Hi, what are the difference between the Oracle SQL  and
the Microsoft SQL?

I am going to restructure the informatic organization of an
association. A part of the work requires the introduction
of a Windows NT server that should contain administration
and medical data.  I think that, at the beginning, about 4-5
PC clients will be used, while, in the future, more clients
will be present and other two servers could be introduced
in branch offices. I need a SQL server to manage data.  
The candidates are the Oracle SQL server and the Microsoft
SQL server.  I would appreciate any hints on this topic.
I would know pros and cons of the two DBMS.

Further, we are going to introduce a site on Internet and
I think that we could use a WEB server either to allow
Internet people to access our server either for internal pourposes;
i.e. the staff could access the data on the server by HTML
documents. According to the selected SQL, I will use the Oracle
WEB server or the Microsoft WEB server.
I would knows also pros and cons about this matter.

I thank in advance anybody who will help me.

Franco Scarselli

The MS product is actually an evolution of the older Sybase version 4.
It is simpler for novices to set up, but does not scale as well as
Oracle (scale means to grow and become a larger system with more users).
Oracle has a steeper learning curve and a greater need to have well
(and expensively) trained technical personell.  Technically, the
major drawback for MS SQL is that it doesn't have row level locking.
That means that whatever your programmers do, there will be situations
where data access will be prevented due to unrelated records being
locked.  The MS SQL will likely be much cheaper in the short run,
I would recommend Oracle if you plan on expanding.  You might consider
one of the PC front ends available for development.

The Web product market is in extreme flux, which will continue
for at least the next couple of years.  I would expect both
SQL's will have many options to choose from, eventually shaking out
to a few.  Since it is impossible to know which Web products will
be the winners, and the winning products will likely be able to
handle either SQL DBMS, whatever you decide for a Web server
interface will have to be redone, perhaps several times.  So
for now, you might as well use whatever product is recommended
by the vendor of the SQL you choose.

jg

--
Joel Garry               joe...@rossinc.com               Compuserve 70661,1534
These are my opinions, not necessarily those of Ross Systems, Inc.   <> <>
%DCL-W-SOFTONEDGEDONTPUSH, Software On Edge - Don't Push.            \ V /
panic: ifree: freeing free inodes...                                   O

Oracle is more difficult to learn that much is true.  MS SQL Server 6.5
is a great product.  I prefer it.  Look down the road a bit.  If your
using windows NT why not use MS SQL Server, there both made by
microsoft, and that is a big plus.  Some say that MS SQL Server doesn't
support row record locking.  That accually makes the whole database
slower anyway, but 6.5 does have a for of it.  I recommend MS SQL
Server.

--
Jeff Lundgren
Summit Consulting Services
Sacramento California
sum...@ns.net
http://www.ns.net/~SUMMIT

Computer Consultants helping small businesses in the greater sacramento
area.

Yes, fortunately consultants are biased.  So i'll give you the rut-tootem
from the ORACLE side.  ORACLE is more difficult to learn, fora reason, it
offers ALOT more features than many of the other RDBMS out thar.  Row-level
locking may make the DBS slower but your other alternative is page-level..
now think about when you've got a large number of users querying same tables,
you trying to say page-locking is going to allow these people to access at the
same time..NO, therefore it will be faster under heavy traffic.
If you are going to invest a ton of money on a SOLID DBMS backed by THE largest
and biggest and baddest database vendor out there..go with ORACLE (40%) of the
market share...closest competitor is INFORMIX(20%)..wheres SYBASE? (15%)..
Now given this? Wheres SQL Server?  ORACLE also runs on many of not all OS and
platforms and is rather scalable.  
Bottom LINE: At the enterprise level, Oracle is tough to beat

[snip]

I'm not sure about this... If we're talking about raw speed and TPC results
comparing Oracle73 to SQL-Server 6.5 on NT 3.51, then Oracle comes up highest
in the benchmarks.  Oracle's had RLL for years, and still owns the highest-ever
recorded tpm/c benchmark in the industry!

FYI: Microsoft was currently standing at 3% when I last looked at the figures.

I fully agree with your 'bottom line', but have also seen first-hand a large
number of customers who have gone for Workgroup Oracle7 INSTEAD of
SQL-Server in the 'low-end' of the market.

Perhaps half the problem is that people still associate Oracle with a very high
price tag, and don't realise that Workgroup Server is essentially the same
kernel and backbone of Oracle, yet at a much lower price-point. (and sure,
without some of the advanced features)

Rgds.

Depends upon how row level locking is implemented, Oracle Rdb(aka DEC
Rdb) has always had a good scheme. Row level locking is fully
implemented, but lcoks are not taken out until required, i.e. if you are
the only one on the table then you only use table level locking. If
someone joins you then the looks are moved towards the records, but not
directly to the records. This is called ALG (adjustable lock
granuality).

