but no one single server to
adapt to different scenarios. DB2 offers probably one
of the most flexible configurations I've seen, having
worked with ALL vendor databases, including a significant
amount of time with Sybase and even your pet Oracle. Most
people do not understand the difference between the grid
( distributed computing ), shared-nothing, shared-disk,
shared-everything, distributed-shared-memory, NUMA, or the
various combinations of any of these, so I think it's a fair
bet my statement holds water. It is not trivial to understand
the differences, or make the right choices, you have to take
the time to do the research.
It **can** be said "IBM clustering on the mainframe is
identical to Oracle clustering on UNIX" in the simplest of
terms. But Oracle partitioning is different, thus the
statement really cannot be made.
In our particular case we couldn't care less which one is
"better" from a religious context, Oracle at the business
level scares the sh** out of us, and gives us pause to even
talk to those people about licenses. When you also consider
that on a 5-year license Oracle will be 5x what IBM is
going to cost, we also have to take that into account. Not
to mention that the learning curve for Oracle is a lot higher
migrating from SQL-Server to Oracle than DB2, we would have
to put our dunce hats on to make the Oracle choice. As I
stated before, DB2 is so darn simple compared to Oracle we
really don't want to have to work so hard to get things
done. We would consider Sybase before Oracle in that regard,
again the compatibility is right in front of us. Sybase sucks
without a high-speed loader, like its bastard step-child
SQL-Server, again another reason we like DB2.
Oracle for all its' inherent strengths is a complete aberration
to introduce into our environment, completely unnecessary, and
no guarantee or knowledge base that it would work as well
or as cost-effectively as DB2. I would also question your
educational licensing arrangements vs. the commercial reality
we live in. They are not going to hammer you with phone
calls, recreational outings, enticements, etc., like they
have done with us.
"Daniel Morgan" <damo...@x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1085789813.699741@yasure...
Data Goob
:-)
Seriously! But I do work for a highly visible company and
cannot give my identity here. I can guarantee you that I
do not work for IBM, or any database vendor. My comments
are all based on a lot of experience, and simply going to the
fine manuals, having had a lot of really great teachers to
guide me. I actually fear I say too much as it is on this
subject for fear of my employer spotting me.
Take care, and come to your own conclusions. Install the
software, and try it out.
"rkusenet" <rkus...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:2hrungF...@uni-berlin.de...
Serge Rielau
> You can even start out without shared-nothing, no clusters
> at all with DB2, play with it in the same configuration as Oracle if you
> want to compare it, and then kick in shared-nothing, and watch the profound
> difference in speed as you increase partitioning and adding servers to the
> cluster.
I'd caution on that statement. Shared nothing wins when the db schema is
chosen wisely. One of the biggest mistakes I see when dealing with
shared nothing systems is that customers define their schema and do
testing on a single node and then presume they simply flip the switch
and they scale lineary.
Once the schema is defined properly it scales indeed very well and there
are DB2 customers with > 100 nodes.
It's OK to start of non-partitioned with the promise to expand later,
but one should keep in mind the ultimate goal and do the design accordingly.
FYI, DB2 Stinger aids the shared nothing design with a partitoning advisor.
As an aside I want to comment on one common competitive statement:
"IBM knows shared nothing sucks and that's why they didn't do it with
DB2 z/Series"
That's just wrong because of the order of events. DB2 z/Series
introduced shared disc before DB2 Parallel Edition was born.
A more correct statement is: "IBM realized that shared disc wouldn't
suffice for the scalability requirements of BI and without hardware
support (parallel sysplex), hence a different approach was chosen for
DB2 on distributed platforms"
That doesn't make either approach wrong, just appropriate for it's
environment and it's task.
Data Goob
nothing from stand-alone SMP, and this is key. There are tables you
might not want to cluster, in addition to tables you do want to cluster.
You need to plan ahead and partition data and instance with deliberate
planning. But it is relatively painless, the DBA can do this quite
easily. The simplicity of the hierarchy is what makes it easy.
Also crucial to this discussion is that DB2 at least offers a lot of
flexibility in how you want to set things up, which is something I
do not see in DB2 marketing. In the course of evaluating DB2 we
didn't "get it" till well into the evaluation as to how DB2 performs,
and how to make it perform the way it needs to, or the way we want it
to. We saw the difference though once we understood the effect of
instance-level partitioning.
Partitioning **is** what DB2 is all about, and not just 'fragmentation'
( partitioning ) of tables to use Informix-speak. DB2 has partitioning
for the instance as well as separate buffer pool management available for
each database and each table, something Informix simply cannot do, as well
as partitioning of the data across nodes, something only XPS can do, and only
when considering a high-speed switch. DB2 has the advantage on small iron,
typically 1 or 2 CPU machines when clustering, and can use a standard network
environment, something Informix XPS was not really designed for. With DB2 if
you prefer, use a high-speed switch and get even better performance.
DB2 has the 'right' hierarchy towards instances, the rightness is in
thinking that stand-alone SMP is not the highest level, but rather that
clustering is the highest level. This is where you begin to see the
genius in the simplicity. It becomes clear why I'm suspecting most of
Informix internal folk shut up and said no more about making Informix a
long-term proposition when comparing the two engines. Once you see that
you can have XPS today, in a better incantation, and use one engine for OLTP
or DSS, it becomes glaringly obvious why IBM is holding their ground and not
pushing the "either-this-engine-or-that-engine" with Informix products.
Informix products would have to add a lot of tunable parameters just to get
up to the waterline of what you can do with DB2.
"Serge Rielau" <sri...@ca.eye-be-em.com> wrote in message news:c9ajht$29j$1...@hanover.torolab.ibm.com...
robert
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040526/tech_database_marketshare_1.html
>
> Interesting to see that database sales for windows is more than
> Unix.
what i've not seen is the other side of this coin: that (perhaps)
IBM's share is skewed (looks larger than it really is) by the
fact that it pretty much owns the mainframe. a relative handful
of very expensive installs. in other words, i question how relevant
DB2 is to the future of relational databases. IBM needs to
demonstrate that it is relevant outside of conversions (i use
the term very, very loosely) of behemouth COBOL/VSAM systems. at
my work, they just defined tables from the copybooks. i
gather this is quite common.
robert
Serge Rielau
Well, I'll waive any comments here.
Neither can or want I comment on what other IBMers do or don't think/say
and why, nor do I think this thread is fitting for the Informix newsgroup.
Redbrick, XPS and IDS have a lot to offer to the IBM team. Crude would
not be a word of my choice for any of these products.
Mark A
news:da3c2186.04052...@posting.google.com...
