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Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

Title:	DEC Rdb against the World

Moderator:	HERON::GODFRIND

Created:	Fri Jun 12 1987
Last Modified:	Thu Feb 23 1995
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1348
Total number of notes:	5438

367.0. "Oracle on VAX and Other Vendors?" by USRCV1::SHOWALTER (Jay Showalter) Mon Jun 05 1989 20:40

I have just spent the last couple of hours getting an eye-full of information on
Oracle in this notes conference.  One question that comes to my mind is how does
Oracle run on other vendor's equipment?  We seem to point out many problems with
Oracle on VAX/VMS systems.  Of course, some of the problems were competitive
knockoffs vs Rdb.  I have heard rumors that Oracle runs much better on non-VAX
systems.  This also brings to mind the question of Oracle on VMS vs ULTRIX. 

The reason that I'm interested in this broader view of Oracle is that one of my
sales reps just came back from a customer who is getting ready to extend a
benchmark invitation to all vendors that can run Oracle.  They are currently
running on a Prime system and are looking for an alternative vendor.  The one
and only requirment that all participants must meet is to be able to provide a
system that runs Oracle.  They don't care what operating system.  But, no other
database solution will be allowed.  (They have experience and many applications
written in Oracle.)

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
367.1	Beware the Oracle... an object lesson	BANZAI::COUGHLAN	DBS Product Management	`Mon Jun 05 1989 23:09`	14
	I don't know how Oracle runs on other systems (although they make their "maximum TPS" claim on Sequent gear), but I have to point out to any and all readers what is happening here... The hardware/OS vendor (Prime, in this case), who thought they had a good deal selling with Oracle to "get the business, who cares about the software", is now being locked out of future business... the customer could care less about Prime, and only is concerned about lowest cost hardware to run Oracle. Who has account control, Oracle or Prime? This could be you! Beware the Oracle... just as at Delphi, the "answer" from the Oracle is easily misinterpreted to be what you want to hear, instead of what you should hear.
367.2	The Architecture is the Answer	MAIL::DUNCANG	Gerry Duncan @KCO	`Tue Jun 06 1989 20:14`	30
	Faster hardware does not always mean that Oracle will run better. For example, table locking in Oracle 5.1.22 will hurt a 30 MIP processor from vendor x just the same way it hurts VAX. In fact, our benchmark on VAX 8840 ran just slightly slower than Bull's new, big, powerfull DPS9000. Further, Oracle 5.1.22 pegged the Bull system running 3 batch jobs .... a first during all the pre-rollout work on this machine. From what my customer told said, the Bull people in Phoenix were really scratching their heads. Another example was that our customer firmly believed that Oracle 5.1.22 would run well in the Bull HARDWARE SMP environment. Boy were they surprised when it ran worse than on VAX. Beyond deficiencies in the Oracle architecture caused by the "over 70 hardware platforms" philosophy, a more fundamental problem is the efficiency of the various C compilers. Bull claimed that the reason Oracle ran so poorly and saturated the CPU on the DPS9000 was that the C compiler was not optimized for the hardware. Now Bull is telling my customer that a new, rewritten version of C will achieve expected performance levels (whatever that means). Of course we've got the order and are implementing the application in two weeks. For now, we're safe from Oracle's threats but who knows what is on the horizon. Just remember that much or Oracle's performance is bit flipping in memory with global pages, etc. Just imagine how very different that must be on all the various operating systems they supposedly support. --gerry