MS SQL Server looks like it is going to adopt this stratergy in the next
release.

BTW what was this figure?

I have many concerns when considering Oracle.  I do agree that from an
enterprise stanpoint (especially if you are doing transactions over
multiple databases), Oracle may be the way to go.  But, there is a steep
price to pay.  First, you have to deal with Oracle.  Second, the product
is more difficult to learn.  Third, the SQL capabilities in
Oracle stored procedures are somewhat limited.  Last time I looked, you
could not create temporaray tables in a stored procedure.  You also could
not join tables on Updates & Deletes.  Also, Oracle's query optimizer is
still not up to speed with Sybase and Microsoft.

Regarding the row level locking issue, I have done system with hundreds
of simulatneous users with page level locking and did not have any
problems.  

Also, if you are doing database replication, Sybase's replication server
is light-years ahead of Oracle.  I actually know companies that are
strickly Oracle shops who use Sybase's replication server with their
Oracle databases.

Because Sybase and Microsoft do not advertise their products in the same
manner as Oracle, these differences are seldom mentioned.  

have fun
ray charb.

I don't agree.  We're not talking about the ENTERPRISE edition of
Oracle!!!!  If you compare Oracle Workgroup Server to SQL Server -
Oracle is cheaper to implement, cheaper to run, and provides a lot
more funcionality, scalable, portable, faster, on and on!  As far as
difficulty to learn - Workgroup Server is actually a lot easier to
learn than SQL Server - PL/SQL is a 4GL language - what the hell does
Microsoft offer as far as a programmatic scripting language in SQL
Server - NOTHING!  You were already corrected on the third issue about
joining tables on updates and deletes ... you don't know what the hell
your talking about.  Check out the benchmarks stupid - Oracle is
always faster on any platform against any competitor.

You're going to tell me you've done systems with hundreds of users on
SQL Server?  MY DYING ASS!!!  The standard number of users on SQL
Server is 10-20... they had ONE (that's right - ONE) site that had 200
users on it 1995!  6.5 still can't get up to 200 users without
terrible consequences - ever heard of DBCC?  You'll be using it on the
hour with SQL Server and that many users (you have to kick every one
off, shut down the SQL Server, and do a Database Consistency Check).
NOW WHY THE HELL IS THERE SUCH A THING AS DBCC IF THEY DON'T HAVE
PROBLEMS WITH COLLISIONS????    There are systems (Informix, Sybase,
Oracle) with hundreds of users that use page level locking (by the way
you can force Oracle into page level locking) that never have
collisions - very common for read-only snapshot OLAP type sites -
because you never do inserts, updates, or deletes -DUHHH!!!  If MS SQL
Server didn't think Row-level locking was important why then did they
implement it on the inserts with 6.5?  And why are they promising Row
level with all transactions in their next release?  Well obviously
because they see the importance in it (collisions are a lot worse on a
database than the overhead involved in managing at row-level) yet they
haven't been able to reproduce this technology!!!
You must be high Jack-ASS!  Those sites don't know what the hell
they're doing then.  Ever heard of Symmetric Replication?  Probably
not eh?  Just spoutin' off aren't you?  Well Oracle's the only one
who's got it and no one's even come close - basically it means (this
will obviously be new to you) readable / writeable asynchrous
replication (full with differed locks, differed RPC, remote triggers,
etc.) along with dynamic master tables - multi master tables - known
as n-way replication.  No one else can do that - not even close!
BULLSHIT!  They just don't have anything to advertise!  I've been in
the consulting business for nine years now and I'm not an Oracle
pusher.  I implement and design whatever  a company (big or small)
wants.  However, Oracle offers a solution from Personal Oracle to
Enterprise and everything in between, tools, everything.  I will not,
however, ever work on SQL Server.  Microsoft came from the bottom in
single user systems.  That's where they should stay!
You have fun using your DBCC every night with SQL Server (old Sybase
technology by the way) while I'm out partying it up and Oracle's
Workgroup Server is at work providing Light's Out automated mgt. (SQL
Server can't do that!).

Well lets see . . .
OLTP features such as triggers, stored procedures, declarative
referential integrity.  These won't be added to the product until a
future release.  Informix uses partitioning to achieve parallelism in
queries.  Informix does not perform well when data is not partitioned
and with their 8.0 system that you mentioned above, they are unable to
achieve ANY parallelism at all without partioning.
Drawbacks  of their Static partitioning:
Inflexible - can't achieive parallelism without partition
Parallelism or administration - but not both.  You can either
partition data for performance (parallelism) or partition for
administration.  However you can't partition for BOTH performance and
administration.  With Oracle partitioning isn't necessary.  Informix
Partioning is done MANUALLY.   There are no partioning tools.  Data
distribution changes require repartitioning, schema shcanges require
repartitioning, and ALL THIS MEANS DOWNTIME!  Show me some Informix
sites with more than 200 gb in size - RARE!  Unproven OLAP- they don't
even offer a multidimensional database or analysis.  

