opinions on Oracle 9i Vs SQL Server 2000

[Beantree]

We are in a position to purchase either Oracle 9i or SQL Server 2000 for a small data warehouse.

We currently have an Oracle 8i DB, but have to re-purchase a lisence (long story).

Aside from the massive price differences, can anyone provide any technological reasons why to select one over the other?

I believe that SQL does not provide for partitioning or bitmap indexes.

I appreciate any feedback. I didn't see any other forums that seem to lend to this discussion, but please let me know if there is one.

Thanks

 

[Michael42]

It seems the trend for Oracle is that though each successive version has more features yet the tools to manage it are becomming more intuitive.

I have been taking the Oracle courses at the Oracle University in Orlando. The teachers expressed this by stating an Oracle DBA for version 7 took 3-5 years to become proficient, version 8 2-3 years, version 9 1-2 years and Oracle 10i due out in September is to have this down to one year.

I am a new dude to Oracle. I have been working intensly at it for 6+ months I finally feel I have it wired. I think the 9i tools are superb (especially OEM and the Oracle Expert).

Super GUI tools seem to have been what Microsoft has always touted. This is no longer a contention point.

Some other points:

* Oracle runs on Windows, UNIX, LINUX and 64 other OS's.
* SQL Server seems to have recently aquired the ability to store terabytes reliably. Oracle can store a terabyte per column!
* Oracle handles asyncronous communications (multitasking + threads) very well as it supports UNIX etc. NT\2k is limited in doing threads (as compared to UNIX) and is limited to 3 gig memory per service. This 3 gig per service architecture limit can be a single point of failure as most do not know it exists!!! If it is not obvious why, both DB's are memory intensive and can be tweaked massively if you have the RAM. In other words if you tried to run say Google using SQL Server you would be forced into a performance cap.

I am not stuck on Oracle though. You should also consider mySQL 4.x (with InnoDB).

Hope these comments were helpful!

Michael42

 

[1stWhiteGhost]

I am an Oracle die-hard. I have never ran into a corrupted database... "knock on wood".
We are currently running Oracle v.8.1.5 and soon to upgrade to v.8.1.7 since we went Windows2000 server with AD. Version 8.1.5 is not active directory aware so the Oracle (Rman) open file agent will not work until we upgrade.

From the Oracle tech-tips seems like some unstability with verion 9i, so not going there yet.

I am stuck on Oracle, and believe it to be a very solid database plateform.

My only concern is that when I call Oracle support, they seem to be able to assist that much. I am tired of TARS and endless messages.

Pete,