> what i've not seen is the other side of this coin: that (perhaps)
> IBM's share is skewed (looks larger than it really is) by the
> fact that it pretty much owns the mainframe. a relative handful
> of very expensive installs. in other words, i question how relevant
> DB2 is to the future of relational databases. IBM needs to
> demonstrate that it is relevant outside of conversions (i use
> the term very, very loosely) of behemouth COBOL/VSAM systems. at
> my work, they just defined tables from the copybooks. i
> gather this is quite common.
>
> robert
Since DB2 mainframe has been around since the mid-1980's, that is
ridiculous. The overwhelming majority or DB2 OS/390 applications were
designed on DB2 from scratch. Your company may be an exception, and somewhat
backward. After all, they employ you, so it must be a really screwed up
company.
Daniel Morgan
> Data Goob wrote:
>
>> You can even start out without shared-nothing, no clusters
>> at all with DB2, play with it in the same configuration as Oracle if you
>> want to compare it, and then kick in shared-nothing, and watch the
>> profound
>> difference in speed as you increase partitioning and adding servers to
>> the
>> cluster.
>
> Serge
>
Aren't you leaving out the part where when making the clustering
decision with shared nothing you have to create separate databases,
for each node, well except on mainframes, whereas with shared-everything
no change to the storage need be made. Nodes can be dynamically added or
removed from the cluster real-time.
I would think that a major consideration.
Daniel Morgan
But for how much longer ... I wonder?
I am watching the huge inroads being made by clustered Linux taking out
Sun's and H/P's more expensive offerings. I built an 8 CPU cluster a few
weeks back with less than $11,000 US in hardware.
How long before it becomes easy to build OS/390 equivalent machines
with a rack of 2 CPU x 4GB Intel boxes running RedHat AS?
I suspect far sooner than you want to imagine.
And when the big iron goes ... do you think DB2 will survive? Informix,
in my opinion, has a better chance of surviving.
Larry
This reminds me of the 80s when client/server and distributed computing
first came in to vogue. The big headline was that the mainframe was a
dinosaur and would soon be replaced by distributed systems. I'm still
waiting. And I think the same thing holds for Linux. It is certainly
appropriate for certain applications. But its got a ways to go before it
matures. And even then, I somehow don't think that a Linux system built
with the hw that you quote will ever be running you bank accounts, your
credit cards, and making reservations for you on airlines. Most, if not
all, of these type of applications require the RAS of the mainframe ...
and I don't see a day real soon when they won't.
Larry Edelstein
Larry
and Microsoft's be skewed by its heritage on Windows? What does that
prove? As long as you are growing on the relevant platforms (which IBM
is), and as long as you maintain a significant overall market share ...
that proves that you are going to be around as a company and more
importantly, as a database company for the foreseeable future. This is
what's most important about market share. Otherwise, I don't understand
your point. It's like saying that because Nabisco has a higher overall
market share in the cookie market ... and that this is skewed by them
having the leading market share in Oreo sandwich cookies, you won't buy
Keebler cookies.
Larry Edelstein
Jean-David Beyer
pathetic in that it did not have an API for C++: only for C. So I ended up
writing a large bunch of C functions to interface to the Informix server.
It worked, but sloppy. Then I upgraded to Red Hat Linux 6.0 and Informix
never worked again. I e-mailed Informix about it and they said they did
not know if it would work with 6.0 or not. I said I would be glad to test
it for them, but that the CD-ROM I had would not read and could they send
me another one. They never answered any e-mails after that.
Which is why I upgraded to IBM DB2 UDB V6.1 which worked just fine. Since
I am cheap, I kept V6.1 through upgrades to RHL 6.2 and 6.3. Now DB2 V6.1
did not really like RHL 7.3. It worked because there were some
"compatability libraries" that could be used, but it meant I had to change
all the makefiles to use those libraries, including getting it to use the
compatibility version of ldd.so.
Anyhow, when I built this machine I put Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 ES on
it and installed IBM DB2 UDB V8.1 (upgraded to 8.1.5) and after a fight to
get it installed (graphic installer does not work), it runs just fine on a
dual hyperthreaded Intel XEON machine with 4GB (expandable to 16 GB if I
found I needed it).
Unless Informix has been greatly improved since the time RHL 6 came out, I
do not see why anyone would wish to use it unless it is a lot cheaper than
DB2.
My needs are quite modest, since I am running it single-user for a single
small (by dbms standards) database. But back when I started, postgreSQL
and Oracle were the other alternatives, and postgreSQL did not run right
(one version would not allow primary keys to be specified, and another was
unable to have views), and Oracle's license agreement was so complicated
that I refused to sign it.
If a small user such as I can use it, I see no reason why a larger user
could not.
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 00:05:00 up 7 days, 7:20, 3 users, load average: 0.34, 0.28, 1.11
Mark A
> >
> > I am watching the huge inroads being made by clustered Linux taking out
> > Sun's and H/P's more expensive offerings. I built an 8 CPU cluster a few
> > weeks back with less than $11,000 US in hardware.
> >
> > How long before it becomes easy to build OS/390 equivalent machines
> > with a rack of 2 CPU x 4GB Intel boxes running RedHat AS?
> >
> > I suspect far sooner than you want to imagine.
> >
> > And when the big iron goes ... do you think DB2 will survive? Informix,
> > in my opinion, has a better chance of surviving.
> >
hardware boundaries between mainframe and smaller computers are starting to
disappear. The biggest cost of a mainframe is the software, and OS/390 and
z/OS are still formidable products for certain applications in large
enterprises.
Data Goob
SQL-Server clustering, which is an abomination and true cluster f***
waiting to happen. With SQL-Server, you have to create duplicate
databases and tables on each node, naming them slightly different names
and you pretty much have to manage data skew on your own. Little if any
parallelism or the ability to manage it is available. We have not heard
of anyone actually doing SQL-Server clustering, although it is supposedly
possible. Not to mention there is practically no control over logical logs
with SQL-Server. It is total crap, a toy by comparison with DB2 or Oracle
or Informix. As far as DB2, the database is created across partitions and nodes.
"Daniel Morgan" <damo...@x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1085885187.582683@yasure...
Data Goob
"Daniel Morgan" <damo...@x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1085885854.322603@yasure...
Daniel Morgan
> Your comments are interesting, and somewhat accurate when talking about
> SQL-Server clustering, which is an abomination and true cluster f***
> waiting to happen. With SQL-Server, you have to create duplicate
> databases and tables on each node, naming them slightly different names
> and you pretty much have to manage data skew on your own. Little if any
> parallelism or the ability to manage it is available. We have not heard
> of anyone actually doing SQL-Server clustering, although it is supposedly
> possible. Not to mention there is practically no control over logical logs
> with SQL-Server. It is total crap, a toy by comparison with DB2 or Oracle
> or Informix. As far as DB2, the database is created across partitions and nodes.
My understanding is the same as yours. Microsoft's so-called clusters
are really just fail-over and their so-called four node cluster has yet,
AFAIK, been implemented by anyone.
