Companies pay price for Oracle 9i

Analysts are divided over a recent comparative database report which claims that Oracle 9i is twice as expensive to run as Microsoft SQL.

The report by the Walklett Group, argues that the total cost of ownership (TCO) of running SQL Server 2000 on a Unisys ES7000 box costs £2.2m over five years, while Oracle9i run on a Sun Fire 6800, costs £4.4m.

Breaking TCO down into outlay for hardware, software, licensing and administration costs, the report shows that by choosing the Microsoft/Unisys solution, users would save £2.2m over five years.

But Tony Lock, senior analyst at Bloor Research said many other factors need to be taken into account when working out TCO. "By being selective, it is possible to slice the egg in different ways," he said. "Downtime is a major criteria and there are other soft factors such as skills within the organisation."

According to Lock, the downtime issue is extremely important. He argued that when including downtime, Microsoft's SQL Server, though cheap initially, would become an expensive tool for mainstream databases

Gordon Buxton, senior developer at Oxford Internet Consultants, agreed that downtime "really matters" in cost, but said it was difficult to quantify.

He pointed out that it varies with the ratio of planned/unplanned downtime and with the type of environment. "Oracle9i has less unplanned downtime than SQL," he said. "We use SQL because we already had a Microsoft infrastructure, so it was easier to implement.

"But every time you make a change you have to reboot the whole system [which causes downtime]. The problem with SQL is that you need to run it on a Microsoft operating system. SQL is more reliable than Microsoft's operating systems. All the downtime we see is not SQL but that of Windows 2000, which is a lot better, but still not nearly as reliable as Linux."

Lock said that the "upfront costs" of SQL Server are attractive, but believes this is small compared to other criteria such as management costs. "IT managers should look at what platform benefits their business requirement," he said.

Lock added that the use of Unisys was vital in the tested SQL combination. "Without boxes such as the ES 7000 and IBM's latest eServer xSeries 440 being around, I would not take SQL server into the database arena.

"Both those boxes have mainframe-type capabilities in terms of ease of management making it possible to extend Microsoft much further into the data centre."

A recent Bloor report compared the performance of DB2, Oracle9i and SQL Server 2000. It rated DB2 the leader in applications support, while Oracle scored highest for its underlying technology. Microsoft finished in second place.

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Comment: TCO must be taken with a pinch of salt