Why fight it? If there is an opportunity to learn DB2, why not?
If you position yourself as a "Database Specialist", it seems that experience or certification in various rdbms´s would be in your favor.
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Why fight it? If there is an opportunity to learn DB2, why not?
If you position yourself as a "Database Specialist", it seems that experience or certification in various rdbms´s would be in your favor.
If only more employers though like David.
Unfortunately my own experience is they want 3+ years most recent experience on their choice of rdbms. I have 10 years DB2 and 2 years Oracle but was recently refused an interview because my DB2 skills were "out of date". The fact the client was using an old version of DB2 didn't seem to phase the agent!!!.
So do you attempt to gain the experience at the risk of your present skill being deemed non-current?
On a personal level, I quite agree with David that the opportunity to learn something should rarely be passed over.
But I probably wouldn't put multiple certs on a CV unless the post had both rbdms in the job spec.
All the best and good luck
Nick
Nick,
All of it seems pretty scary and shaky.Of course it's good to learn new technology but it's swinging like wild all over the place. There's so much to learn!!!
But all said and done, with the pricing going open pretty soon,Oracle should be able to find it's place back in the market, it hasn't lost ground at all.
It just needs to polish it's sales skills.
Cheers!!
It doesn't seem that working with two or three different rdbms's is comparable to becoming a jack of all trades. There are some basic concepts that relate to Oracle, DB2, Sybase, and so on. Overall, your point about chasing the latest technology is taken.
About a month ago, i received 3 calls for a UDB contract. My experience with UDB can be counted in days and weeks. I set up a prototype for some developers about a year ago, and tried to become familiar with the basics.
In Germany, UDB is not so widely used and there is not a large pool of unemployed contractors as there is for other skills. I received 0 calls for Oracle DBA work during the same time period.
While, indeed, oracle are pricing their products cost too high. Imaging from the basic set up to maintenance. It cost a bomb, i believe everyone knows that. Getting unix server alone is pretty expensive.Dun talk abt maintenance cost, is also indeed high. What if the company can't offer downtime,they need a cluster server, another hardware costs maintenance and others issue.
In singapore, the oracle version , those companies are using 8,8i. One of my frenz who is working for a company who is parther of Oracle solution provider. Told me that, those companies are planning to switch over to 9i in a few months or a year time.
But, there's also big companies are switching their Oracle to MS SQL Server. Although, the inital cost of the Oracle setup is high, they are willigly to forsake it and go for MS SQL. In long run, they will save a lot on costs. I not well verse on Oracle, so, i can't give any comments on the product compare to the others. For DB2 is not widely use in singapore. Most companies use Oracle and MS SQL
I have talked to some of the Microsoft Solution provider, and i reliase that most of them have no clue on setting up a better performance MS SQL Server. All they know, is to install the SQL Server, click default all the way. And, this is how they set up the SQL server. They dun place the data files and transaction log files in another harddiks. Using hardware raid systems, instead of software raid. Coz, software raid will use up your own system resources. Setting up raid 5 systems on data files for better reading. Raid 1 for transactions logs. And, of course, there's other area for setting up a good SQL server.
I quite disppointed with them, all they know is to dump everything in one hard disk. No wonder, ppl will say why my SQL server is running slow and query not responding to the time they required. Coz, they know nothing abt SQL server. That's the problem.
Worst, one of the vendor, trying to sell me a MS SQL Server with a lousy setup and spec. After, telling them, how a SQL server perform and how to tune and setup. Now, they are using my ways and solutions for setting up SQL Server for their customers. So, i just hope that those Microsoft solution provider companies know what they are doing.
Anyway, good feedbacks are always welcome in this thread.
Have a good day ahead guys.
We had discussion like "MS SQL is killer of Oracle" around half of year ago, as I can remember.
Where now MS SQL an and where now Oracle. On the same places as than.
Just Oracle will live it own life in Oracle sector of a market, MS Sql or DB2 will live its own lives too.
Desicion about changing DB in large corporations this is a strategic decision.
How often corporations make strategic decisions? This years and years.
Conclusion:
Don't care about ur OCP sertification.
Some another company in that day maybe made desicion about migration from DB2(MsSql) to Oracle.
I've used SQL Server quite a bit and it's a cool product which is more than capable of coping with 90% of the DB requirements most companies have. What people must realise is that it is more of a one-size-fits-all solution than Oracle. Oracle/DB2 only become important when you move to the very big or very complex.
RDBMS prices are now comparable:
Oracle EE - $27,000 per processor
SQL Server EE - $19,000 per processor
DB2 EE - $20,100
Each company has differing ideas on support/upgrade costs.
In addition you have to consider the OS your locked into by the products. Both Oracle and DB2 allow you to use free OS software (Linux). With SQL Server you have to use W2K at $1000 per server, unless you want advanced server which will cost £4000 apprx.
When you start to compare total cost of ownership, including platform costs and features you'll see that the costs are not so vastly different. If you look at the price tag on the shelf you can be misled!
Cheers
$27000 per year? How much is if you wanna pay for named users?Quote:
Originally posted by TimHall
RDBMS prices are now comparable:
Oracle EE - $27,000 per processor
SQL Server EE - $19,000 per processor
DB2 EE - $20,100
Each company has differing ideas on support/upgrade costs.
In addition you have to consider the OS your locked into by the products. Both Oracle and DB2 allow you to use free OS software (Linux).
Linux is free, right. But you don't have to pay anything for Solaris either (after you by the box from Sun). In any case you need a machine to install the OS on.
No, Oracle licencees are not sold on per-year basis, at least not yet ;). It is the cost of a "lifetime" licence per processor. If you don't care about the support, that is all you'll have to pay for as long as you want to use that database. In other words, for as long as you are not forced to upgrade it, at which moment you'll have to by a new licence. If you sign your support contract, you'll have to pay a certain % of the licence cost each year for their support, any in this case you are entiteled to all new releases for free.Quote:
Originally posted by julian
$27000 per year?
Named user licence for EE is 800$ (list price). And BTW, AFAIK the list price for EE per processor is $40000, not $27000. The latest could be the price you'll be able to bargain with all the discounts. As I'm not familiar with prices of SQL Server and DB2, I wonder if the prices provided by Tim are list prices or the lowest prices you could get. If they are list prices, then you should compare them to Oracle's $40000, in which case the price difference is substantial.
It made me currious, so I checked the prices on the web myself. So for the fair comparison, these are the numbers:
Oracle EE - $40,000 per processor
SQL Server EE - $19,999 per processor
DB2 EE - $20,100