More Database per Dollar

In this Issue:

DBMS options for small to midsized businesses (SMBs) are opening up. Superior performance, reliability, security, and built-in BI functions are becoming more accessible to systems requiring fewer management resources. Responding to a shift in opportunity, enterprise vendors such as Oracle, IBM, SAP, and PeopleSoft are doing more to appeal to SMBs to expand their market share and challenge Microsoft.

Microsoft's fairly comfortable dominance in the SMB market is challenged by a recent study from Progressive Strategies titled "Comparative Management Cost Study of Oracle Database 10g and Microsoft SQL Server 2000," which can be found at http://www.progstrat.com/research/gems/040401rdbmscmcs.pdf.

The study concluded that 10g is 20% less complex than SQL server to administrate. Also, while 10g and SQL Server fared equally well in daily administration tasks, Progressive found that Oracle outperformed SQL Server in the mission-critical area of backup and recovery by an unweighted factor of 50%. "The manageability of the two databases differed the most in performance diagnostics and tuning," notes Barry Cohen, CTO for Progressive, pointing out the maintenance of 10g requires 76% less time and is 38% less complex than with SQL Server 2000.

Microsoft contends the study missed some points. "For one, the quality of SQL Server's auto-tuning dictates its settings rarely need to be overridden, while Oracle has just begun to provide task wizards to ease the burden to DBAs managing enterprise RDBMSs," says Microsoft's SQL Server director of product management, Tom Rizzo.

Rizzo also says 10g lags in automated resource management. "SQL Server is still the only enterprise RDBMS that is able to dynamically tune itself based on workload requirements and available system resources," says Rizzo. He claims that although Oracle has simplified the task of tuning with new tools and wizards, it still requires a knowledgeable administrator to identify the need for and execute the tasks.

There's fodder, too, for those involved in the debate of best-of-breed vs. suite solutions. Some also criticize that Oracle and IBM's "openness" to all platforms comes at a price: Rizzo says, "They force you to design based on the lowest common denominator because of the multiple development frameworks, platforms, and programming models they support." He believes the tight integration between Visual Studio and SQL Server can't be mirrored: "The two products are being developed simultaneously, all product groups work off the same .Net framework."

Despite Microsoft's stated advantages, Cohen believes DBAs can perform common administrative functions in 30% less time using Oracle Database 10g, in part because 10g requires 20% fewer steps for the same set of administrative tasks than Microsoft SQL Server 2000. "We determined that could save businesses roughly $32,600 per DBA annually from increased administrator productivity," adds Cohen.

Oracle has also upped the stakes by striving for more penetration into the application layer and low-end DBMS market. It had already introduced hosted applications a few years ago, but in February, Oracle also lowered the price for Standard Edition One from $5,995 to $4,995 per processor, and increased maximum server capacity (for Oracle Standard Edition One) from the previous limit of one processor to two processors. "Making our entry-level pricing the same as Microsoft's shows that we're serious about competing head-on with SQL Server," says Bob Shimp, VP of technology marketing at Oracle.

While Oracle is lowering the cost of entry-level systems, the impact of open-source databases on Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle down the road will be interesting to watch: "MySQL recently came up with transaction support and stored procedure support, so [it] may move up the ladder and put some pressure on Microsoft from the bottom, while IBM and Oracle apply more on the top," observes Carl Olofson, program director for IDC.

Typically, MySQL is used at the departmental level, deployed by a developer attempting to address an application need without having to go through IT procurement. "That may be fine in the short term, but whether a small 10-person company or a multinational conglomerate, nine out of 10 of these customers will require more within a year or two," says Microsoft's Rizzo. He claims that SQL Server's automated resource management capabilities surpass that of desktop databases like MySQL.

To put further pressure on Microsoft, Oracle has partnered with Dell. "Oracle Standard Edition One running on two-processor Dell PowerEdge servers is an ideal configuration for many customers including SMBs, departmental enterprise systems, and government departments," maintains Shimp.

According to the Progressive study, the integration with Dell has expedited the installation and configuration to a level comparable to SQL Server 2000.

THE EXTRA VALUE OF BI

Additionally, SMBs' desire to have business intelligence integrated into the DBMS may cause Oracle or IBM to take note of what Microsoft does with SQL Server 2000 (which includes Data Transformation Services and Analysis Services).

"Oracle and IBM have had more success with BI in larger companies, but now they may have to bundle more intelligence into their databases to make it appealing and cost-effective to smaller players," contends Olofson. While IBM and Oracle still consider BI to be separate from the database, cost-effective bundles could surface.

"Businesses dealing with hoards of information want to quickly identify hidden trends and patterns in data to minimize business risks through BI," concedes Shimp, who contends Oracle's platform is "analysis-ready," which means OLAP, data mining, and SQL Analytics are built into the data server where analysis takes place. He acknowledges, however, that Oracle OLAP and Data Mining options incur additional costs.

Susana Schwartz is a New York-based freelance writer specializing in emerging technologies and their impact on IT infrastructure.