Feature Parameter Oracle 10g IBM DB2 UDB 8.1

Product Features General The first true ‘business intelligence platform’ which can handle the requirements not only of data warehousing, but also OLAP, data-mining and ETL operations with Grid Computing. The benefit of a business intelligence platform is integration—specifically the integration of the data—so that the same server infrastructure can be leveraged for all tasks which involve processing of large amounts of data providing high performance, scalability and manageability.

The first multimedia, Web-ready relational database management system, for large size Enterprise Data Warehouse and small size Data Mart. Product offer includes DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring, DB2 UDB Text Information Extender (to search text documents), etc

Data Types Supports all kinds of data types.Supports all kinds of data types. There are few data types oracle has, but not DB2, but that can be managed with other data types available in db2

Constraints/Built-in functions/Mathematical and Scientific Functions

Oracle provides different kinds of Built-in functions/Mathematical and Scientific functions and Constraints

DB2 provides more scientific functions compared to Oracle.

Support to Joins and recursive queries

Oracle supports more joins like Natural join etc and up to 64 recursive sub queries

Db2 supports almost all the joins except for a few and supports up to 28 recursive sub queries

Platform Support General Unix / Windows NT, SMP, NUMA, Clusters and MPP. Almost supports all the platforms

AIX, HP-UX, Linux, NUMA-Q, OS/2, OS/390, OS/400, Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT and Windows XP. SMP, MPP, DMPP, Clusters. Wide coverage of all the platforms.

DB2 has always the advantage of running on their own IBM Servers and OS, which makes it more robust

Grid Computing General Oracle 10g is the first software engineered for Grid Computing. Oracle uses full clustering, work load management and data centre automation for dynamic Grid computing. This would result in higher resource utilization and lower costs.

DB2 UDB's Grid Computing comes with large SMP servers with hardware partitioning, which is no different from the Mainframe Model.

Hardware 10g runs on commodity hardware

Dynamic Grid

I/O tuning

IBM recommends to use SMP for the grid

Oracle uses RAC (Real Application Clusters) to form the Grid, which can dynamically add or remove instances with no downtime.

In a DB2 cluster database, to add a node, need to re-partition the data, which would result in downtime.

Automatic Storage Management (ASM) distributes the I/O load across the Grid, to optimize performance and less I/O tuning

DBA has to manually tune the I/O load

Information Integration

Oracle supports accessing non-oracle database using its transparent gateways. Also the oracle data can be shared with non-oracle database using oracle streams.

IBM DB2 not as comprehensive as Oracle 10g

Security

8 ExaBytes (10**18) 8 PedoByte (10**15)

In oracle security is built in each and every layer and in the database server. It has features like Virtual Private Database (VPD) and Label Security

In DB2 the security is built outside the database i.e. in the operating system. DB2 does not features like VPD and Label security

Maximum Database Size

BI Features

Scalability General

Data Warehousing and BI features

Oracle 10g is a standards based platform that addresses all of the server side BI and data warehousing requirements including ETL, OLAP and Data mining. 10g's capabilities eliminate the need for having multiple engines in a BI environment.

* a powerful ETL subsystem with over 150 transformations * imbedded OLAP awareness to boost OLAP query and cube generation performance regardless of which OLAP tool being used * advanced data mining functionality including Modeling, Visualization and Scoring * resource management to monitor and preemptively manage query submission and database usage * provides a simple GUI-based patented process that enables information in an Excel spreadsheet to be transferred seamlessly to multiple databases

Oracle 10g supports the most scaleable SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) and NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access) and similar systems and it can handle multi terabytes of data

IBM DB2 UDB is highly scalable and has a proven track for handling terabytes of data

Cluster Scalability (Scale Out)

Oracle 10g has a limited cluster scalability

DB2 UDB by far out scales Oracle for number of nodes supported in a cluster

SMP Scalability (Scale up)

Oracle 10g has a good SMP scalability

DB2 UDB has demonstrated the ability to scale up beyond Oracle. Perhaps more importantly, DB2 UDB does so with leading price/performance allowing you to scale without skyrocketing costs.

