Philip Howard, Research Director at Bloor Research, recently evaluated the performance, scalability, administration, and cost considerations for the leading integrated systems from IBM and Oracle for OnLine Transaction Processing (OLTP) environments. Here is a summary of his conclusions:
And here is a video with his evaluation. It is packed with practical advice regarding storage capacity, processing capacity, and more.
Noel Yuhanna is one of the more prominent names in the database software industry. He is the principal analyst covering database software at Forrester. Here’s a 12-minute video where Noel describes his view on the most commonly used strategies for lowering your database-related costs. Topics include virtualized infrastructure, database compatibility layers, database-as-a-service, database compression, database sub-setting, and administration automation. This video is packed with interesting information. I hope you enjoy!
The International DB2 User Group (IDUG) and IBM are offering a complimentary workshop for DB2 for z/OS clients who are planning to migrate to DB2 10. This workshop will help attendees maximize the business benefits and cost savings associated with moving to DB2 10; it will also ensure that they are adopting IBM best practices when doing so. The workshop is being offered immediately prior to the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference EMEA in Prague. Seats are limited, so make sure to sign up soon! The details are:
Date: 13th November 2011
Time: 9:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Location: IDUG DB2 Tech Conference EMEA in Prague
Cost: Complimentary
Link: DB2 10 Migration Planning Workshop
If you are an Oracle Database DBA who is going to Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco this year, you should check out a free training course from IBM. Immediately before the conference, we are offering a free hands-on course that is designed to help people with Oracle Database skills learn DB2. Of course, because DB2 now supports so many Oracle Database-like features, it is much easier for Oracle professionals to work with DB2. Not only does the course discuss the differences between the products, but it also gives you hands-on experience with DB2. This is a great opportunity. It is an easy and affordable way to expand your skills/resume to include DB2. You’re going to San Francisco anyway, so all you have to do is get your employer to spring for a couple of additional hotel nights. There’s even an opportunity to take a free official certification test as part of the course. The course is two days long, and takes place on Friday 30 Sept and Sat 01 Oct in San Francisco. To learn more and register, please go to www.ibm.com/db2workshop.
Anyone who has spent any length of time around IT will have encountered their fair share of shameful vendor-sponsored studies. It is an unfortunate reality of the over-aggressive marketing that sometimes comes to the fore. In my opinion, a recent study from ORC International that was commissioned by Oracle is one of the most worthless vendor-sponsored studies that I have ever seen.
Please understand that I, as someone working with DB2, have a natural bias against Oracle. Please also understand that the product I work on is presented in an unfavorable light in this study. That being said, I think I have reasonable grounds for my position. Please let me know if you agree or disagree. And, by the way, I am open to an equally critical examination of any vendor-sponsored studies that I commission.
The study in question is titled Database Manageability and Productivity Cost Comparison Study: Oracle Database 11g Release 2 vs. IBM DB2 Enterprise 9.7. It claims that database administrators can perform administrative tasks in 43% less time and with 45% fewer steps in Oracle Database 11g when compared with IBM DB2 9.7. This is actually the fifth such study commissioned by Oracle. The original study was written by Rauch Associates, then the Edison Group wrote the next three instances of the study, and now the latest installment comes from ORC International.
The first thing I’d like to point out is that the methodology for this report is overly simplistic, and could be prone to incorrect conclusions. It uses two metrics: the amount of time it takes a DBA to perform a task, and the number of steps involved in performing a task.
Of course, when you think about the time measurements, you’ve got to wonder about the relevant levels of experience of the DBAs used for the tests. This metric is, as you can imagine, subject to wild disparity. In order to put this metric into perspective, we need to know the experience levels of the DBAs involved. Without this information, the time measurements are incomplete. Even with this information, the time measurements are still subject to question, given the inexact nature of human experience levels and human ability.
And it goes without saying that a simple count of the number of steps needed to complete a task is an overly simplistic metric. For instance, when creating a tablespace in Oracle Database, there is a single screen with a number of settings for creating a tablespace. There is little or no on-screen guidance, and no context-sensitive help for the settings. Even though this is a usability nightmare, this would count as a single step. On the other hand, in DB2 you have the option of using a nice 7-screen wizard with lots of great context-sensitive help. Is this one step, or seven steps? You can quickly see that a simple count of the number of steps is simply not reliable.
