Does anybody have a hands-on experi

[ssh33]

Does anybody have hands-on experience with Oracle 9i and MS SQL Server? What are the pros and cons of both? What do you think is a better overall?

 

[ocpguru]

Oracle is the more robust of the two. Oracle is the only RDBMS to provide true read consistancy without blocking readers. Example - you start a long query for a report. After you start the query, but before it completes, other users update some of the same rows you are querying against. In SQL server, these changes will show on the report. In Oracle, they won't. To fix this behavior in SQL server, you'd need to lock the table while the query runs. SQL Server may be easier to administer. Oracle is more secure. (i.e. slammer virus spread via SQL server).
My choice is Oracle. I may be biased since I'm an OCP DBA. If its for a smaller system (< 5 GB and < 100 users) and read consistancy is not an issue,then SQL server may be better.

 

[Wonboodoo]

ocpguru is correct. Just want to add:

* SQL Server is a hell of a lot cheaper.
* Oracle runs on more platforms, not just Winblows.

If you've got money to burn choose Oracle.

The only reason to choose SQLServer over Oracle is it's point-and-click simplicity and the cost.

If money is an issue and you don't need some of the more advanced RDBMS features (transactions, read-consistency, stored procedures, triggers, online backups, replication, ... etc) I'd also consider looking at the freebies (MySQL, PostgreSQL, ... etc). A lot of web-based applications will work quite happily with these.

 

[sem]

Oracle Database includes also a lot of additional software. In most cases it's just precofigured versions of opensource products like Apache Webserver with modperl, Jserv and Oracle's module for pl/sql, so you may also run your servlets or other web applications on the same box (for servlets - even within embedded jvm).
Regards, Dima