I could go on and on - Informix days are over.  Let me give you an
example... the technology you mentioned above - its latest web page
from Informix is from JULY 1995!!!!!  HELLO INFORMIX PULL YOUR HEAD
OUT and start producing and stop talking!  Just for proof -
http://www.informix.com/informix/corpinfo/zines/whitpprs/wht3/6828whi...
. . . pathetic.
Oh, and what about raw bottom-line speed - once again Oracle kicks
Informix all over on any platform!!!!  

If I were you David, I'd be looking around for another job - and we
both know it!

Why is DB2 not in this list - I rather thought it had a pretty sizeable
market share - certainly there's got to be a vast number of legacy
systems out there if nothing else.

Mike

[snip]

We use both Oracle and Sybase and I will have to say
Oracles people and Tech support are unbearable.

Oracle is resource a hog ,yet very powerful

There are good 3rd party DBA tools for Sybase, better for MS sql
and Oracles are clunk city.

SQL*net is a pain
If page level locking is so terrible how does sybase
manage to support such large mission critical apps?

Or maybe they just say they do.

==============================
Joseph Buhl
Lockheed Martin
Denver,CO            
Internet                         jb...@den.mmc.com
phone                             (303) 977-8148
==============================

|> >
|> > In article <richu.7.01811...@interaccess.com>, ri...@interaccess.com
|> > >and biggest and baddest database vendor out there..go with ORACLE (40%) of the
|> > >market share...closest competitor is INFORMIX(20%)..wheres SYBASE? (15%)..
|>
|> Why is DB2 not in this list - I rather thought it had a pretty sizeable
|> market share - certainly there's got to be a vast number of legacy
|> systems out there if nothing else.
|>
|> Mike

Yep, DB2 Family share numbers are missing.  It's numbers are boosted
substantially by the fact that it includes DB2/400 which is the most
widely-used multi-user relational database.  Since DB2/400 is
integrated into the operating system, every AS/400 installed
automatically gets DB2/400 and there are about 300,000 of those
installed around the world.

--
Kenton Milligan
DB2/400 Development
IBM Rochester-AS/400 Division
km...@rchland.vnet.ibm.com
GO HAWKEYES!!
(opinions stated are not necessarily those of my employer)

In article <4qp6om$...@ornews.intel.com>,
        ray charbonneau <raych...@teleport.com> writes:

OK, but OTOH, you're recommending that one deal with a company with a worse
reputation than IBM in the 1960s for responsiveness to customers???

Perhaps this is true for the 30% solution.  I'd call them comparable in
learning curve, if you're only looking for about an 80% solution to your
problem.  But as you head toward the complete solution, MS starts having
an exponential learning curve.  Certainly, for application programming,
I suggest that the enhanced functionality of ORACLE significantly reduces
the project time-line.

That kind of suggests that your knowledge of ORACLE dates back to about
1992, doesn't it?  We have an application that generates, populates,
and drops hundreds of temporary tables per hour, with table_names that
will NOT cause name reuse for several hundred million transaction cycles.

Basically true, up until 7.3, at which point this criticism is gone.
Current ORACLE is at 7.3.

I've heard this from MS idiots, yet not one challenge in my work
environment has come even close to proving this one, in fact most have
shown that the claimants are putting reliance on advertising, and not
on any measured performance.  The most I will grant you is that queries
CAN be developed on MS that will actually optimise better, but that is
the real exception.

In addition, particularly with MS, you must physically implement objects
(i.e. indices), which a DBA can prove will never be used (other that to
tie up disk and cpu cycles during updates).  In other words, the sole
reason for the restrictions seems to be to sell more Intel hardware.

Its hard to claim actual problems will occur, unless you require top
performance, in which case, monitors will show lots of unneeded waits,
when transaction activity is high.  OTOH, burning cpu cycles hardly
matters when you've only got a few users.

ORACLE's could use a lot of clean up, and certainly could become far more
intuitive, but it is quite satisfactory with a little in-house competence.
If you're talking about using ORACLE's SNAPSHOTs, rather than SR, then I
can't disagree, because of the object naming limitations, and the trickiness
that you sometimes have to engage in to cause multiple triggers on a
condition to fire in the proper sequence.

No, you're right ... MS in particular concentrates on glitz, when at least
a little bit of functionality in their product would be useful.

In addition, you've ignored some of the more useful capabilities, such
as the Spacial Storage Option.  