Captain Pedantic
news:c9ajht$29j$1...@hanover.torolab.ibm.com...
Can you post your $ONCONFIG file and output from onstat -p?
Andrew Hamm
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040526/tech_database_marketshare_1.html
>
> Interesting to see that database sales for windows is more than
> Unix
And we give a shit Because _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ?
W(hy)TF were you stupid enough to cross-post this worthless waste of
bandwidth based on meaningless numbers that have been aggregated almost out
of existence?
Geeeezzzzzzz...........
Data Goob
products, and as a DBA using DB2 could you comment, so that is why
I would invite other IBM people besides yourself to comment. To
say that it is not appropriate for Informix people is to deny that
Informix products are a product line OWNED BY IBM. Informix is not
an independent company, it IS IBM. There is no offense talking about
DB2 features here in Informix, don't worry people will probably like
to know. While the upgrades to Informix products are noble, they
**will** eventually be absorbed into DB2, so the conversation is
not lost on this audience.
If I were an Informix DBA I would be extremely interested in knowing
what DB2 has that Informix does not and the reverse. Since I've taken
the time to work with both products I can tell you the differences.
What DB2 really lacks are good docs showing the comparisons, something
IBM should provide Informix people, and just get on with it. It should
not have to come from the end-user community, it should come from IBM,
and allow people to get excited about it enough to let go of Informix
products. I have yet to see anything missing in DB2 that is present in
Informix that we just had to have or that we could not live without.
Both products excel at simplicity and tunability, common ground for
both communities.
PS Andrew Hamm I was wondering where my laugh-for-today was going to
come from. ;-)
"Serge Rielau" <sri...@ca.eye-be-em.com> wrote in message news:c9bfeo$41s$1...@hanover.torolab.ibm.com...
Daniel Morgan
> What DB2 really lacks are good docs showing the comparisons, something
> IBM should provide Informix people, and just get on with it. It should
> not have to come from the end-user community, it should come from IBM,
I would like to respectfully disagree.
It should come from the user community. And, as you state, from persons
that have wide experience with both product lines.
Anything that comes from IBM will be written with marketing's heavy
hand involved in the editing.
What comes from DBAs and developers can contain a lot more unvarnished,
and untarnished, truths.
Daniel Morgan
> Unfortunately I don't have the Gartner report (The summary used to be
> free :-(, But an interesting number to look at may be tracking the
> Windows share.
> IBM Entered that market with DB2 V5 I believe. The Unix market was
> entered with the prior release.
> For being the last one entering the game I think DB2 has been doing
> quite nicely :-)
>
> Cheers
> Serge
If you define the Windows database marketplace as one that doesn't
contain MS Access and MS Fox?
I've yet to run into a single instance of DB2 on Windows ... or for
that matter DB2 on non-IBM hardware. Do they exist? Of course. But
they are few and far between. And almost all in companies that have
DB2 on an IBM platform already.
Serge Rielau
> Aren't you leaving out the part where when making the clustering
> decision with shared nothing you have to create separate databases,
> for each node, well except on mainframes, whereas with shared-everything
> no change to the storage need be made.
If I would have said that it would have been a lie. If you say that it's
ignorance (or a lie - We'll never know...).
A DB2 sytem running with database partitioning is 1(one, uno, une, eine,
adjien) database, create with a simple command: CREATE DB <dbname>.
Every table is created using 1 create table statement. No explicit
partition names, views or whatever. You insert, update, delete, select,
import and load 1 table.
Oh and: There are no frigging 2-Phase-Commits the application has to
worry about either no matter how often Oracle repeats the garbage!
What about putting down the Oracle marketing material for a seocnd and
getting yourself a DB2 book before yacking about stuff you have no clue
about?
> Nodes can be dynamically added or
> removed from the cluster real-time.
Ahh, now we're talking. You can add a node fairly easily actually.
It's up to you whether you just want to get the CPU horsepower or
actually repartition the data, which you can do over time. The
capability of doing that online has nothing to do with shared nothing,
but everything with what customers need. In a BI environment it is
simply more important to reach those 100s of nodes at all than doing
online repartitioning.
One makes thy choices. Blame DB2 V8 for not doing it, fair enough. But
don't blame shared nothing. It's absolutely doable.
> I would think that a major consideration.
Depending on the customer, sure, - as are many other things like will it
actually get linearly faster if I double my nodes from 64 to 128.
Gert van der Kooij
(sri...@ca.eye-be-em.com) says...
> Unfortunately I don't have the Gartner report (The summary used to be
> free :-(, But an interesting number to look at may be tracking the
> Windows share.
> IBM Entered that market with DB2 V5 I believe. The Unix market was
> entered with the prior release.
> For being the last one entering the game I think DB2 has been doing
> quite nicely :-)
>
> Cheers
> Serge
>
I found some DB2 UDB history at
http://www.tendigit.com/izone/history/history.html
Mark A
> that matter DB2 on non-IBM hardware. Do they exist? Of course. But
> they are few and far between. And almost all in companies that have
> DB2 on an IBM platform already.
> --
> Daniel Morgan
This is complete nonsense. Unless you consider all IBM compatible PC servers
to be IBM's (which of course is not the case).
DB2 UNIX runs on HP/UX and Sun Solaris. Many large companies run on these
two non-IBM hardware platforms. I personally have used DB2 on Solaris quite
a few time.
Larry
the NY Metro area, I have two that are using DB2 on Solaris (and in both
cases, they did not have DB2 on any other platform prior to Solaris).
Larry Edelstein
Daniel Morgan
You can't call the fact that I, personally, have never run into
DB2 on Windows nonsense. And you sure can't dig your way out of it
by making reference to HP and Sun hardware unless you are somehow
equating Solaris with a Microsoft product.
So I'll try the statement again ... I ... that means mean personally, in
35 years in this industry ... seen DB2 on Windows in any organization
that didn't have DB2 also on another IBM platform such as a mainframe
or AS400.
I can not be wrong about my personal experience.
If you wish to prove that my personal experience is somehow skewed and
not representative of the database market as a whole ... then here's
how you can do it.
Publish official numbers showing the number of DB2 licenses, on MS
Windows, that are in companies that are not also using DB2 on mainframes
or AS400. Simple.
Daniel Morgan
> And I can say that across about half a dozen customers that I have in
> the NY Metro area, I have two that are using DB2 on Solaris (and in both
> cases, they did not have DB2 on any other platform prior to Solaris).
>
> Larry Edelstein
And I wouldn't begin to disagree with you. Of course we both know
that Solaris is not Windows and that what I wrote was:
"I've yet to run into a single instance of DB2 on Windows ... or for
that matter DB2 on non-IBM hardware"
Which part of my use of the word Windows made both you and Mark
immediately run out and decide to talk about Solaris rather than
address the reference to Windows? ... I know ... and I'm sorry I
added the second part of the sentence. But while your experience
may be valid in the NY Metro area ... it is not my experience
from any site I am aware of on the West Coast.
