January 9, 2015 at 12:34 pm
Two databases separated by a common language!
If you can write T-SQL then you will be able to use 80% of your knowlege in PL/SQL but there are things (like dates) that will drive you batty.
If you write PL/SQL then being restricted to only carrying out set based operations will make you take your hair out.
For people swapping between the two - watch out for this one!
SELECT TOP 3 records FROM table ORDER BY somefield
T-SQL will order the table and then return the top 3 records
PL/SQL will take the top three records and then return them in the specified order
For me the TCO of Oracle is really high - The DBA and developer tools are expensive and horrible. TOAD is expensive (£400 per user licence) and not as good as management studio. The free editor is severly lacking and I found it to be very buggy. The learning curve is a lot higher, there is not as much on-line support, and Oracle don't have an express version of 12 so you can't learn the latest version. Developers and DBAs are more expensive to hire and generally not as experienced as their T-SQL cousins.
That said, you can charge through the nose for Oracle 🙂
January 12, 2015 at 9:44 am
In the end it will be management that decide this issue, not technical people.
My advice is to talk to your management and find out what pressures they are under regarding this decision. Part of this may be you helping to organise a meeting with relevant managers and technical staff from both organisations.
If their main pressure is to provide an upgrade at lowest cost, then staying with the current DBMS vendor is a no-brainer - the cost of reworking the application for the new platform will be over 50% of the total upgrade cost.
It would be unusual for a government organisation to mandate the use of a particular DBMS, particularly between Oracle and SQL Server. Both products work well, and neither product has enough advantages to make the bean counters support any mandate.
I think when the business pressures are known then the technical decision regarding platform will become easy to make.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
January 12, 2015 at 10:02 am
Something else to remember. If your CF application is accessing data from the SQL Server database using stored procedures there will be changes to this process if you move to Oracle.
In SQL Server stored procedures can return result sets to the application. In Oracle it doesn't work that way, you have to return a reference cursor to the calling application. This could mean changes to both the application and the stored procedures.
January 12, 2015 at 10:29 am
EdVassie (1/12/2015)
In the end it will be management that decide this issue, not technical people.My advice is to talk to your management and find out what pressures they are under regarding this decision. Part of this may be you helping to organise a meeting with relevant managers and technical staff from both organisations.
If their main pressure is to provide an upgrade at lowest cost, then staying with the current DBMS vendor is a no-brainer - the cost of reworking the application for the new platform will be over 50% of the total upgrade cost.
It would be unusual for a government organisation to mandate the use of a particular DBMS, particularly between Oracle and SQL Server. Both products work well, and neither product has enough advantages to make the bean counters support any mandate.
I think when the business pressures are known then the technical decision regarding platform will become easy to make.
Thanks for the input but that's not correct (in our situation). They are relying on us to provide our technical "SME" opinions and recommendations. The people making the decision are also technical on their side.
January 13, 2015 at 4:01 am
They are relying on us to provide our technical "SME" opinions
IMHO the main items are:
1) Cost of conversion to a new DBMS, which will involve re-writing all of the database layer components.
2) Technical expertise within the team that deals with that customer in your organisation.
Cost of conversion is a cost of opportunity item. It would mean perhaps no other upgrades to the application for many months while the conversion was done.
The customer would then need to acceptance test everything on the basis it is a new application, which often leads to legacy design decisions they were previously happy with now being raised as bugs.
Both you and the customer end up spending a lot of time and money just to stand still.
With technical expertise you should consider if your organisation is mainly an Oracle or SQL Server shop, or has a depth of skills in both products. If you are a 90% Oracle shop the reasons to convert are greater, as there are more staff to do the support. If you are a 90% SQL Server shop your organisation should consider if it even wants to bid to do the conversion.
If the customer is a 90% Oracle shop and wants to bring the support in-house that is a different question. However, they should be raising that as a requirement and not hope it will happen as a side-effect.
Even if you did convert to Oracle then the staff that support that customer would change and a lot of domain knowledge would be lost, which would lead to a period of poorer service to that customer until the new staff got up to speed. (I know management like to think that all staff can be swapped at will, but domain knowledge is increasing being recognised as an asset that costs money to acquire.)
For me, the relative strengths and weakness of both products or their license costs are not that important for this situation. The business case you present will of course need to show the costs of each option, but you have a very strong case to keep with SQL Server based on just conversion costs and domain knowledge.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
January 14, 2015 at 12:23 pm
To drive home the point that Jeff was making you can look at the PCs that your users are running. If the application lives on the desktop then for Windows 7/8 (even XP) the SQL drivers are already installed. If you move to Oracle you will have to visit every PC to install the Oracle drivers. Beside the cost of the driver there is the cost of installing it.
What are they charging these days for a copy of Toad? Each DBA will need a copy of that so that they can make changes to the databases and do maintenance tasks. I'm sure that you can install and run SSMS for, what was that figure, free?
Is Oracle better than SQL Server? In some cases yes. Is SQL Server better than Oracle? In some cases yes. Then this is a SQL Server forum and lots of us here are kinda prejudiced towards the devil we know. You are likely to get the same sort of tilt if your were on an Oracle forum but the other way.
As far as technical better one vs the other I would set that as a wash and look at things from a TCO perspective. Best thing to do would be to set down a list of your requirements and size estimates. Then get bids from a couple of SQL Server consultants and a couple from some Oracle consultants. Look at those with an eye to what of your current assets (hardware, software, and staff) can be leveraged.
ATBCharles Kincaid
January 14, 2015 at 1:20 pm
Yes, I know if I went to an Oracle forum they would be pro Oracle. But I'm pushing a SQL Server agenda so I want the biased SQL opinions. 😉
Thanks for all the input I did get some good pointers and direction.
January 15, 2015 at 4:14 pm
I think the business intelligence products (SSIS , SSAS , SSRS ) are a huge plus if you are looking at the warehousing side of things and not just an operational data system. The integration here makes a good point for you. I dont know about Oracle, but I think overall that SQL Server is quite the stable system.
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January 16, 2015 at 8:21 am
Alvin Ramard (1/8/2015)
I strongly believe in the KISS principle. Keep It SQL Server 🙂
Oh I love this quote, I'm going to steal it...
Hakim Ali
www.sqlzen.com
January 16, 2015 at 8:38 am
You mentioned in comments that your product/service uses .NET web services, SSIS packages, and .xls files, all Microsoft products. I would think these integrate with SQL Server far better than with Oracle. Argument enough?
Hakim Ali
www.sqlzen.com
February 5, 2015 at 6:16 pm
Just out of curiosity, what was the end result? Did management stick with SQL Server or switch to Oracle?
February 5, 2015 at 6:39 pm
Won't know the answer for that for a while. 🙂 The document I'm writing is a huge database enhancement recommendation compilation. The platform decision is just one section in it. We have until September to finish it and provide our recommendations for the system. 🙂
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