To compound matters, the logic also appears to be flawed. The study goes to great lengths to construct the framework for the tasks that will be compared. They claim that “DBAs were interviewed about the amount of time they typically spent in each of the four areas of study to determine the weighted workload value for each subject area, and multiple database disciplines were chosen, including 24x7x365 production DBAs as well as application and development DBAs“. The upshot of all those interviews is that 45% of a DBAs time is spent with Performance and Tuning Tasks. I don’t think this is an unreasonable estimation of the amount of time, especially in Oracle Database environments. However, the interesting thing is that there are three tasks in the Performance and Tuning section, and two of those require 0 steps and 0 time for Oracle Database. This area where DBAs report that they are spending 45% of their time requires only 2 steps and 8 seconds across all three tasks in an Oracle Database environment. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something doesn’t add up here. Not only does this supposedly time-consuming set of tasks take almost no time and effort, but this relative disparity is then weighted heavier than everything else in the findings. As if the flawed methodology was not enough, this flawed logic makes the findings even more questionable.
As I mentioned earlier, this study is essentially an updated version of the study from Edison that compared Oracle 11g and DB2 9.5. Both studies essentially use the same methodology. The primary difference is that this latest study uses the current versions of the products. But if you compare the two studies, you will notice something very mysterious. In several cases, DB2 now has a higher complexity score, even though the same interfaces are available. For example, in the previous report from Edison, creating a table took 17 steps in Oracle Database and 5 steps in DB2. Now, mysteriously, it takes 17 steps in Oracle Database and 17 steps in DB2. How can Oracle and ORC International explain this fact? Why does something that had a complexity score of 5, now suddenly have a complexity score of 17?
It is also interesting to note that this study takes advantage of Oracle’s add-on products that must be separately purchased (namely, the Diagnostic and Tuning Packs). However, they do not do the same for DB2 (in particular, they do not use IBM Optim Performance Manager or DB2 Recovery Expert). Instead, they use the deprecated DB2 Control Center. Why did they choose to perform tasks only with a subset of the tools available to DB2 DBAs, yet they include extra charge products for the Oracle tasks?
And the final thing I’d like to draw your attention to is the “Out of the box installation” step. Notice that the DBA performing the tests encountered a bug that elevated the DB2 complexity score from 1 up to a whopping 15. The study states that they encountered JR28800. However, the IBM support site states that this bug was resolved in DB2 8.1 Fixpack 17. How is it possible that they ran into a problem in DB2 9.7 that was resolved in 8.1 Fixpack 17? Did Oracle and ORC International really use the current version of DB2, or did they use a version that is so old that it is no longer even in service?
The good news is that there is a better methodology for comparisons like this. It was developed by researchers looking for a general way to determine time and labor costs associated with IT systems. They presented their findings at the 10th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management 2007 in a paper titled Predicting Labor Cost through IT Management Complexity Metrics. It would be very interesting if Oracle were to use these more accurate and objective complexity metrics, rather than their own suspiciously rudimentary measures. If they did, they may find that the results are closer to the finding in the study covered in the Comparing Common DBA Tasks for IBM DB2 and Oracle Database post, where DB2 is shown to be clearly superior.
By now, you’ve probably had your fill of hearing about vendor-sponsored studies. Let’s hear from people who switched from Oracle Database to DB2, and are willing to go on record with their experiences:
“The total cost of ownership with DB2 running on IBM systems is almost half the cost of Oracle Database on Sun systems. With DB2, our current DBAs will be able to support more applications and more users.”
- Anuprita Daga, Chief Manager, IT, Reliance Life Insurance
“Our IT team now has more time to work on other value-added tasks due to DB2 self-tuning properties and the seamless integration with the SAP software.”
- Tom DeJuneas, IT manager at Coca-Cola Bottling Co Consolidated
“DB2 requires less attention from the Basis DBAs than Oracle”
- Andrew Juarez, Lead SAP Basis Administrator at Coca-Cola Bottling Co Consolidated
“We switched from Oracle Database to IBM DB2 and cut our data management costs in half, while improving performance and reliability of business applications.”
- Sandro Reátegui, Systems Architect, Banco de Crédito del Peru
“Data administration costs have also decreased. DB2 automates many tasks, such as memory allocation, storage management and business policy maintenance, freeing the company’s database administrators to focus on new projects.”
- Sergey Golubev, Head of IT Maintenance and Networking Department, JSC Rietumu Banka
IBM has a couple of great ways for people with Oracle Database skills to easily add DB2 skills to their resumes. These are available at no charge, allowing you to add skills to your resume and become more attractive to potential employers.
Solitaire Interglobal surveyed IT departments about the amount of staffing needed for various database-related activities. When it comes to staffing, Solitaire notes that:
These staffing figures were collected from the actual operation groups measured in the other metric collection efforts, and cover organizations in North and South America, Asia, Europe, Antarctica and Australia. These organizations have reported staffing for 24×7 coverage, rather than single shift.