Federated Scalability

Unstructured Data

XML

Oracle 10g integrates with heterogeneous database systems through transparent gateways allowing integrated, real-time access to diverse data.

DB2 delivers optimized integration with heterogeneous database systems through Information Integrator allowing integrated, real-time access to diverse data as if it were a single database, regardless of where it resides

Support for XML and Unstructured Data

Oracle 10g can handle unstructured data like emails, images, documents, multimedia. Oracle 10g stores everything in an integrated fashion

IBM handles all kinds of unstructured data, but it stores the media and its meta data in different tables and requires more processing and I/O overhead for media retrieval

Oracle XML DB is a high performance XML storage and retrieval technology available with Oracle 10g. With XML DB oracle provides the advantages of relational DB technology XML technology at the same time. Oracle 10g stores XML in such a way that retrieval of images and parent XML doc is very much faster.

IBM DB2 UDB's XML extender and Information Integrator are loosely coupled and poorly integrated results in low performance.

Solution Suite Oracle Developer Suite 10g DB2 Cube ViewsDB2 Datawarehouse EditionDB2 Intelligent MinerDB2 OLAP serverDB2 Query Patroller

Web Services

Availability Disaster Recovery

Web Services has been enabled since oracle 8i and 10g has been using Jpublisher to support Database as Web Service Provider

DB2 UDB has been providing web services since its version 8 for both provider and consumer

Oracle DataGuard allows customers to survive disasters of many forms. DataGuard reduces planned downtime by utilizing the standby server for maintenance, upgrades, and routine operations in addition to reporting.Granularity of shipped data from Primary to Standby is individual Transactions, thus ensuring zero data loss.Automated Failover and Switchover Operations.Offload backups and Reporting to Standby Database.Auto re-synch after network is restored.

High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR) provides replication to a Standby database. But the Standby is not available till the Primary goes down.Granularity of shipped data is much coarser, it being Log Files.

Clustering

Query Performance Locks Row level locks.

Indexes

Partitioning

Oracle 10g uses Real Application Clusters (RAC). During unexpected node failure, recovery is faster because shared cache clusters.

DB2 UDB has a shared nothing cache cluster called Database Partitioning feature (DPF). During unexpected node failure, the recovery takes longer because of the shared nothing architecture.

Row level locks, but with lock escalation, which leads to contention and deadlocks.

Bit map indexes and bit map join indexes improve star join performance.

DB2 UDB has dynamic Bit Map indexes that are not as efficient as Oracle Bit Map Indexes.

Oracle supports Range and Hash Partitions and Local and Global Partitioned Indexes.

DB2 UDB has Hash Partitions and Local Index Partitions only.

Load Performance 10g introduces Oracle Data Pump for High Speed bulk data and Meta Data movement. Data Pump allows full parallel capabilities, restartability and monitoring.

DB2 Export/Import utilities allow Table level extract and load

Administration Intelligent Advisories Memory Advisors, to size and tune the various memory structures.MTTR (Mean Time to Recover ) Advisors.Summary Advisors, to size and recommend Materialized Views.Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) provides an intelligent infrastructure for managing space, application, system resource and back up & recovery.

Self-Managing And Resource Tuning (SMART) technology which includes,Configuration Advisor Wizard, Configuration Advisor Wizard, DB2 Health Center.

Self-tuning capabilities

Self Tuning Memory management.Automatic free space management.Self Tuning direct I/O management.

Self-Managing And Resource Tuning (SMART) technology can be used for automatic tuning

Initialization Parameters

Most init parameters are dynamically changeable.

Parameters are not dynamically changeable.

Backup/Recovery

Human Errors

Recovery Manager (RMAN) provides new advanced features for backup and recovery like,Optimized incremental Backups,Compression of Backups,LogMiner allows damaged Log files to be scavenged for partial recovery.Oracle can minimize Backup time through the use of Read Only Tablespaces.Resumable Backup/Restore.Incremental Backup of LOBS.Block level Media Recovery.Oracle can Split a Mirror while the database is fully online.

UDB does not support Read Only Tablespaces.UDB has to suspend database I/O during mirror split.Errors during Backup/Restore require the entire operation to start from the beginning.

