howell@telesci.UUCP (Douglass J Howell ) (03/17/89)
Hello, A while back I sent out a request for information on some RDBMS vendors as we were planning on buying a UNIX RDBMS for our new product These are the results of the request I sent out for info on INGRES, UNIFY, INFORMIX, ORACLE. We chose these vendors for evaluation for several reasons: 1. We wanted a relatively big company: USA & international support less chance of going belly-up more established product (we do not want to be a guinea-pig) product that is available on many different UNIX boxes 2. We wanted a product that our users could possibly be using elsewhere and could use elsewhere if they so desired (eg their PCs) 3. Our RDBMS was required to run on SUNs, HP 9000/8XXs, and PCs Some other DB vendors did not have products available on HPs & SUNs at the time we selected these vendors for testing Our applications will NOT be major league large transaction oriented applications, so our evaluation criteria are simple: 1. speed in loading data into DB. we have a lot of data that comes in fast 2. storage efficiency - lots of data, more efficient data storage means more can be stored 3. impression that if a feature/capability is not currently available, it will "soon". 4. cost 5. other more minor factors, Criteria we did not care about: 1. Elegance of language, interface, etc. We figured that to get so big they had to have something on the ball, at least enough to get our relatively simple application done. Criteria where all the vendors seemed to be about the same: 1. Complaints from users. Each vendor seemed to have its problems and no one vendor stuck out from the others 2. Features. Each vendor, if it did not have a feature, had it scheduled. They all appear to play leapfrog featurewise. We chose Informix TURBO. In a nutshell, here is why: UNIFY did not seem very interested in our business. I had to BUY their 3rd party SW catalogue. We figured if they were so uninterested up front, it would not get any better INGRES did not have anywhere near the performance of Oracle or Informix. less than .1 of the performance of OUR criteria (see #1 above) However, they were extremely cooperative and helpful. Oracle performance was ~ .6-.7 of informix. Informix permitted us to turn off all journalling when required to boost performance. Oracle could not. I suspect this gave informix the big speed boost. And YES, I understand the hazards in this. Also, oracle would have been giving us a pre-release copy of their big new faster release, and we do not wish to be alpha/beta/new release guinea pigs. Also, they did not show up with SW until ~2 days before the stated end of our trial and we had to repeatedly ask to see manuals to get a couple. After we terminated the trial and did not select them, they got quite obnoxious about it all. Oracle was not supported on SunOS 4.0 again, they would have gotten us a pre-release version, but that would have made all our SW from them pre-release, and that scared us. Informix Was faster than competitors and price was similar to that of Oracle. Were in and out of here quickly, had a product that had been out for quite some time, and were very cooperative. Supplied us with manuals, etc for as long as we liked Informix financial troubles did not affect our selection. Their problems appeared to be with Wingz/Smartware and not the RDBMS and they did not appear to be fatal Doug Howell Phone: +1 609 866 1000 EMail: howell@telesci.uucp (...!princeton!telesci!howell) -- Doug Howell Phone: +1 609 866 1000 x218 EMail: howell@telesci.uucp (...!princeton!telesci!howell) Snail: Telesciences CO Systems, 351 New Albany Rd, Moorestown, NJ, 08057-1177