

Ellison on IBM: "In databases, they are a decade or so behind us." - ilamont
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9149883/Database_wars_IBM_Oracle_s_Ellison_trade_zingers

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derwiki
Pure numbers aren't the important thing here, IMO. How many college students
are playing with DB2 or IMS on System Z? It's going to be a very low number,
for a few very good reasons:

    
    
      * while reliable, System Z is incredibly hard to work with as a programmer or sysadmin
    
      * in my experience, IBM flat out refuses to give any of their "serious" products to universities. They say "Oh, download DB2 Express-C" and that's the end of the discussion.
    

If I know there are 1000x more people in the field with Oracle experience on
common hardware than DB2 on System Z, I'm going to go with Oracle. Hardware is
cheap. Good engineers/sysadmins aren't.

~~~
acangiano
There is actually a great number of college students playing with DB2. They
usually do so with DB2 Express-C, because it's free and production ready, so
it's ideal for students and startups (even though we have large corporations
who use it as well). DB2 Express-C is easy to work with, easy to administer,
and has the same core code as commercial versions used by the largest
companies in the world. System Z provides a nice hardware/software combo, but
don't be fooled into thinking that DB2 LUW (Linux/Unix/Windows) is not
"serious" or anything but great, really. DB2 provides many useful innovations
that are not available to Oracle users. And thanks to DB2 Express-C, many of
these benefits are available for free.

DISCLAIMER: I work for IBM in the DB2 team.

~~~
sharms
This sounds suspiciously like marketing speak. I graduated in 2006, and we
never even spoke of DB2 in my time at the University of Michigan.

For curiosities sake, specifically to your post:

What makes it ideal to startups (any cool examples)? What innovations exist in
DB2 that are not available elsewhere?

~~~
abossy
From acangiano's profile:

"I'm a Software Engineer & Technical Evangelist at IBM in Toronto, Canada."

~~~
9oliYQjP
College in Canada has a different meaning than in the U.S.. Here, it means
community college. The equivalent term in Canada for an American college would
be university. In Canada there are no universities that I'm aware of that have
DB2 on their curriculum. There are definitely community colleges that do have
it though.

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acangiano
> IBM is so far behind, they don't have any chance at all. In databases, they
> are a decade or so behind us. I'm serious.

FUD.

~~~
bitdiddle
I agree, total FUD. Oracle also claims to have invented relational databases,
also total bullshit.

~~~
logicalmind
The list of Oracle claimed firsts is here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database#List_of_claimed...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database#List_of_claimed_firsts)

I don't see them claiming to have invented relational databases. Do you have a
reference for that claim?

~~~
bitdiddle
I do, but I'd have to dig it out. In one of the earlier versions of Oracle
than ran on Windows 95 (arguably the last decent one :), one got a set of
manuals with it, one of which was titled something like "Concepts and..." It
was in there.

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wglb
Entertaining back-and-forth, but are there independent performance numbers
published backing up either claim?