Retrieve data from the past using Flashback Query.Mine Logs and audit changes using a SQL interface.

No support for Human Error Recovery.

SQL Server 2000 Teradata V2R6 Sybase ASE 12.5http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/compare/mythandreality.asp http://www.olapreport.com/Market.htm http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/compare/Oracle10g.asp

http://www.sybase.com/content/1032414/ASE_1252_Features_wp.pdf http://www.embarcadero.com/resources/release_notes/erstudio.html http://www.dbforums.com/resources http://www.sybase.co.kr/support/products/ASE12.5Datasheet_4.pdf

SQL Server 2000 only works on Windows-based platforms, including Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows CE. In comparison with SQL Server 2000, DB2 Universal Database version 8.1 supports all known platforms, including Windows-based platforms, AIX-based systems, HP-UX systems, Linux Intel, Sun Solaris and so on.SQL Server 2000 includes comprehensive data warehousing capabilities, such as integrated Data Transformation Services (DTS), SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, and even graphical tools that help model your data warehouse

Teradata’s ability to achieve real-time, active data warehousing - Teradata databases are designed for maximum concurrent applications including historical trend queries and real-time data loading.

Teradata’s parallel abilities - Teradata manages contending requirements for resources through dynamic resource prioritization that is customizable by the customer.Built on fault-tolerant hardware, Teradata is designed to withstand component failures.Its fallback capability keeps replicated data on physically separate disks, keeping data available and recovery automatic.

The low cost of ownership associated with Teradata-In Teradata, data placement, free space management, data partitioning, data reorganization,index reorganization, workspace management, query tuning and workload management are automatic.

Recognizing the need for event-based integration, Teradata has developed and partnered with vendors such as TIBCO to provide the appropriate interfaces and adapters in Teradata Warehouse

Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) is Sybase’s flagship RDBMS product, designed to provide enterprises with a high performance system for data and transaction processing—for the lowest total cost of ownership. Continuing a track record of business-critical performance and cost-effective computing, ASE 12.5 builds upon its predecessors with superior ease of use, system performance, and support for new applications. ASE Web Services consumer supports SOAP and uses WSDL and HTTP for interoperability Sybase ASE has established itself as one of the most cost-effective data management platforms for business-critical computing

Supports all kinds of data types. Supports all kinds of data types. There are few data types like Identity which Teradata has but not available in Oracle. Column with Identity data type generates running number. Oracle manages such requirement with database object as sequence.

Supports all kinds of basic data types include image, and text datatypes.Datetime fields are stored as a number which is accurate to 1/300 of a second.

SQL Server provides different kinds of Built-in functions/Mathematical and Scientific functions and Constraints

Teradata provides following kinds of functions,Case Expressions,Arithmetic,Trignometric and hyperbolic functions, Set operators,Date time, interval functions,Ordered analytical functions,String handling functions,Logical predicates,Attribute functions,Hash related functions,Built-in functions,Data type conversion.

Sybase provides almost all the mathematical/statistical functions which other providers provide

SQL Server 2000 can't execute recursive queries to build a hierarchical XML output for arbitrarily deep hierarchies

Teradata supports nested join,hash join,merge join and a maximum of 64 recursive sub queries.

Sybase supports almost all joins and Merge joins as a query execution method for equijoins and it also supports nested-loop joins

SQL Server 2000 only works on Windows-based platforms, including Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows CE.

NCR Unix MP-RAS 3.02, Windows 2000 Server,NCR SMP & MPP Servers

Sybase ASE 12.5 supports all known platforms, Compaq Tru64, HP/UX (32 & 64 bit), IBM AIX (32 & 64 bit), Linux, Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 98 (clients only), SGI IRIX (32 & 64 bit), Sun Solaris (32 & 64 bit)

Microsoft's support for service-oriented architectures via Web Services and .NET Remoting,combined with benefits in scalability derived from the Windows Server Systems ability to take�advantage of SMP processors, makes .NET Web Services powered by SQL Server 2000 asolution to distributed processing that is in use today versus Oracle's promises to deliver on gridcomputing starting with its10g release. Microsoft has been a collaborator and sponsor member for many years and is involved in defining standards for Grid computing.The following links provide examples of classic implementations of Data Grids that have been operational long before Oracle marketing initiated its Grid campaign.

