whm@sunquest.UUCP (Bill Mitchell) (01/20/89)
A couple of weeks ago I posted an article alluding to a database evaluation
that I've been working on for a while. This generated some questions about
what I've found. Well, I've got some findings, but a lot of the findings were
obtained on a non-disclosure basis, so I can't pass those findings along.
I'm sure that a lot of firms do DBMS evaluations for their own purposes and
now that we're in the winding down stage, I have to wonder about the right
way to go about selecting a database is.
Our situation is that we're developing a new product and we see a lot of
development leverage that can be applied by using a database system. Thus,
we endeavored to pick one out.
Our approach was to get a set of manuals for each system and study them.
We looked at six systems: Oracle, Ingres, Unify, Informix, Empress, and Sybase,
and I estimate that about 11,000 pages of documentation were involved. I
certainly didn't read every page, but I read a lot of pages. I have to think
that there's a better way, but what?
It would be wonderful if all vendors would produce an in-depth overview of
their product. Of the six vendors, only Empress and Sybase provided
documentation of this sort and I think they still fell a little short of
what I'd like to see. However, I have to give Empress and Sybase high
marks for attempting to meet this need. I have to give RTI some credit
for having C.J. Date write "A Guide to Ingres" under a consulting contract.
On the down side, such books go out of date and I'd rather see such documents
be current and directly available from the vendor. Of course, everyone has
glossies, but there's never enough detail to really answer one's questions.
I thought that Datapro reports might be a good source for information and
I looked at their reports on various systems. They had some useful information
such as the quantity of licenses sold and such, but in general, they weren't
much use. I don't know if this is generally the case, but at least one report
contained text straight from a vendor's glossy.
The naive might think that vendor representatives might be a good source of
information. For specific questions about a product, the vendor is a good
source, but I've never heard a DBMS vendor say that their product is anything
but perfectly suited for one's application. Vendors are often short on
knowledge about the competition and can't make detailed comparisons between
their product and their competitor's.
We never pursued it, but I wonder if there might be consultants around who
would take a look at one's needs and make recommendations. Of course, you
might want to get a second opinion or two.
I wonder if it would be feasible for an unbiased group to produce an outline
for a summary document and then have each vendor produce a document adhering
to the outline. I know, that's a little optimistic.
Well, to conclude, I think that there are probably a lot of persons currently
involved in trying to select a DBMS. If you've got any good ideas on DBMS
selection, I'm sure a lot of readers of this group would like to hear them.
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Bill Mitchell whm@sunquest.com
Sunquest Information Systems sunquest!whm@arizona.edu
Tucson, AZ {arizona,uunet}!sunquest!whm
602-885-7700
p.s.
If you're involved in a DBMS evaluation at the moment, I'll be glad to give
you my two cents (over the phone) on what I think about any or all of the
systems that I looked at. The best time to reach me is between 2pm and
6pm MST, M-F.gupta@cullsj.UUCP (Yogesh Gupta) (01/26/89)
In article <161@sunquest.UUCP>, whm@sunquest.UUCP (Bill Mitchell) writes: > [a good summary of the problems in evaluating DBMSs] One independant consultant who published a comparative report on UNIX DBMSs in 1988 is: Patricia Seybold's Office Computing Group 148 State Street, Suite 612 Boston, MA 02109 Ph: (617) 742-5200 Title: UNIX DBMSs: A Comparative Study by Judith R. Davis They did a report on Unix DBMSs that was dated by about six months when it came out, but was a good starting place. They compared Unify, Informix, Ingres, Oracle, and Progress. They had a small section on Sybase also. I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in the above group other than that I have read the above report. -- Yogesh Gupta | If you think my company will let me Cullinet Software, Inc. | speak for them, you must be joking.
lee@Data-IO.COM (Kyu Lee) (04/26/89)
If anyone in the netland has done competitive evaluation of DBMS, I would appreciate getting a copy. I would like to know DBMS running on PCs as well as on workstaions. Individual comments on some of the more popular systems are also welcome, e.g., dBase, Rbase, Oracle, Ingress, Raima (db_VISTA), Servio Logic (?). If you E-mail me your response, I will collect them and post them here later, i.e., unless you specify that yours not be posted. Kyu Lee lee@data-io.com