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From: tgreenla@oracle.uucp (Terry Greenlaw)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Benchmark between dBASE & Oracle!
Message-ID: <1990Apr10.143336.2803@oracle.com>
Date: 10 Apr 90 14:33:36 GMT
References: <1990Apr6.194145.2101@pds3> <509@dbase.A-T.COM>
Reply-To: tgreenla@oracle.UUCP (Terry Greenlaw)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Lines: 47

In article <509@dbase.A-T.COM> dveditz@dbase.A-T.com (Dan Veditz) writes:
>ravi@pds3 (Gorur R. Ravi) writes:
>>We are considering developing our dBASE apllications in Oracle (V 6)
>>on Prime (386) running Unix Sys V. I need to have some benchmarking
>>information before we take this decision.
>>	Does anyone out there have some benchmarking information 
>>on the performance of an application running in dBASE on DOS and the same
>>running in Oracle on Unix (Preferably on a 386 machine)?
>
>The Oracle license agreement does not allow buyers of the product to 
>publish benchmark figures.  It ticks-off *our* marketing department!
>
>-Dan Veditz      dveditz@dbase.A-T.com       
>                 { uunet | ncar!cepu }!ashtate!dveditz

******************************************************************************
               THIS IS A PERSONAL OBSERVATION AND SHOULD IN NO
               WAY BE INTERPRETED AS A STATEMENT OF MY COMPANY             CYA
******************************************************************************

Butt protecting personal disclaimers aside, of course Oracle wouldn't want
competitors publishing benchmark results. The benchmark results we publish
are all validated by independant firms that are a lot more likely to give
honest answers than our competetors. 

I'm sure Oracle marketing will be glad to provide you with all the benchmarking 
numbers you would ever want, as would Ashton-Tate. I'm sure that Ashton-Tate
wouldn't want us publishing our dBase benchmarking results either. Have you
ever seen an ad where the company that paid for the ad underperforms the
competition. "Hey, our new Grommotz 5000 gets 625 miles to the gallon of
ordinary tap water (in small print "when launched from an orbiting space
station"). Of course, your mileage may vary." ;-)

As far as the benchmark you mentioned goes, I'm not sure what kind of numbers
you would get comparing a DOS database to one on unix. The numbers for
Oracle for MS/DOS against dBase and Oracle for SYSV against dBase for SYSV (?)
may be better comparisons.

IMHO, the only true useful benchmark is the your application after you've
written it.

See CYA header above.

Terry O. Greenlaw             Sheathed within the Walkman, 
Staff Engineer                Wear a halo of distortion.
Oracle Corporation            Aural contraceptive,
tgreenla@oracle.oracle.com    Aborting pregnant conversation - Marillion