[ale] SQL server recomendations

[jhubbs at telocity.com]

According to a recent article I read, recent versions of PostGreSQL exhibit dramatic improvements in speed over previous versions.

Not only is Oracle expensive but its pricing model, IMHO, is very anti-consumer.  Your base license price is determined by the product of some number they set times the number of CPUs in the system you're going to run in on times the clock speed of the CPUs.  IIRC, they make some kind of adjustment for RISC CPUs.  Then they knock some kind of arbitrary "discount" off so as to make the equation not quite linear, but we're talking about tens of thousands per license here, so the "discount" can be best described as, well, "lube."  

They were also quite testy with me over the phone when I tried to get license prices in order to work up a cost estimate for a client; if I wasn't the one paying the money, they didn't walk to talk cost with me.  

I dare say that PostGreSQL can probably do what you need; someone who REALLY KNOWS it should take a look at your requirement.  In order to get failover, recoverability, etc., you may have to pull some stunts, but at least you're in the driver's seat and not one or more vendors.  

Also, don't assume that the "big guys" are a silver bullet; I ran into a bug that prevented MS SQL Server - arguably one of the best products MS has ever made - from making database backups automatically in version 6.5.  I don't know if it ever got corrected in 7.0/2000.

- Jeff

On Tue, 14 August 2001, greg at turnstep.com wrote:

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> > slowdown on the input volume during the winter months. I
> > realize I could use MySQL or PostGreSQL which are free, but
> > due to the size of this thing, and the possibility of remote
> > sync'ing, I'm guessing I should stick with one of the "big
> > guys". 
> 
> You should look at Postgres again - it is definitely now one 
> of the "big guys". Lumping it together with mySQL is not fair 
> to either one. MySQL is good for fast, simple transactions such 
> as running slashdot. Postgres, on the other hand, is a very 
> powerful, ANSI-compliant database that can handle a lot more than 
> most people think. I still think Oracle is the best overall 
> database, but the price for it is outrageous. If you can afford 
> it and are planning on doing a *lot* of business (on the order 
> of millions of records+) pony up for Oracle, but if not, go for 
> Postgres. 
> </twocents>
> 
> Greg Sabino Mullane
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