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Blog Entry
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Microsoft SQL Server / Oracle Comparison
Oct 24 2008 2:03PM
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This is a short comparison of these 2 leading database platforms. It is by no means intended to be an in-depth comparison of the various features of each database platform but more a usability comparison from the perspective of an IT Systems Administrator and “part-time DBA”.
Coming from a Windows Server Administrator background, it was only a matter of time before I started working with SQL Server databases. Once I learned the basics and attended a few classes I was hooked. I studied and passed my exams and obtained my MCDBA exam and spent a few years primarily as a SQL Server DBA. I have worked with all versions of SQL server from 7.0 through to 2005.
An undisputable fact is that SQL Server databases are everywhere. Every small application that gets installed uses either an MSDE instance or full blown SQL server. Very often the administration of these databases falls under the IT System Administration group as opposed to a dedicated DBA group. Studies show that in terms of numbers of installed instances, SQL server is the market leader due to the multitude of small instance installations.
There lies one of the great strengths of SQL Server….its ease of setup and its rugged reliability. It can be left to do its job with very little tuning and still provide reasonable performance. Because of this reputation however it has become stereotyped as a small “department” database and not worthy of powering enterprise-class applications.
For years Microsoft has fought to shed this image and from my experience the product can compete with Oracle in every opportunity I’ve ever witnessed. Admittedly I’ve never worked in environments with databases larger than 100GB but there are whitepapers that say that people out there are doing it.
Obviously this article is somewhat one-sided as I have no operational experience with Oracle other than my team supporting the UNIX servers they reside on. However I have assisted in a number of troubleshooting sessions where we tried to resolve performance bottleneck issues. The Application support group were blaming the Oracle database and DBA’s were blaming the application. As an observer, it became clear to me that the lack of a GUI in the UNIX OS makes it very difficult to get a feel for what’s truly happening at each layer. I can log onto a SQL server, open task manager or Perfmon and immediately get a feel for performance. Then I open SQL profiler and start troubleshooting. I didn’t see the Oracle DBA’s doing those same tasks and I think that’s primarily because they distance themselves from the operating system whereas a SQL Server DBA is generally far more intimate with the Windows Server operating system.
In terms of performance, we also have a number of high transactional MS SQL servers setup in advanced highly-available clusters with failover options to disaster recovery sites. These systems were again setup by System Administrators and not specialized teams of DBA’s which is a significant cost saving.
Cost is another interesting factor. Historically Microsoft SQL server cost significantly less than Oracle however the two have converged to be almost identically priced recently. A major change was in 2007 when Oracle matched Microsoft’s policy of charging per socket instead of per core. Both Oracle and Microsoft SQL come in around $5,000 a server if you purchase the Standard versions. SQL Server 2000 standard had major memory limitations (2GB) however those limitations were removed in SQL 2005 Standard however these is still a 4 processor limitation. Both Clustering (High Availability) and Mirroring (Disaster Recovery) are included in the MS SQL Standard edition
Both MS SQL 2005 Enterprise and Oracle 11g Enterprise come in around $20,000 per processor and offer a whole host of features that make them the perfect choice for high performing enterprise applications.
In my opinion, the one outstanding feature of Oracle is their Real Application Clustering (RAC) which supports the deployment of a single database across a cluster of servers providing fault tolerance, performance and scalability. For many people this is what tips the balance in Oracle’s favor. However from a usability perspective I have to give the edge to MS SQL Server. In a small IT department an MS SQL Server is more easily administered by the System Administrators instead of a dedicated DBA.
Reference:
Oracle Feature Comparison
SQL Feature Comparison
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