Microsoft Research: TerraService.NET: An Introduction to Web Serviceshttp://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?msr_tr_id=MSR-TR-2002-53

Microsoft Research: Web Services for the Virtual Observatory

Grid computing relates to the ability to farm out the resources to a collection of computing agents. In a large-scale database environment (VLDB), the issue isn't farming out the computing cycles but it is providing access to the data.In a parallel computing environment, there are many computing agents called AMPs (Access Module Processor) and the slowest AMP slows down everybody. In the Teradata environment, it's not unusual from an I/O throughput perspective, to move hundreds of terabytes per day across their I/O subsystem.

Sybase supports Grid computing with the help of some third party grid computing softwares.

UNIX MP-RAS,Windows 2000

No I/O load tuning is required.

Processor :Pentium 166 MHz or higher Memory :32 MB RAM (minimum for Desktop Engine),64 MB RAM (minimum for all other editions),128 MB RAM or more recommended

Sybase also runds on almost all the Hardware/Software Supported Compaq - TruCluster, IBM - HACMP, Sun - Sun Cluster, HP - ServiceGuard, Windows NT - Microsoft Cluster Software (MSCS), Veritas Cluster Software, SGI FailSafe

In a Teradata database, to add a node, need to re-partition the data, which would result in small downtime.

For several releases, SQL Server has had the capability to automatically tune itself based on run-time conditions. As a result, SQL Server requires little, if any, tuning by a database administrator; memory, file sizes, and the I/O subsystem are a few of the items SQL Server manages on behalf of the administrator

Sybase ASE 12.5 has dynamic tuning features ASE allows DBAs to dynamically manage total memory available, number of user connections,number of locks, number of open objects, procedure and disk input/output structures and adjust configuration parameters to deal with server load changes without restarting, to create greater server uptime.

Simplify the integration of your back-end systems and data transfer across firewalls using XML

This facility is not available in Teradata

ASE supports importing/exporting data from other non sybase database, using power transfer utility.

1.023 Petabyte Exabyte

SQL Server 2000 has all of security features such as integrated security for single sign-on, network packet encryption, Public Key Infrastructure, or Kerberos as a standard feature of the database.SQL Server 2000 has the National Security Agency’s C2 rating, making it the only "current" database that has undergone security certification. Ensure your applications are secure in any networked environment, with role-based security and file and network encryption

Teradata provides built id security at user level as well as at system level. Teradata supports security administration capability to prevent unauthorized persons from accessing the system and its resources as well as permitting legitimate user access to resources to which they are authorized.

In sybase security is built in each and every layer ie database level, table level also. It has features like SA(System Administrator), wich is the super user in sybase terms. embedded SSL encryption and PKI certificate protocols in ASE 12.5

roughly 1,048,516 terabytes, and up to 16 simultaneous instances of the Server that can be run on a single computer

SQL Server version 7.0 pioneered the integration of Business Intelligence features (for online analytical processing, or OLAP, and data warehousing) with an enterprise database product. SQL Server 2000 extends these capabilities with integrated data mining. Microsoft is acknowledged by industry observers such as The OLAP Report as the fastest-growing provider of OLAP functionality.SQL Server 2000 includes comprehensive data warehousing capabilities, such as integrated Data Transformation Services (DTS), SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, and even graphical tools that help model your data warehouseProvides parallel ETL environment Teradata Warehouse Builder and also integrates well with 3rd party ETL tools in the industry. Apart from this, load utilities like FastLoad, MultiLoad, TPump and BTEQ can be used for loading data. Teradata has in built OLAP functions like CSUM, MAVG, QUANTILE, VARIANCE etc. Does not have a native OLAP Server. Integrates well with 3rd party OLAP tools.