Bill

In article <4qtdoc$...@inet-nntp-gw-1.us.oracle.com>,
"an133...@anon.penet.fi" <an133...@anon.penet.fi> writes

  Wrong,Wrong,Wrong Informix does have triggers,stored procedures and
referential integrity. It does not use just partitioning to acheive
parallelism in queries - it uses multiple threads per query if PDQ is
enabled. E.g.

   SELECT x,y
      FROM z
      GROUP BY x
      ORDER BY y

  gets possibly >1 scan thread, a group by thread, a sort thread...
  If you use the OnPerf GUI performance monitoring tool you can see each
  thread and how many rows it has processed so far... I've seen it
  running!

   Prove wrong above.

                               ^
                               |

  Really so how do you control disk layout to ensure that
disks/controllers can be used in parallel. Less i/O bandwidth means
lower performance and how do you acheive that in Oracle??

   Never really need tools to do paritioning - I've always been able to
   write scripts...

   Data distibution changes do not always require repartitioning. Only
   if it means that parallelism across disks suffers and you HAVE to
   redo your layout of data across disks if that happen. Don#t tell me
   ORACLE KNOWS whne the system is idle can which queries users run
   frequently and can reod the disk layout when the system is idle...
   Hmmm I know that no users will be running queries for the next 1/2 hr
   I'll just redistibute my data...... Oracle Future Prediciton Add-on
   module is here at last....

  K-MART evualuate all the leading relational daabases for thier new
  600GB data wharehouse and decided.....Informix.

    Informix do have a multidimensional analysis tool - MetaCube.

   Whats so pathetic - sounds better than Oracle to me - sa share
   nothing rather than a share everything system.

    Prove it - on a platform with the same number of CPUS running
    at the same speed with the same amount of memory and disks
    i.e. the same hardware. Go no prove it on >3 platforms.

   If I were you I'd

   a) get your facts right... the URL you quote actually proves Informix
   supports triggers and stored procedures....blown your candle out
   without even trying!

   Please do go on - anything else than Oracle has you think Informix
   does not have?
--
David Williams

Have you? With that language???????????????

Dear friends, named ones and anonymous ones! I have one Q:
Is this a serious discussion??? I have watched this discussion for the
sake of professional interest, but i must admit that I have troble
evaluating answers from mr. ANON...

Rune.

--

My, my.  Aggressive, aren't we?

In recent benchmarks for VLDB insert and select performance, Informix
8.0 has been "kicking" Oracle all over...

Oracle Corporation may be a better company than it's competitors
(with the exception of Microsoft), but it's product is totally
market-driven rather than technology-driven.  It will be interesting
to see if it holds up to the many complex data demands that are
coming down the pike.

With the existing base of Oracle customers, you probably won't have
to be looking for a job anytime soon.  But I wouldn't assume that
Oracle is going to continue to be King of the Hill.

If you go by number of systems rather than number of users, larger systems
are skewed out.  If you go by dollars, the opposite may be true.  You can
skew by picking markets, too.  Pretty useless measures, anyways.

There are plenty of MSSQL and Sybase 4.x places out there, but who
cares.

jg

--
Joel Garry               joe...@rossinc.com               Compuserve 70661,1534
These are my opinions, not necessarily those of Ross Systems, Inc.   <> <>
%DCL-W-SOFTONEDGEDONTPUSH, Software On Edge - Don't Push.            \ V /
panic: ifree: freeing free inodes...                                   O

:Oracle is more difficult to learn that much is true.  MS SQL Server 6.5
:is a great product.  I prefer it.  Look down the road a bit.  If your
:using windows NT why not use MS SQL Server, there both made by
:microsoft, and that is a big plus.  

I wonder why people keep saying that.

People should not volunteer to run Microsoft products. It is something you
do because you have to. I say that of experience. I am a MS basher, but I
am also about to be a MS certified personel.

My brief experience (simple project at dept of CS) with Oracle says that
it looks good, and there is lots of tools for generating front-ends.

If the MS SQL is just half as buggy, and has only half the 'features' you
usually find in MS products, then stay away from it.

:Some say that MS SQL Server doesn't
:support row record locking.  That accually makes the whole database
:slower anyway, but 6.5 does have a for of it.  I recommend MS SQL
:Server.

And if he gets an NT server, it is because he does not want performance
anyway. NT is one of the worst performers I have seen, and generally
unstable (can you say spontaneous reboot on COPY FILE.PS /B LPT1:) and
outdated (PostScript level 2 is impossible to send through the print
server (from Mac and PC))

We run NT because we run some simple apps that needs to run under Windows.
But we like Linux more and more, snd there is a great free database called
Postgres95 available for it.

PS: We are about to get an AIX server because of good Linux experience,
and for crucial data we want something like that.

--
Povl H. Pedersen - p...@edunet.dk
Macintosh / Unix / Win (aaargghh) programmer -  System Administrator
Microsoft philosophy since 1984: Why innovate when you can immitate