Posted by DA Morgan on 04/06/06 19:11

Paul wrote:
> Anyone know where I can find some good resources to help us choose between
> SQL and Oracle ( Progress Openedge as well ) . Any comments on what you
> would choose ?? We are creating a new Warehouse Management System which wil
> manage our very large inventory.
>
> Anyway comments suggestions welcome
>
> Thanks
> Paul

This type of question generally invites a bloody good flame war but I
will try to present some of the deltas that flavour Oracle in the least
inflammatory way that I can.

Be very careful when comparing these two products as the verbiage may be
the same but the concepts and technologies can be very different. For
example a database in SQL Sever equals a schema in Oracle and has
absolutely nothing to do with the Oracle concept of a database. Neither
is a SQL Server instance the same concept as an Oracle instance.

Both products have log files but they work in very different ways. In
SQL Server one sizes log files to handle the largest transaction and its
rollback. In Oracle one can perform an infinitely large transaction
using a couple of small log files.

Both products have tables but that is pretty much where the similarity
ends. Oracle provides heap tables (same as a SQL Server table) but also
two types of global temporary tables (the tables aren't temporary ...
the data is), external tables, compressed tables, index organized
tables, nested tables, partitioned, and XML tables. Not to mention
objects such as sorted hash clusters.

Talk about indexes and in SQL Server you find BTree and Bitmap indexes.
In Oracle you will also find bitmap join, compressed, descending,
function-based, reverse key, and no-segment indexes.

And this type of difference extends throughout the products. For example
SQL Server has no object types that perform the functions of Oracle's
packages, sequences, user-defined operators, rule-sets, and many more.

Look at security and you will find the differences are very substantial
as is the range of operating system options. You'll never run SQL Server
on Linux. And on Windows you will always be the target of every virus,
trojan, worm, and disgruntled employee that knows anything about the
o/s. Be sure to look at auditing with Sarbanes-Oxley and similar laws
in mind.

How important is 7x24 operation? There is no SQL Server technology
equivalent to Oracle' Real Application Clusters. They are working hard
in Redmond to get it in a future version but that is years away. And
how important would a capability such as resumable transactions be as
Oracle provides with their DBMS_RESUMABLE built-in package?

Be sure too to look at the differences in the transaction models. They
are completely different. In Oracle reads never block writes and writes
never block reads and there are an infinite number of row-level locks.
Lock escalation does not exist.

Finally, in spite of marketing types naming things to help sell them,
the fact is that SQL Server's Enterprise Edition is approximately
equal to Oracle's Standard Edition. Oracle's Enterprise Edition contains
essentially nothing but features SQL Server does not offer. Only the
name "Enterprise" is the same.

Feel free to contact me off-line if you wish as I have no interest in
fueling the inevitable name-calling any further than I already have.
Also feel free to visit my web site "Morgan's Library" at www.psoug.org.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

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