A Comparison of Oracle 9i with DB2 v8.1 - Page 2

September 10, 2003

Performance comparison

It is very difficult to make a performance comparison betweenOracle 9i Database and DB2 Universal Database v8.1. The performanceof your databases depend rather upon the experience of the databasedevelopers and database administrator than from the database'sprovider. You can use both of these RDBMS to build stable andefficient systems. It is also possible to define the typicaltransactions, which are used in inventory control systems, airlinereservation systems and banking systems. After defining thesetypical transactions, it is possible to run them under the differentdatabase management systems working on different hardware andsoftware platforms.

TPC tests

The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC.Org) is an independentorganization that specifies the typical transactions (transactions usedin inventory control systems, airline reservation systems and bankingsystems) and some general rules these transactions should satisfy.The TPC produces benchmarks that measure transaction processing anddatabase performance in terms of how many transactions a given systemand database can perform per unit of time, e.g., transactions persecond or transactions per minute.The TPC organization made the specification for many tests. There areTPC-C, TPC-H, TPC-R, TPC-W and some old tests, such as TPC-A, TPC-Band TPC-D. The most popular test is the TPC-C test (OLTP test). At the moment the article was wrote, Oracle held the top TPC-C by performanceresults. See Top Ten TPC-C by Performance Version 5 ResultsNote. Since most organizations really do not run very large databases, the key points on which Oracle 9i Database won the TPC-C benchmarks do not really matter to the vast majority of companies.

Price comparison

Compare pricing for Oracle9i Standard Editionand IBM DB2 v8.1 Workgroup Edition:

Compare pricing for Oracle9i Enterprise Editionand IBM DB2 v8.1 Enterprise Edition:

Note. This is not a full price comparison between Oracle 9i Database and DB2 Universal Database v8.1. It is only a brief comparison. You may qualify for discounts and the prices may be increased or decreased in the future. See Oracle and IBM to get more information about the price of their products.

Features comparison

Both Oracle 9i Database and IBM DB2 Universal Database v8.1 support theANSI SQL-92 entry level and do not support the ANSI SQL-92 intermediatelevel. In the Features comparison section of this article I want tomake a brief comparison of the PL/SQL with DB2 SQL dialect and showsome Oracle 9i Database and DB2 Universal Database v8.1 limits.

PL/SQL vs DB2 SQL dialect

The dialect of SQL supported by Oracle 9i Database is called PL/SQL.The dialect of SQL supported by IBM DB2 v8.1 is called DB2 SQL dialect.A brief comparison of PL/SQL and DB2 SQL dialect follows:

Oracle 9i and DB2 v8.1 limits

Some of the limitations of Oracle 9i Database and DB2 version 8.1:

Conclusion

It is not true that Oracle 9i Database is better than DB2 Universal Database v8.1or vice versa. Both products can be used to build stable and efficient systemsand the stability and effectiveness of your applications and databases dependrather upon the experience of the database developers and database administratorthan the database's provider.

Literature

1. Oracle documentation
2. DB2 Technical Support
3. DB2 Universal Database v8.1 system requirements
4. Top Ten TPC-C by Performance Version 5 Results
5. SQL Server 2000 vs Oracle 9i
6. SQL Server 2000 vs DB2 v8.1

» See All Articles by Columnist Alexander Chigrik