Re: database market share 2003

From: Jean-David Beyer <jdbeyer_at_exit109.com>
Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 00:16:50 -0400
Message-ID: <10bio1lhg6tatea@corp.supernews.com>

Daniel Morgan wrote:
> Mark A wrote:
>

>> "robert" <gnuoytr_at_rcn.com> wrote in message
>> news:da3c2186.0405291715.5e4125bd_at_posting.google.com...
>>
>>> what i've not seen is the other side of this coin:  that (perhaps)
>>> IBM's share is skewed (looks larger than it really is) by the
>>> fact that it pretty much owns the mainframe.  a relative handful
>>> of very expensive installs. in other words, i question how relevant
>>> DB2 is to the future of relational databases.  IBM needs to
>>> demonstrate that it is relevant outside of conversions (i use
>>> the term very, very loosely) of behemouth COBOL/VSAM systems. at
>>> my work, they just defined tables from the copybooks.  i
>>> gather this is quite common.
>>>
>>> robert
>>
>>
>>
>> Since DB2 mainframe has been around since the mid-1980's, that is
>> ridiculous. The overwhelming majority or DB2 OS/390 applications were
>> designed on DB2 from scratch. Your company may be an exception, and 
>> somewhat
>> backward. After all, they employ you, so it must be a really screwed up
>> company.

>
>
> But for how much longer ... I wonder?
>
> I am watching the huge inroads being made by clustered Linux taking out
> Sun's and H/P's more expensive offerings. I built an 8 CPU cluster a few
> weeks back with less than $11,000 US in hardware.
>
> How long before it becomes easy to build OS/390 equivalent machines
> with a rack of 2 CPU x 4GB Intel boxes running RedHat AS?
>
> I suspect far sooner than you want to imagine.
>
> And when the big iron goes ... do you think DB2 will survive? Informix,
> in my opinion, has a better chance of surviving.
>

Well, I ran Informix on my Red Hat Linux 5.0 box for a while. It was a bit pathetic in that it did not have an API for C++: only for C. So I ended up writing a large bunch of C functions to interface to the Informix server. It worked, but sloppy. Then I upgraded to Red Hat Linux 6.0 and Informix never worked again. I e-mailed Informix about it and they said they did not know if it would work with 6.0 or not. I said I would be glad to test it for them, but that the CD-ROM I had would not read and could they send me another one. They never answered any e-mails after that.

Which is why I upgraded to IBM DB2 UDB V6.1 which worked just fine. Since I am cheap, I kept V6.1 through upgrades to RHL 6.2 and 6.3. Now DB2 V6.1 did not really like RHL 7.3. It worked because there were some "compatability libraries" that could be used, but it meant I had to change all the makefiles to use those libraries, including getting it to use the compatibility version of ldd.so.

Anyhow, when I built this machine I put Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 ES on it and installed IBM DB2 UDB V8.1 (upgraded to 8.1.5) and after a fight to get it installed (graphic installer does not work), it runs just fine on a dual hyperthreaded Intel XEON machine with 4GB (expandable to 16 GB if I found I needed it).

Unless Informix has been greatly improved since the time RHL 6 came out, I do not see why anyone would wish to use it unless it is a lot cheaper than DB2.

My needs are quite modest, since I am running it single-user for a single small (by dbms standards) database. But back when I started, postgreSQL and Oracle were the other alternatives, and postgreSQL did not run right (one version would not allow primary keys to be specified, and another was unable to have views), and Oracle's license agreement was so complicated that I refused to sign it.

If a small user such as I can use it, I see no reason why a larger user could not.

-- 
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Received on Sat May 29 2004 - 23:16:50 CDT