Out of Date FUD
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I hate seeing this stuff, probably as much as the Linux crowd hearing about some FUD from Microsoft. Here's an article about Linux in the data center that starts out great. Linux won and Microsoft won, each having grown their presence and revenue in the corporate data center. I agree with that and it's Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, etc. that have been falling. Especially in the desktop market where if you don't want Windows, then you probably consider either Linux or a Mac.
The article is obviously pro-Open Source, which is fine, and talks about the various alternatives in various places. Apache, Tomcat, etc. in place of the closed source products that are usually considered. But when they get to the database part, that's where I got turned off. There is the usual mention of MySQL and PostgreSQL in place of DB2 and Oracle, but then they mention Microsoft SQL Server. The quote is that if you insist on using SQL Server, it is "derived from Sybase", which is available on Linux. The implication being "run Sybase".
Now if you want to run on Unix, please, feel free to pick whatever RDBMS that runs on your platform. But don't compare Sybase to SQL Server. A long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far, away (I saw Episode III this weekend), SQL Server 4.2 was ported from Sybase and through v6.5, it retained lots of similarities. But with v7 and beyond, there is no more Sybase code and the products have diverged substantially. They may share T-SQL and have some similarities, but there is no comparison. SQL Server is miles beyond Sybase and if you are using any portion of the capabilities, it is not an easy move.
It's FUD, and if you read Linux Insider, you probably don't know any better. That's ok, if someone asked me about some pro-Microsoft FUD, I might not know better, but I'd try to find out. I think there are many fine products and there is space for all of them to succeed in the world. Pick the best one for your environment. I may give the non-SQL Server crowd a hard time, but it's in fun. There are places where SQL Server isn't the best fit.
So if some of your *nix guys want to port to Sybase, don't give in so quickly. It might make sense, but it's definitely not an easy task.
Steve Jones
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We moved a Sybase application running on a DEC/Alpha with proprietary DEC Unix
last year to SQL Server and my life has been a whole lot easier since then. This server was a nightmare to manage and although the hardware remained fairly stable for 6 years, when something did go wrong it was expensive and took several people and many hours to repair. It took us 3 weeks and going through several different resources before we could even determine if the Raid configuration could be changed (it couldn't without completely rebuilding the box). Even installing an EBF (DEC equivalent of a Service Pack) took several tries before it would apply properly and we paced the room with sweaty palms like nervous expectant fathers during the whole upgrade process. 
Although todays flavors of *nix are much easier to manage than what we had in place, I agree strongly that there's no comparision between Sybase and SQL Server and there probably hasn't been since the early '90's. I did have to attend an administration course for Sybase back in 2001 and even back then, there were few to no new implementations of ASE. Every single person in my course was in the position of supporting a legacy application that they had inherited from a previous company or DBA.
I stand ready for flaming from the Open Sores guys if there are any lurking here.
My hovercraft is full of eels.
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"..ready for flaming from the Open Sores guys.." -
hopefully a deliberate typo - funny that! - splly. since "flaming" & "open sores" sorta make for a very "OUCH" combination...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
Yes, deliberate. I saw it somewhere and thought it was funny after all the bashing that MS gets from their detractors.
My hovercraft is full of eels.
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