Jean-David Beyer
> So I'll try the statement again ... I ... that means mean personally, in
> 35 years in this industry ... seen DB2 on Windows in any organization
> that didn't have DB2 also on another IBM platform such as a mainframe
> or AS400.
>
> I can not be wrong about my personal experience.
>
Could it be that people smart enough to select DB2 are smart enough to
select an OS other than Windows? ;-)
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 20:05:00 up 8 days, 3:20, 4 users, load average: 4.08, 4.10, 3.88
Daniel Morgan
> Daniel Morgan wrote (in part):
>
>> So I'll try the statement again ... I ... that means mean personally, in
>> 35 years in this industry ... seen DB2 on Windows in any organization
>> that didn't have DB2 also on another IBM platform such as a mainframe
>> or AS400.
>>
>> I can not be wrong about my personal experience.
>>
> Could it be that people smart enough to select DB2 are smart enough to
> select an OS other than Windows? ;-)
I would certainly hope so. That was certainly my experience when
I worked with DB2. Yet somewhere back a few days ago in this thead
someone was trying to make the case for DB2's great success on the
Windows platform. Why I can't imagine. Putting DB2, or for that
matter Oracle, Informix, or Sybase on Windows to me means that you
don't need to be up 7x24 and accept the fact that the machine will
be down frequently for patching and virus fighting (caveat: unless
you are one of those people that believes firewalls are fool proof).
Mark A
> DB2 on Windows nonsense. And you sure can't dig your way out of it
> by making reference to HP and Sun hardware unless you are somehow
> equating Solaris with a Microsoft product.
>
> So I'll try the statement again ... I ... that means mean personally, in
> 35 years in this industry ... seen DB2 on Windows in any organization
> that didn't have DB2 also on another IBM platform such as a mainframe
> or AS400.
>
> I can not be wrong about my personal experience.
>
> If you wish to prove that my personal experience is somehow skewed and
> not representative of the database market as a whole ... then here's
> how you can do it.
>
> Publish official numbers showing the number of DB2 licenses, on MS
> Windows, that are in companies that are not also using DB2 on mainframes
> or AS400. Simple.
>
> --
> Daniel Morgan
I didn't say anything about your "personal experience." I just said your
comments are nonsense. If you prefer: "your [limited] experience is
non-sense."
I have seen many DB2 installations on Windows. Since you live in Washington
state, where there is an extreme MS bias, most companies use MS SQL Server
on Windows. That combination is strong, but not quite as dominant in other
parts of the country.
Excluding all companies that also run DB2 on OS/390 and AS/400 is quite
restrictive. I believe that are over 2000 companies who use DB2 on IBM
mainframes. The number of companies that run AS/400 (or I series) is in the
tens of thousands, and DB2 comes with the OS.
So you seem to be excluding a huge percentage of the largest 5000 companies
in the US (most of whom have at least one IBM mainframe running DB2 or an
AS/400 which comes with DB2).
So your comments are ridiculous (again). Double-talk. Non-Sense.
Larry
What was your motivation in making the statement that you have never
seen DB2 on Windows? You know the answer. You were trying to disparage
DB2's presence in the distributed marketplace. And distributed means not
only Windows ... but UNIX also. That's why I answered your statement
with a personal experience with UNIX. There are pleny of customers who
run DB2 on UNIX ... who don't want to run DB2 (or any rdbms) on Windows.
Larry Edelstein
Howard J. Rogers
[snip]
I'll just mention that I did a stint at one of Australia's largest insurance
companies as a DB2 administrator. They used 4 NT4 servers. And there were no
AS400s or mainframes in the vicinity at the time. Which was a good 10 years
ago now.
I'm not commenting on whether that makes DB2 on Windows common or rare. Or
suggesting that this somehow invalidates your experience. Just thought I'd
share!
Regards
HJR
Daniel Morgan
> Daniel,
>
> What was your motivation in making the statement that you have never
> seen DB2 on Windows? You know the answer. You were trying to disparage
> DB2's presence in the distributed marketplace. And distributed means not
> only Windows ... but UNIX also. That's why I answered your statement
> with a personal experience with UNIX. There are pleny of customers who
> run DB2 on UNIX ... who don't want to run DB2 (or any rdbms) on Windows.
>
> Larry Edelstein
Is paranoia a prerequisite for working with DB2 these days?
I was responding to a statement that said it was successful on that
platform by stating I'd yet to see it implemented that way once. Now
if a statement of fact is disparaging so be it.
If my experience is not the norm, as you and Mark seem to wish to
indicate ... where are the numbers? Or is asking for numbers a vicious
attack?
Daniel Morgan
It doesn't invalidate my experience any more than my experience
invalidates yours.
All of the times I've seen DB2 have been on mainframes but then,
as you know, also in Fortune 1000 size companies which is primarily
where I ply my trade.
Andrew Hamm
ALL RIGHT KIDS.
Enough!
Geez you guys are suckers for a decent trolling. Aren't you ashamed? If you
MUST continue this crap, please remove informix from the list of
newsgroups. - i have no idea where you are from.
Data Goob
What trolling?
"Andrew Hamm" <ah...@mail.com> wrote in message news:2i00mcF...@uni-berlin.de...
Jean-David Beyer
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
>
>> Daniel Morgan wrote (in part):
>>
>>> So I'll try the statement again ... I ... that means mean personally, in
>>> 35 years in this industry ... seen DB2 on Windows in any organization
>>> that didn't have DB2 also on another IBM platform such as a mainframe
>>> or AS400.
>>>
>>> I can not be wrong about my personal experience.
>>>
>> Could it be that people smart enough to select DB2 are smart enough to
>> select an OS other than Windows? ;-)
>
>
> I would certainly hope so. That was certainly my experience when
> I worked with DB2. Yet somewhere back a few days ago in this thead
> someone was trying to make the case for DB2's great success on the
> Windows platform. Why I can't imagine. Putting DB2, or for that
> matter Oracle, Informix, or Sybase on Windows to me means that you
> don't need to be up 7x24 and accept the fact that the machine will
> be down frequently for patching and virus fighting (caveat: unless
> you are one of those people that believes firewalls are fool proof).
>
That is the firewall that is a block of wood or plastic with two dummy
RJ-45 connectors on it.
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 08:35:00 up 8 days, 15:50, 4 users, load average: 4.09, 4.09, 4.06
rkusenet
"Andrew Hamm" <ah...@mail.com> wrote
> And we give a shit Because _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ?
>
> W(hy)TF were you stupid enough to cross-post this worthless waste of
> bandwidth based on meaningless numbers that have been aggregated almost out
> of existence?