Antartica… really! Anyway, here’s the staffing information, first for IBM Power Systems environments and then for IBM System x environments:
Solitare notes that a significant contributor to IBM DB2 requiring less staff are the requirements around the service desk or help desk. They attribute the difference to the number of calls, and the amount of time required to handle those calls. If you read the full report, you will see lots of great information about specific percentage differences for number and duration of calls on each platform.
Another interesting metric for comparing database software is time-to-market. This is the amount of time it takes an IT department to get a system up-and-running, from project inception to having live production systems. Time-to-market is a very important consideration for organizations who want to have agile and responsive IT departments. In this case, Solitaire note that:
The systems tracked for this portion of the study were paired based on either simultaneous comparative development, or function point equivalents and application type. The comparison is intended to be evocative and not quantitative, since other critical success factors can enter into this picture.
Here is the time-to-market comparison, first for IBM Power Systems environments and then for IBM System x environments:
You can read and download the full Solitaire report at Comparing Real World Database Performance: IBM® DB2® versus Oracle® Database and Microsoft SQL Server®.
Yesterday, I blogged about relative outages for IBM DB2 and Oracle Database, as reported by Solitaire Interglobal. Well, Solitaire also surveyed people in data centers regarding their satisfaction levels with database software. Here is how Solitaire introduce their findings:
The ultimate metric for the success of any product is customer satisfaction. The satisfaction rating is an aggregate result of how well the customer feels that the DBMS provides benefit for the expense, reliability and thought leadership. As such, this rating can be seen as the final accolade of how well a product is doing.
Solitaire report the satisfaction for two groups: the Executives that manage the overall organization, and the Operational Staff that work with the systems on a day-to-day basis. Here are the findings. As you can see, both the Executives and the Operational Staff who work with DB2 report a higher satisfaction than those who work with Oracle Database.
First, here are the satisfaction ratings for environments running IBM Power Systems servers.
And here are the satisfaction ratings for environments running IBM System x servers.
Not only do customers–both Executive and Operational–have a higher satisfaction rating for DB2, but interestingly the people who are hands-on day-in and day-out have the best satisfaction numbers.
You can read and download the full Solitaire report at Comparing Real World Database Performance: IBM® DB2® versus Oracle® Database and Microsoft SQL Server®.
The International DB2 User Group (IDUG), the leading association of IBM DB2 database and technology professionals, is conducting a survey to better understand the changing “Information Management” needs and wants. This will enable IDUG to provide the right technical education and training for its community. When you choose to participate in this survey and submit your email address, you will enter into the drawing for one of three (3) complimentary IDUG Conference Passes ($1,995). Your email address will be used for results notification only, and all responses are strictly confidential. Please take a moment to contribute to this project – and help IDUG meet your technical training needs.
The survey should take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Please respond no later than May 20, 2011. Your feedback will provide valuable insight regarding your needs and provide a better understanding as to how IDUG can best address areas important to you.
Please note that your responses will be confidential and reported in aggregate. If you have any questions about the survey or have difficulty accessing the survey, please contact idug@idug.org.
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about Oracle Exadata performance. It certainly performs quite well. Although it is not necessarily faster than an IBM system. For instance, I know of a recent customer bake-off where an IBM Power 780 system was 2.4 times faster than a half-rack Exadata system. And when you combined the performance difference with IBM’s price advantage, it made the decision a no-brainer for the customer. Naturally, each customer bake-off has so many variables, as to make it useful only for that customer. The key thing to remember is that you need to keep your vendors honest by performing these competitive bake-offs, and not simply comparing a new system’s performance to an old system.
But anyway, the real reason for this blog post is to remind you that product maturity is important and to remind you of the 15 years of product maturity that have gone into the IBM Smart Analytics System. A level of product maturity that is not yet present in Oracle Exadata. Oracle are relative newcomers when it comes to developing integrated hardware/software systems, or engineered systems as they like to call them. And this shows when it comes to the challenges currently facing Exadata users. In the following presentation, I have assembled some references to independent experiences with Oracle Exadata. In each case, I include information about the source of the information, whether it is a Web page or a session at an Oracle event.
Admittedly, every product has bugs and issues. My intention here is simply to highlight that Oracle Exadata may not necessarily be the “IT nirvana” that Larry Ellison may portray it to be. While we have heard Oracle touting the ease of managament of Oracle Exadata, the reality is that this is a very complex system with many of the issues you might expect with a complex system that is so early in its maturity. And, of course, remember that as your system grows, the system will only be as reliable as the underlying software (ie. Oracle RAC).
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