Sybase AS IQ provides the BI&DW features. sybase IQ analysis information in seconds and the ability to handle thousands of users and queries and terabytes of data. Sybase promotes its AS IQ product as it lowers overhead costs, Higher performance, greater scalability and lower maintenance and ownership costs to customers. Sybase AS IQ's query performance is higher than Oracle and Teradata.

SQL Server's shared-nothing cluster is scalable, and SQL Server 2000 still holds the top three clustered TPC-C scores

Highly scalable in terms of the database size (100+ TB) and the number of users (1000 +). Supported by SMP and MPP architecture.

Sybase is highly scalable, it can be scaled up and out by increasing number of users to thousands and also increase the size to terabytes. A robust, multithreaded, multiprocessor execution engine executes components and processes transactions at high speed while making the most efficient use of available system resources like native threads, CPU, memory, and networks

In Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000, scaling out is both a hardware solution and a data storage solution; the data itself is partitioned over multiple servers.SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition can take advantage of up to four Processors on all Windows.SQL Server Enterprise Edition provides true enterprise class scalability with its ability to utilizeup to 64 processors on Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition 64-bit. The move to consolidate the number of servers in an enterprise and gain performance benefitsand reliability via SMP platforms with built-in fault-tolerance and failover is a trend that allowsenterprise technology managers to avoid the need to deal with complex machine clusteringschemas.

SQL Server 2000 takes advantage of symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP) systems. SQL Server Enterprise Edition can use up to 32 processors and 64 GB of RAM

Teradata database being designed around a shared nothing model , the software is able to scale linearly with the hardware.

sybase closed the gap created between the need to scale up to handle exponential growth in data volume/complexity.

SQL Server Enterprise Edition provides true enterprise class scalability with its ability to utilize up to 64 processors on Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition 64-bit.

Sybase supports hetrogeneous Environments dbms. Sybase Real Time Messaging helps achieving this.

SQL Server allows one to manage unstructured data like searching through Microsoft documents.

Images and documents can be stored in Teradata by using LOB and BLOB data types.

Sybase can handle unstructured data

SQL Server supports XML to a greater extent

XML documents can be stored by using LOB data type. Teradata provides UDFs to generate XML document out of a relational table structure.

Sybase ASE 12.5.2 also enhances XML data functions so that text, image, and binary data are supported for XML functions in addition to all other ASE data types. This makes it much easier for application developers to generate XML data from relational queries. For example, ASE can now be used to catalog an XML document used for a product catalog that includes pictures and product descriptions and return text, image or other data using XML functions. Query result sets can also be mapped to SQLX-formatted XML documents.

SQL Server 2000 is available in several editions:• SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) • SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition • SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition • SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition • SQL Server 2000 Personal Edition • SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE) • SQL Server 2000 Windows® CE Edition (SQL Server CE) Analysis Services is supported on all versions except SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE) and SQL Server 2000 Windows® CE Edition (SQL Server CE)SQL Server 2000 includes comprehensive data warehousing capabilities, such as integrated Data Transformation Services (DTS), SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, and even graphical tools that help model your data warehouse

Teradata Warehouse Miner Teradata Metadata Services Teradata CRM Suite

Sybase ASE 12.5 has available in two formats ASE Workplace ASE Enterprise

Available since 2002 allowing developers to expose existing data and logic residing in SQL Server 2000 as Web Services.

Sybase provides a separate suite for web services ie Sybase Web Services Integrator (WSI) Suite is a platform for seamlessly integrating business processes and enterprise data between trading partners. Proven and tested technology supporting all major Web services specifications

Failover clustering,log shipping is available only in SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition. Replication is a feature in all versions of SQL Server, although it is not specifically designed as a high availability solution like log shipping and failover clustering. It can create redundancy for data by creating duplicates of production databases, but a method would have to be devised to point an application, client, or Web server to the SQL Server, much like in log shipping. Network Load Balancing can be used to mask a server name change

High availability. Teradata provides Fallback protection for tables in the event of single AMP failure.RAID 1 & RAID 5 protection in the event of disk failure. Clique protection in the event of node failure and minimize down time. Moreover Teradata Dual Active Solution (Teradata V2R6) provides redundant back-up system for disaster recovery.