I actually think this is one of the better threads here. Lot of information.
rk-
Noons
> Unfortunately I don't have the Gartner report (The summary used to be
> free :-(, But an interesting number to look at may be tracking the
> Windows share.
> IBM Entered that market with DB2 V5 I believe. The Unix market was
> entered with the prior release.
> For being the last one entering the game I think DB2 has been doing
> quite nicely :-)
Have they stopped counting all AS400 sites
as "DB2 sites" yet?
--
Cheers
Nuno Souto
wizo...@yahoo.com.au.nospam
Serge Rielau
Did I talk about AS/400? I purposely referred to Unix and Windows.
Captain Pedantic
news:40bb409a$0$3032$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
Well, no, most assuredly they *haven't* stopped.
Which rather makes the whole debate a complete waste of breath, doesn't it?
If wishing were reality, IBM would have all Informix users moved or moving
by now.
But in fact, even the biggest die-hard is hard-pushed to name even a
handful.
That university in Carolina, or was it California, featured on the IBM
website ... is that the only one?
But in the best traditions of the ostrich, IBM management can't see the
truth on this matter.
Enor P
Am think Andrew is not getting sex enough, he is very angry for mothing too
quickly.
--
Enor
Alexey Sonkin
> From: Data Goob [mailto:data...@hotmail.com]
>
> In the real world Informix is already dead.
>
In the real world, DB2 is still in it's childhood.
Some facts about DB2:
1. DB2 doesn't support table fragmentation within a single node
(unlike XPS, which is able to fragment table within a single node
and at the same time partition the table across nodes.)
2. DB2 still operates with 32-bit rowid's.
This imposes a very hard limit (4 billion rows) on the table size.
With Informix, this limit can be overcomed with intranode fragmentation.
The only option with DB2 is table partitioning across cluster nodes.
How many people are using inter-node partitioning for OLTP systems?
3. DB2 with it's 'no checkpoint' architecture makes very
poor caching of DB writes: in DB2, only one modification
is possible (from different sessions) for a page before
it MUST be synced with the disk.
In a real Informix/Oracle OLTP environment a page can modified many
times from concurrent sessions before it goes to disk (like the
'current' page in any accumulative table)
(Our typical disk write caching is >85%)
4. DB2 doesn't support implicit type casting in SQL statements and stored
procedures.
Can anybody imagine a headache of porting Oracle/Informix applications to
DB2?
5. DB2 doesn't support defining variables in stored procedure
by database column type (DEFINE my_var LIKE my_tab.my_col);
7. In it's current version, DB2 doesn't support anything
like Informix HDR or Oracle's log shipping ('Stinger' is not released..)
8. DB2 terminology is totally human-unreadable.
May be, this terminology came from the 'mainframe monsters' world.
------------------------------------------
Alexey Sonkin
sending to informix-list
Andrew Hamm
>
> Am think Andrew is not getting sex enough, he is very angry for
> mothing too quickly.
Am thinking He Gnore Mouse Penis (for anyone who still hasn't got the joke)
should stop hiding behind the facade of an innocent fool and should be brave
enough to openly stand by what they say and do.
Perhaps he's OTC trying a different sock puppet.
rkusenet
"Alexey Sonkin" <ale...@grandvirtual.com> wrote in message news:c9gang$675$1...@news.xmission.com...
Andrew Hamm
>
> Am thinking He Gnore Mouse Penis (for anyone who still hasn't got the
> joke) should stop hiding behind the facade of an innocent fool and
> should be brave enough to openly stand by what they say and do.
looks like i've missed the true joke too - enor mousepenis. Simply push the
words together. That's the hotmail email account used. Still tracing
further....
Captain Pedantic
news:c9gang$675$1...@news.xmission.com...
> 8. DB2 terminology is totally human-unreadable.
> May be, this terminology came from the 'mainframe monsters' world.
Does DB2 run on mainframes?
shahid.mehmood
Why am I receiving every post twice?
sending to informix-list
Noons
>>
>> Have they stopped counting all AS400 sites
>> as "DB2 sites" yet?
>>
> Did I talk about AS/400? I purposely referred to Unix and Windows.
>
I repeat: have IBM (AND Gartner) stopped counting all AS400
licenses as DB2 installations? Couldn't care less what the other
numbers are until this obvious fabrication is eliminated from their
"market share" claims.
Data Goob
>
> >
> > In the real world Informix is already dead.
> >
>
> In the real world, DB2 is still in it's childhood.
>
Oh Ok, that's cool, we will be excited about new features coming.
> Some facts about DB2:
>
> 1. DB2 doesn't support table fragmentation within a single node
> (unlike XPS, which is able to fragment table within a single node
> and at the same time partition the table across nodes.)
>
I'm not sure if you understand DB2 terminology enough to comment,
because it looks like your comments suggest that you misunderstand
certain things about how DB2 works.
Tables **can** be partitioned on a single node with one or many
partitions. We ran tests on one machine, then clustered two then
clustered three. The partitioning feature of DB2 is similar to
co-servers on XPS, you can create virtual co-servers in DB2 just
you can with XPS, on ONE server, they are called partitions, not to be
confused with disk partitions. You can mix and match across nodes
( physical servers ) just like XPS.
For example, we can set up a db2nodes.cfg for 3 physical machines
on our 'master coserver' (although it is possible to start/stop DB2
from any physical node unlike XPS which requires the master coserver
to start/stop from ):
0 server1 0
1 server1 1
2 server2 0
3 server2 1
4 server3 0
5 server3 1
The config file looks like this there is nothing else to it. The above
example is the eqivalent of 2 co-servers on each machine, or known as
partitions in DB2.
Physically:
server1 -- server2 -- server3
0 0 0
1 1 1
I could have easily just set this up on one machine or two machines, or n,
it still boils down to six partitions ( six XPS co-servers ). I could have
also set up 4 partitions per machine, one for each CPU. It is also important
to understand this is for one instance that spans three physical machines. In
Informix XPS each machine has an instance of its own, a bit more primitive
in the rawest of terms of shared nothing.
Here's another example, one machine, six partitions:
0 server1 0
1 server1 1
2 server1 2
3 server1 3
4 server1 4
5 server1 5
What happens next is important, the data is split up automagically for
you across partitions, whether they be on one machine or 3 or 6. You
define the data the way you want, and use raw-disks if you prefer or use
cooked files. We're using cooked because again, I'm lazy. You can also
define tables to take advantage of only certain partitions too.
> 2. DB2 still operates with 32-bit rowid's.
> This imposes a very hard limit (4 billion rows) on the table size.
Thanks we'll stay below 4 billion rows. And probably a good idea
to jump into 64-bit, and eliminate that 32-bit rowid problem.
> With Informix, this limit can be overcomed with intranode fragmentation.
> The only option with DB2 is table partitioning across cluster nodes.
