Comparison of Database Systems, Essay Example

With various industries, particularly web-based businesses growing at such remarkable rates because of exposure to global markets, managing all of the information that a business receives has become a critical concern. It has simply become impractical to handle databases manually, and so relational database management systems are used to do automate most of the tasks. This essay compares two such software, the SQL Server 2005 by Microsoft and the Oracle 11g, and determines which between the two is best suited to small businesses with less than 50 personnel and which is best for larger businesses.

With the release of SQL Server 2005, Microsoft was able to pick itself up and finally become competitive in the market of database systems (McCown, 2005). Among the main features of this database system are online reindexing, incremental recovery, and database mirroring, which enable the system to provide a highly comprehensive uptime (McCown, 2005). However, SQL Server 2005 still lags behind Oracle 11g in terms of management capabilities, as the system is still unable to manipulate excessively large volumes of data in ways that Oracle 11g and its predecessor, Oracle 10g can (Caton, 2005). According to McCown (2008), the crowning jewel of Oracle 11g is in its Real Application Testing. This feature provides a way “of reproducing production workloads to certify those changes without affecting the production environment” whenever code changes are made in the system (McCown, 2008). Also, Oracle 11g boasts of being one of the pioneers of “green” database management (Lynn, 2008). That is, it is equipped to handle terabytes of data at only a third of the necessary disk space (Lynn, 2008). In terms of cost, SQL Server 2005 is much more manageable than Oracle 11g. SQL Server 2005 costs only $24,999 (McCown, 2005) per processor while Oracle 11g costs $60,000.

Based on these features, it can be inferred that for smaller businesses that consist of only 50 people that handle a relatively lower volume of data, SQL Server 2005 is the better option. Firstly, small businesses can be expected to have lesser staring capital to use for development, making it imperative to go for the more affordable option. Also, a small business would not need all of the features that Oracle 11g offer, which is designed for the management of larger volumes of data. On the other hand, businesses with more than 50 people should consider Oracle 11g over SQL Server 2005, especially if the business is very large. Not only does Oracle 11g offer much greater management flexibility, its advanced data compression feature can generate savings in terms of hardware and physical space, as well as enable the company to boast of having “green” practices.

References

Caton, M. (2005). Change Is Good for SQL Server 2005. Retrieved November 9, 2010 from: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Database/Change-Is-Good-for-SQL-Server-2005/1/

Lynn, S. (2008). Review: What to make of Oracle 11g. Retrieved November 9, 2010 from: http://www.crn.com/reviews/applications-os/207400344/review-what-to-make-of-oracle-11g.htm?itc=refresh

McCown, S. (2005). SQL Server 2005 piles it on. Retrieved November 9, 2010 from: http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/sql-server-2005-piles-it-021

McCown, S. (2008). Oracle Database 11g shoots the moon. Retrieved November 9, 2010 from: http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/oracle-database-11g-shoots-moon-041?page=0,0