I have a lot of database-related subjects to blog about here. (Just look at the categories list on my blog DBMS2 for a preview of coming attractions.) But before I dive in, perhaps it would be best to point out why you should care. In particular, let's talk about why you'd ever consider using something other than the default choice of Oracle. (Similar reasons apply to Microsoft SQL Server.)
Price
Oracle costs a lot to buy and maintain. And the price keeps going up, even as the cost of hardware goes down.
Complexity
Running Oracle requires huge amounts of manual intervention. Newer products generally require less. True, Oracle was totally rewritten in Versions 6 and 7, which takes us to the early 1990s, when many current competitors were already in some form or other on the market. But even so, Oracle is effectively an older product than most alternatives.
Compatible alternatives
Postgres Plus Advanced Server offers strong Oracle compatibility, including a broad range of functionality few applications ever use. It's based on a well-tested open source code line. And it's vastly cheaper than Oracle.
One area where I wouldn't say Postgres Plus is well-proven is large-scale data warehousing. But Dataupia offers a low-cost data warehouse appliance that can back-end Oracle databases.
Non-relational alternatives
Oracle has impressive datatype extensibility. Even so, if you want to manage text or native XML or native object-oriented structures, it's probably not the way to go - unless your non-relational needs are pretty lightweight. If you want to manage text, look at Autonomy or Microsoft/FAST or Coveo or Mark Logic or Attivio (especially the last three). If you want to manage XML, look at Mark Logic or maybe Intersystems Cache'. If you want to manage objects, look at Cache'.
Related links:
Curt Monash is a leading analyst of and strategic advisor to the software industry. Praised by Lawrence J. Ellison for his "unmatched insight into technology and marketplace trends," Curt was the software/services industry's #1 ranked stock analyst while at PaineWebber, Inc., where he served as a First Vice President until 1987. He subsequently co-founded Evernet, Inc., a $40 million networking systems integrator. Since 1990, he has owned and operated Monash Research, an analysis and advisory firm covering software-intensive sectors of the technology industry. In that period he also has been co-founder, president, or chairman of several other technology startups.
Curt has served as a strategic advisor to many well-known firms, including Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AOL, CA, and Netezza. Curt earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (Game Theory) from Harvard University. He has held faculty positions in mathematics, economics and public policy at Harvard, Yale, and Suffolk universities.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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Oracle
Why would any knowledge person choose Oracle? Informix, DB2 all are much better technical products (my opinion). I have many sites running Informix that sometimes ship 10k boxes a day, they don't have a dba or an onsite administrator. Once every 3 to 4 months we look at the db and logs to see if any tweaking needs to be done, it normally does not. Good design and good products work better than bodies and hardware.
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