Wrong. I am not a DB2 expert but I think your understanding of DB2 is
a bit off. But I also get the feeling that somehow you feel Informix is
better than DB2, but one has to ask just what is it better at? What
features are really missing from DB2 that we just gotta have? I already
know for our purposes we won't be using anything more than the basic
features.
> How many people are using inter-node partitioning for OLTP systems?
>
I have no figures to report to you.
> 3. DB2 with it's 'no checkpoint' architecture makes very
> poor caching of DB writes: in DB2, only one modification
> is possible (from different sessions) for a page before
> it MUST be synced with the disk.
> In a real Informix/Oracle OLTP environment a page can modified many
> times from concurrent sessions before it goes to disk (like the
> 'current' page in any accumulative table)
> (Our typical disk write caching is >85%)
>
I don't know DB2 well enough to argue this point, but DB2 on our
system is pretty darn fast, and a lot faster than SQL-Server, so
fast I can't believe the difference. Guess that's all that really
matters to us, and we are seeing fantastic performance with only a
moderate attempt at tuning. But it does sound like DB2 has some room
for improvement. We'll certainly take advantage of those improvements
when they come, interesting that some of the companies we talked to
using DB2 didn't seem to have any issues like this one.
> 4. DB2 doesn't support implicit type casting in SQL statements and stored
> procedures.
Is this something we need? Or is it a reflection that you have a bad
data model and need to convert data types? Converting data does not
necessarily have to be done in the SQL, it can be done outside the
SQL with a good ETL tool, and we have one just for that purpose.
> Can anybody imagine a headache of porting Oracle/Informix applications to
> DB2?
>
We have not tried to port any Oracle or Informix applications, but did
have a pretty easy time with our SQL-Server migration, it went really
smooth. Have you tried the Migration Toolkit for Oracle or Informix?
The SQL-Server MTK works for us very well.
> 5. DB2 doesn't support defining variables in stored procedure
> by database column type (DEFINE my_var LIKE my_tab.my_col);
>
This feature is not available in SQL-Server either. Bummer. Guess we
won't need it. Looks like an Informix feature that could show up in
DB2 sometime, but it's not urgent.
> 7. In it's current version, DB2 doesn't support anything
> like Informix HDR or Oracle's log shipping ('Stinger' is not released..)
>
Is that a bad thing? Do we need that? We have replication with our
SAN perhaps it makes me lazy not to mess with the database server
replication. I don't like to have to work hard. We'll use the SAN,
it's faster, and no DBA intervention required.
> 8. DB2 terminology is totally human-unreadable.
> May be, this terminology came from the 'mainframe monsters' world.
>
Alexey I'm sure there are other features that would be nice to see in
DB2, but we're probably not gonna need 'em, and probably wouldn't know
what to do with a lot of the features that are already in DB2. By the
time we really get good with DB2, the Informix product line will have
completely collapsed and DB2 will be there with the Informix features
put into it. So we're willing to wait for those few features from
Informix that are really important but not urgent.
Alexey Sonkin
Goob,
First, some more facts about DB2:
1. In DB2, the location of table indexes MUST be specified
at table creation. It's impossible to 'create index in....'.
Very unflexible
2. DB2 installes into a fixed location on a hard drive.
This directory can't be 're-linked', because DB2 installer
ceated a lot of links to that location.
This has a severe effect on DB2 upgrades.
To switch the system from one DB2 version to another,
it is necessary first to stop DB2, then completely remove old
software, install new software into the same location
and only then start DB2.
It takes few seconds to one minute with Informix to upgrade
from one version to another (in terms of system downtime),
and takes up to 30 minutes to do it with DB2.
Is DB2 a database for 24x7 systems?
3. Cross-database queries within a single DB2 instance do not perform
as though they are local queries (like in Informix).
This will be a shock to those why normally have different
databases for loosely related applications with Informix and
makes occasional inter-database queries...
See other comments below
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Data Goob [mailto:data...@hotmail.com]
>
> "Alexey Sonkin" <ale...@grandvirtual.com> wrote in message
> >
What You say is that one can easily simulate a cluster on a single
machine - that is, run several DB2 instances on a single machine.
Not a big deal. Many XPS customers were doing the same when they
were running 32-bit version of XPS (when 64-bit XPS was not available)
on the monstrous 64-bit SMP hardware.
What I say is that XPS support HYBRID fragmentation.
Table can be fragmented on a single node (vertical fragmentation)
by hash and at the same time fragmented by expression across
XPS co-servers (instances in DB2 terminology) - horizontal fragmentation.
> > 2. DB2 still operates with 32-bit rowid's.
> > This imposes a very hard limit (4 billion rows) on the table size.
>
> Thanks we'll stay below 4 billion rows. And probably a good idea
> to jump into 64-bit, and eliminate that 32-bit rowid problem.
Are You sure, that 64-bit DB2 is using 64-bit ROWID?
I think, You are wrong on that
> > With Informix, this limit can be overcomed with intranode fragmentation.
> > The only option with DB2 is table partitioning across cluster nodes.
>
> Wrong.
I can just repeat, that there is no intra-instance table fragmentation in
DB2. I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong on that
> I am not a DB2 expert but I think your understanding of DB2 is
> a bit off. But I also get the feeling that somehow you feel Informix is
> better than DB2, but one has to ask just what is it better at? What
> features are really missing from DB2 that we just gotta have? I already
> know for our purposes we won't be using anything more than the basic
> features.
Did You ever deal with LARGE systems?
> > How many people are using inter-node partitioning for OLTP systems?
>
> I have no figures to report to you.
Share-nothing architecture is good for DataWarehousing, not for OLTP.
> > 3. DB2 with it's 'no checkpoint' architecture makes very
> > poor caching of DB writes: in DB2, only one modification
> > is possible (from different sessions) for a page before
> > it MUST be synced with the disk.
> > In a real Informix/Oracle OLTP environment a page can modified many
> > times from concurrent sessions before it goes to disk (like the
> > 'current' page in any accumulative table)
> > (Our typical disk write caching is >85%)
> >
>
> I don't know DB2 well enough to argue this point, but DB2 on our
> system is pretty darn fast, and a lot faster than SQL-Server, so
> fast I can't believe the difference. Guess that's all that really
> matters to us, and we are seeing fantastic performance with only a
> moderate attempt at tuning. But it does sound like DB2 has some room
> for improvement. We'll certainly take advantage of those improvements
> when they come, interesting that some of the companies we talked to
> using DB2 didn't seem to have any issues like this one.
I believe, that DB2 is very fast in reporting, in index creation...
I'm talking about OLTP insert performance from parallel sessions
into a single table.
>
>
> > 4. DB2 doesn't support implicit type casting in SQL statements and
> > stored procedures.
