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From: gupta@cai.com
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Oracle - what sort of database system is it?  Is it for Unix?
Message-ID: <369.27b70a0d@cai.com>
Date: 11 Feb 91 21:18:04 GMT
References: <1991Jan29.152745.9028@cs.odu.edu> <1991Jan30.161141.24870@inel.gov> <10607@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Computer Associates International
Lines: 31

In article <10607@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>, mao@eden.Berkeley.EDU (Mike Olson) writes:
> In article <1991Jan29.152745.9028@cs.odu.edu> aiko@cs.odu.edu (John K Hayes)
> asks regarding oracle:
> 
>> Does it run on VAX VMS?  
>> Can someone describe generally what Oracle is?
> 
> [...]
> do later releases of oracle include a query optimizer?  at what release
> level was one added?  and what (roughly) is the cost function used to
> pick a plan?  the last question is intended to discover whether oracle's
> query optimizer is less than, equal to, or greater than the standard
> optimizer that was designed for system r in the 1970's.
> 
> any oracle implementors out there?
> 					mike olson
> 					postgres research group
> 					uc berkeley
> 					mao@postgres.berkeley.edu

There is a comprehensive article in InfoDB (a magazine published by
Database Associates, Colin White - Editor) Fall 1990 (Vol 5 Num 3)
written by David McGoveran - Associate Editor, which compares the
optimizers of commercial RDBMSs  (CA-DB, DB2, Informix Online, Ingres
Oracle, Rdb/VMS, ShareBase, Sybase SQLServer, and Tandem NonStop SQL).
According to it, the Oracle optimizer doesn't even come close to the
other products on the market.  

Yogesh Gupta
Computer Associates.
(408) 922-2633