Quote:
>> Are they running Progress on A350,000 Sun servers
>> and SQL on some clone PC with 32 Mb RAM or what?
And the reply started so good, with a point that actually had
some validity. True, you don't know that the Sun and the
NT box were equally matched.
But this argument also has another point behind it. With
Progress you have the choice of that Sun box. Or IBM,
or HP, or Pyramid, or DEC, etc. etc. The best you can do in
the NT world is DEC Alpha and even that will eventually
run out of gas. Huge Sun machines and IBM SP's
means there's a higher performance choice that does not
exist for SQL Server.
Quote:
>> If you want to look at performance where you
>>see the hardware and software, try the Transaction Processing Council
>>at http://www.ideasinternational.com/benchmark/tpc/tpcc.html - you'll
>>notice that Progress is not well represented in either the raw
>>performance or the 'bang per buck' sections - not to put too fine a
>>point on it, it doesn't appear.
Are you familiar with the type of tests TPC requires? Have you
ever read a full TPC audit report? Do you understand the procedure?
First, how many people out there are in the high complexity,
high cost, Transaction Monitor distributed processing arena?
You had better be to be thinking that the TPC is anything close
to a real live scenario. Also understand that you require a
hardware vendor support to submit the results. That means there's
a whole lot of politics going on, with DB vendors wooing the H/W
guys.
You'll notice that all that politics means there are only a half
dozen databases represented in the whole TPC. Now if
you didn't know better you'd say that only that many made
it to the head of the pack. But since the TPC is required to
publish all submitted benchmarks, it means that only those
databases have been submitted.
The bottom line is that no 2nd tier database has ever been, or
will ever be submitted to the TPC unless the DB vendor is also
a hardware vendor. The multi-million dollar process to run and
submit the results is also a great barrier to many small
databases.
Quote:
>>In the $/tpm section you'll see only
>>one DBMS in the top 10 positions, and you'll find that the following 10
>>positions also have the same DBMS. out of ain't bad.
When you're competing against a handful of other DB's and
they all are in the who's the fastest race, it's easy to get
low cost numbers. It's also easy to get lower numbers when
you don't include a TPM that costs $80,000-$100,000 and
replace it with a lot of custom programming that doesn't have
to be included in the costs.
Quote:
>>If you had to pick a non Microsoft product and
>>cost didn't count, why would you choose Progress?
So picking a Microsoft product would be everybody's goal,
right?
Why Progress? Transaction oriented, good RAD environment,
low cost of ownership, (perhaps you should talk to PSC's
David Bows. There are Gartner Group studies showing the
lowest cost of ownership is Progress, not SQL Server)
bullet proof recovery, (rated even higher than Oracle)
low cost, excellent performance, (no perhaps not the biggest,
I know that, but it's right there next to the big guys)
small foot print, (in terms of RAM, CPU and disk needed)
some small features like wor dindexed perhaps.
And if they don't get you perhaps one of the 10,000 Progress
applications will draw you in.
Quote:
>>The masses are
>>sometimes right and maybe Oracle etc are onto something.
The masses are also often wrong, and maybe Oracle etc.
fall right into providing the masses with the wrong product.
Quote:
>>Do what you want, but if you're thinking about jobs, bear in mind that
>>picking an obscure niche can be risky as well as lucrative.
Well, what's your definition of obscure niche? US$150Mill a year
of product sold directly, US$2 Bill of products created with
the product sold through the chanel. Over 2000 VAR's creating
over 10,000 applications.
What's your definition of obscure? Is qad MFG/Pro obscure?
If you want to cast doubt on PSC's stability then you've got a
lot to learn about the company. They're not the one who
went out on a limb and created products no body wanted, then
lied about the sales figures. They're former executives didn't
secretly trade stock before the true sales figures came out
and are now facing both criminal and multiple multi-billion dollar
shareholder law suits. They weren't another unstable one
following the same path, creating another product with an all too
familiar name, that went over like a lead balloon. Then they
blamed lagging sales and a horrible quarter on trouble in Asia,
even though their sales their are negligible and their costs
are sky rocketing.
Look, there are many reasons to use Progress, and some reasons
not to. But PSC the company is not going to go out in a blaze
of glory like an Informix, Oracle, or Sybase will. They have a
Wall St. reputation for conservatism. (and yes, they have a
decided Wall St. reputation, I've heard from several brokers
who are in the high tech area, all all now of Progress and
their conservatism, their gold plated balance sheet,
and their reserve of cash)
So it you want to talk about reasons, that's fine. But if all
you can muster is Progress is an unstable company,
Progress has never been sumbitted to the high priced,
over rated, and highly poliitical TPC, and Microsoft
and the masses are always right, then your arguements
are pretty weak.
=================================================================
Geoff Crawford Phone: (973) 627 - 0307
Innovative Client Servers FAX: (973) 627 - 0634
Denville NJ 07834 Web: http://www.innov8cs.com
Progress vs. MS SQL Server