>
> Is this something we need? Or is it a reflection that you have a bad
> data model and need to convert data types? Converting data does not
> necessarily have to be done in the SQL, it can be done outside the
> SQL with a good ETL tool, and we have one just for that purpose.
>
> > Can anybody imagine a headache of porting Oracle/Informix applications
> > to DB2?
>
> We have not tried to port any Oracle or Informix applications, but did
> have a pretty easy time with our SQL-Server migration, it went really
> smooth. Have you tried the Migration Toolkit for Oracle or Informix?
> The SQL-Server MTK works for us very well.
Yes, this I tried it.
This toolkit doesn't support at the moment:
- conversion from implicit Informix type casting to explicit type casting
- conversion from 'define.. like ..' variable definitions to fixed-type
variable definitions
- conversion from Informix exception handling to DB2 exception handling..
That is, this Toolkit can only automate 20% of conversion efforts
> > 5. DB2 doesn't support defining variables in stored procedure
> > by database column type (DEFINE my_var LIKE my_tab.my_col);
>
> This feature is not available in SQL-Server either. Bummer. Guess we
> won't need it. Looks like an Informix feature that could show up in
> DB2 sometime, but it's not urgent.
See above. This feature is necessary to convert from Oracle/Informix
> > 7. In it's current version, DB2 doesn't support anything
> > like Informix HDR or Oracle's log shipping ('Stinger' is not released..)
> >
>
> Is that a bad thing? Do we need that? We have replication with our
> SAN perhaps it makes me lazy not to mess with the database server
> replication. I don't like to have to work hard. We'll use the SAN,
> it's faster, and no DBA intervention required.
Do not know about You. We need replication.
As for the SAN... I'm strongly against it both for it's high price and
for it's poor performance. There are many postings on CDI about SAN.
> > 8. DB2 terminology is totally human-unreadable.
> > May be, this terminology came from the 'mainframe monsters' world.
> >
>
> Alexey I'm sure there are other features that would be nice to see in
> DB2, but we're probably not gonna need 'em, and probably wouldn't know
> what to do with a lot of the features that are already in DB2. By the
> time we really get good with DB2, the Informix product line will have
> completely collapsed and DB2 will be there with the Informix features
> put into it. So we're willing to wait for those few features from
> Informix that are really important but not urgent.
>
Hope that Informix features will be in DB2 before most Informix
customers switch to Oracle under the influence of the enormous
increase of prices for the IBM/Informix tech support
Larry
Has Oracle stopped counting UNIX or has Microsoft stopped counting SQL
Server?
Larry Edelstein
Larry
Has Oracle stopped counting UNIX or has Microsoft stopped counting Windows?
Larry Edelstein
Alexey Sonkin
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Captain Pedantic [mailto:theharl...@hotmail.com]
>
> > 8. DB2 terminology is totally human-unreadable.
> > May be, this terminology came from the 'mainframe monsters' world.
>
AFAIK DB2 was originally created for mainframes
and ported to opensystems (UNIX, NT) rather recently.
This is why DB2 opensystem marker share is small
Clive Eisen
>
> Perhaps he's OTC trying a different sock puppet.
>
>
Be a brave man who said that to the clowns face
Enor P
Am have already apologised for this. I can't take back freinds joke on me.
--
Enor
Paul Watson
--
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Oninit Ltd # Growing old is mandatory
Tel: +44 1436 672201 # Growing up is optional
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www.oninit.com #
Buck Nuggets
> DB2 on Windows nonsense.
No, but I can call that fact totally irrelevant. I have never run
into a production oracle database on windows either. But then again -
I'm seldom involved in windows projects. So this experience of mine
is also totally irrelevant.
You're an oracle consultant, right? Let me guess...you don't get
called into a lot of db2 projects, right? Hmmm, there could be a
conection here...
BTW, lately I have been running into db2/windows implementations -
often in conjunction with websphere and its add-on applications.
And please - spare us the appeal to authority argument of your fortune
1000 companies. Many of us have consulted at dozens of forture 1000s
- and know how rare it is to ever see more than 1-2% of their IT
infrastructure. The fact that you may have spent two weeks
configuring an oracle server in the marketing department of company X
says and were not informed of their other vendor products is so
meaningless that it only further erodes your weak credibility on the
db2 market share.
I appreciate when you set the record straight on unfair oracle
criticisms. When you're the one engaging in FUD, you fall into the
same value category as body enhancement spam...
buck
Joel Garry
> The problem is Oracles' distributed lock manager.
>
> Take note, the DLM conzept actually came from IBM, and interestingly
> enough, Ingres for Linux will be using it. Look at who is pushing
> the DLM, it's OpenDLM from IBM!
>
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1599317,00.asp
> http://oss.software.ibm.com/dlm/
Did you read this? It clearly states the DLM concept is modelled
after the VAX version. What it doesn't say is that Rdb was the reason
for that, and Oracle improved upon it. Later, Oracle bought Rdb, with
all of it's attendent intellectual property. Link doesn't seem to
have been updated since 9/11/01...
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/opendlm
> http://opendlm.sourceforge.net/
>
> Oracle came about, if we look at history, from Larry seizing the dbms
> opportunity that IBM did not. So, it could be said that Oracle is a
> delta of DB2 on the mainframe, in its own incantation, pushed into UNIX.
Which is about as accurate as saying X windows are a delta of Windows
3.1.
jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040531/news_mz1b31choney.html
Data Goob
> "Data Goob" <data...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<pT2uc.541$Oi....@fe44.usenetserver.com>...
> > The problem is Oracles' distributed lock manager.
> >
> > Take note, the DLM conzept actually came from IBM, and interestingly
> > enough, Ingres for Linux will be using it. Look at who is pushing
> > the DLM, it's OpenDLM from IBM!
> >
> > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1599317,00.asp
> > http://oss.software.ibm.com/dlm/
>
> Did you read this? It clearly states the DLM concept is modelled
> after the VAX version. What it doesn't say is that Rdb was the reason
> for that, and Oracle improved upon it. Later, Oracle bought Rdb, with
> all of it's attendent intellectual property. Link doesn't seem to
> have been updated since 9/11/01...
>
Yes I read it, very confusing documentation.
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/opendlm
> > http://opendlm.sourceforge.net/
> >
> > Oracle came about, if we look at history, from Larry seizing the dbms
> > opportunity that IBM did not. So, it could be said that Oracle is a
> > delta of DB2 on the mainframe, in its own incantation, pushed into UNIX.
>
> Which is about as accurate as saying X windows are a delta of Windows
> 3.1.
>
Isn't it? :-)
I was being liberal in my comments, but I do recall Oracle taking off
on opportunities that IBM didn't even see. Bill Gates took advantage
of a windowed environment that **could** have been modeled after a
windowing environment at Xerox Park, which ran under X. So...
La...@nospam.net
Daniel Morgan
> Here we go again.