ASE has very high availability solution. Runtime features that result in less work for recovery by keeping the difference between the in-memory state and the persistent state of a database to a minimum. Recovery time features that make use of available server resources intelligently to recover and bring a database online faster. (ASE) provides a number of features to ensure continuous availability, including a highly available (HA) Active-Active hot standby in which two ASEs can be configured as companions to each other.

Hash partitioning.

In-built recovery features like Fallback, AMP Clustering and Clique have been implemented in Teradata to survive from AMP failure or node failure in the system.

Sybase uses the hardware clusters from Compaq - TruCluster, IBM - HACMP, Sun - Sun Cluster, HP - ServiceGuard, Windows NT - Microsoft Cluster Software (MSCS), Veritas Cluster Software, SGI FailSafe for HA solution

Row level locks.SQL Server may choose to do both row and page locking for the same query, for example, placing page locks on the index (if enough contiguous keys in a nonclustered index node are selected to satisfy the query) and row locks on the data. This reduces the likelihood that lock escalation will be necessary

Row level lock as well as table level lock depending on the request. By default dirty reads are acceptable.

Row Level Locking, Page Level Locking, Data Page Locking, Table Level Locking, All Page Locking

Clustered and non clustered indexes but no bitmap indexes

Oracle-like bit mapping indexes are not available. Join Indexes are widely used to improve join performance.

B-Tree indexes, clustered and non-clustered indexes bitmap indexes are not supported

sybase supports vertial partitioning (column-based approach) it supports index and column partitions

Provides multiple utilities for loading data.

FastLoad - Specifically for empty tables. High performance by fully exploiting resources of the system and using multi session parallelism.

MultiLoad - for Loading data into multiple tables at the same time. Can handle multiple input files concurrently. Provides full restartability.

TPump - Provides real time data maintenance of a large database. It enables acquisition of data from the client with low processor utilization. Tpump uses row-hash lock and allows concurrent updates on the same table.

Power Transfer helps achieve excellent load performance

A self-managing database system. ASE Provides DBXray, DB Expert to monitor server health, analyse/optimize db performance and also for back up and recovery

The self-tuning features that have been in place since SQL Server 7.0 have been improved again with the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2000.The quality of the auto-tuning is such that its settingsrarely need to be overridden. Furthermore, Microsoft was the first enterprise RDBMS to providetask wizards to further ease the burden of database administrators with its version 6.5 databaseabout eight years ago

Automatic space management capability.

ASE can be self-tuned with scripts that automatically apply configuration values based on the server load at any time. ASE’s dynamically tunable capabilities make it the best DBMS for use in hybrid transaction processing/query environments. With its unique tuning capabilities, ASE can adjust its cache of index pages and data, reduce I/Ocosts, provide user priorities, control resources at the CPU level, or limit resources for a query or batch.

Parameters are not dynamically changeable.

Most init parameters are dynamically changeable

Flashback query is not supported

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 offers two database backup mechanisms -- full backups and differential backups(SQL Server 2000 includes the capability to perform differential backups. Using this approach, backups run relatively quickly and are smaller in size than other types of backups. Moreover, differential backups may be performed while users access the database.).In SQL Server 2000, more operations can be performed online so that the server can stay up and running. Additionally, new backup features ensure that backups can be performed with little or no impact on server performance or availability

Teradata Archive and Restore facility is provided for back up and recovery. Permanent Journaling can be enabled for incremental back up and recovery from harware failure or application error.

Sybase uses quiesce database feature for backup/recovery by using Network Appliance Filer. sybase provides two types of backups ie offline backup and backup using quiesce database model Minimize user disruption with automatic fail-over detection and transparent client sessionrecovery. Backup and recovery performance is dramatically improved over conventional directly attached disk (JBOD or RAID) configurations. Use of Snapshots, combined with conventional backup-to-tape techniques, can dramatically optimize the Sybase ASE 12.5 database backup operation. Sybse perfoms the restore mechanisms by two types ie.. Restoring a Database with No Transaction Log AvailableRestoring a Database with Transaction Log Available

Before-Image Permanent Journaling supportes recovery from human error.

Flashback query is not supported