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The relational database is an integral part of the enterprise. We ran two popular SQL databases through a battery of tests and found that you can have it all speed and ease of use for a reasonable price.
Being a database administrator is sort of like being a politician -- you've got to keep everybody happy. Your users, like constituents, make constant demands on the database you administer. Your customers, like lobbyists, can't conduct business with you if your database server is down. The corporate controller, who controls the purse strings, has ordered you to keep costs down. And finally, the collective lot of them expect the database to maintain the fastest possible speed regardless of the number of users accessing the system. This is no small task. Fortunately, the latest generation of SQL database servers are up to the challenge. All of which, hopefully, help you stay in office for at least another four years.
SOLUTIONS OR BUST. It's easy to get seduced by the vendor-speak of the latest TCP benchmark. Like 5-year-olds fighting over whose new bicycle is shinier and faster, database vendors are constantly touting a new benchmark using the snazziest, most expensive technology in a never-ending race to outdo each other. We know that even though you'd like to run your database on a system with 28 processors and hundreds of megabytes of memory, your budget probably won't allow it. Which is why we approached this comparison from the perspective of an administrator at a growing organization that has outgrown its current desktop database and is looking to upgrade to a relational database. And, most importantly, the administrator doesn't have a budget as bottomless as the federal government's.
Our fictitious company, Info World Distribution Inc. (IWDI), invited all of the SQL heavyweights -- Microsoft, Sybase, Oracle, Informix, and IBM - to recommend a database server solution to our problem (including server hardware, software,...