>
> Has Oracle stopped counting UNIX or has Microsoft stopped counting SQL
> Server?
>
> Larry Edelstein
I'd sure like to have your message translated into English. Last time
I looked, and it was just a few minutes ago, Oracle didn't sell UNIX.
If you truly believe that Oracle is counted every UNIX installation as
a database customer ... like IBM counts every AS400 as a DB2 customer.
You are drinking something far stronger than the Laphroaig I'm sipping.
--
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damo...@x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
Daniel Morgan
> You're an oracle consultant, right?
Wrong!
> Let me guess...you don't get
> called into a lot of db2 projects, right? Hmmm, there could be a
> conection here...
>
> buck
Your guesses are incredibly bad.
I'd suggest you stay away from poker tables.
Andrew Hamm
> He'd need a big sock
That's not what I've heard.
Where is the old bugger anyway? He's been even more quiet than I have.
scottishpoet
$7.06 billion in 2003, but much of the increase was the result of
currency conversion rather than improved demand, according to
market-research firm Gartner.
The 2003 database sales figures, which Gartner released Wednesday,
show International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) continues to be the
market leader in terms of new license sales.
But much of IBM's business continues to be on mainframe computers,
rather than UNIX or Windows machines. In the UNIX and fast-growing
Linux markets, Oracle Corp. (ORCL) outpaced Big Blue.
Overall, IBM's revenue from new database license sales rose 4.9% to
$2.52 billion in 2003, Gartner said. That gave the Armonk, N.Y.,
company 35.7% of the total database market in 2003, flat from the
previous year.
Oracle, Redwood Shores, Calif., saw its new license sales rise 2.4% to
$2.29 billion, but its market share dropped to 32.6% in 2003 from
33.4% the previous year, Gartner said.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) continued to gain ground on its two main
competitors in the database market. The Redmond, Wash., company's new
database license sales rose 11% to $1.32 billion boosting its market
share to 18.7% from 17.7% in 2002, Gartner said.
In the UNIX segment of the database market, Gartner said sales fell
5.9% to $2.34 billion last year as most of the leading vendors
declined. Oracle's new license sales fell 8.3% to $1.34 billion, or
57.4% share; while IBM's sales fell 5.8% to $586.5 million, or 25.1%
share.
The sales of databases for computers running the Linux operating
system in 2003 more than doubled to $299.3 million from $116 million a
year earlier, Gartner said. Oracle commanded 69.1% of this market,
boosted by its clustering offering, while IBM had 28.5% share.
-By Marcelo Prince, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5244;
marcelo...@dowjones.com [ 05-27-04 0733ET ]
"Data Goob" <data...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<VD8vc.43$pa...@fe42.usenetserver.com>...
Noons
> Here we go again.
Yes. for as long as those cretin claims continue...
> Has Oracle stopped counting UNIX or has Microsoft stopped counting Windows?
Why should they?
Noons
> You are drinking something far stronger than the Laphroaig I'm sipping.
Your very good health!
Larry
Larry
Darin McBride
I think Noons' point is that it's unfair to compare Oracle (Linux,
Unix, Windows) against DB2 (Linux, Unix, Windows, AS/400) since the
domains are different.
Larry wonders why it's fair, using the same logic, to compare Oracle
(Linux, Unix, Windows) against MS SQL Server (Windows) since the
domains are different.
Of course, neither one makes sense. While some companies do constrain
their spending to certain platforms (all-MS shop running Windows,
all-HP, all-Sun, all-IBM, etc.), I would think that most database-using
shops are simply trying to store and retrieve data. As long as that
works, the platform in use is only of as much interest as their budget
allows (i.e., a budget of $20,000 isn't going to get an AS/400!).
If they go out and purchase some hardware running DB2, or Oracle, or
SQL Server, that's what they bought. So it counts for that product.
Noons' second point is that all AS/400 users are counted as DB2
customers whether they use it or not. Sorta like all Windows users are
counted as IE users, for example. However, what Noons has not proven,
or even attempted to demonstrate, is that this is a significant
distortion of the reality. Fact is that they did buy DB2, although
reality may be that they didn't want to. But is that a significant
portion of the AS/400 market as to render it misleading?
Noons
> For the same reason that you want IBM to stop counting DB2 on AS/400.
You wouldn't be smart enough to fathom the difference...
Noons
> I think Noons' point is that it's unfair to compare Oracle (Linux,
> Unix, Windows) against DB2 (Linux, Unix, Windows, AS/400) since the
> domains are different.
Nope.
> Larry wonders why it's fair, using the same logic, to compare Oracle
> (Linux, Unix, Windows) against MS SQL Server (Windows) since the
> domains are different.
Nope.
> all-HP, all-Sun, all-IBM, etc.), I would think that most database-using
> shops are simply trying to store and retrieve data. As long as that
> works, the platform in use is only of as much interest as their budget
> allows (i.e., a budget of $20,000 isn't going to get an AS/400!).
So, if you are using a AS400 to run RPG applications inherited
from your 20 year old System 36, WTF is IBM counting THAT
as a DB2 license?
> If they go out and purchase some hardware running DB2, or Oracle, or
> SQL Server, that's what they bought. So it counts for that product.
Sure. the problem is that IBM is counting ALL (let me see if you can
grasp the difference: I said ALL, it means THE TOTALITY OF) AS400 sites
as DB2 sites. Which they are NOT, NEVER were and NEVER will be.
> counted as IE users, for example. However, what Noons has not proven,
> or even attempted to demonstrate, is that this is a significant
> distortion of the reality. Fact is that they did buy DB2, although
> reality may be that they didn't want to. But is that a significant
> portion of the AS/400 market as to render it misleading?
Yes. ALL AS400 sites IS a "significant portion of the AS400 market",
in case you have not noticed?
Obnoxio The Clown
Larry said:
> For the same reason that you want IBM to stop counting DB2 on AS/400.
>
> Larry
>
> Noons wrote:
>> Larry allegedly said,on my timestamp of 2/06/2004 2:18 AM:
>>
>>> Here we go again.
>>
>>
>> Yes. for as long as those cretin claims continue...
>>
>>> Has Oracle stopped counting UNIX or has Microsoft stopped counting
>>> Windows?
>>
>> Why should they?
Have you tried UPDATE STATISTICS?
--
Bye now,
Obnoxio
"C'est pas parce qu'on n'a rien à dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule"
- Coluche
"Necrophilia means never having to say ... well, anything!"
- Captain Pedantic
"Ogni uomo mi guarda come se fossi una testa di cazzo"
- Marco
sending to informix-list
Obnoxio The Clown
Noons said:
> Larry allegedly said,on my timestamp of 3/06/2004 9:57 AM:
>> For the same reason that you want IBM to stop counting DB2 on AS/400.
>
> You wouldn't be smart enough to fathom the difference...
Who shit in your Wheaties?