Introduction

Most of us IT people get set on "our ways" fairly early on our careers - we favor certain technologies/platforms over others and often become partisans of our favorite technology. However, when you are shopping for a database management system for your organization you must put the interest of the organization ahead of your preferences and make an informed decision, one that is best for the organization. In order to do that you need to have good knowledge of not only your preferred technology but of the competing ones as well. In the case of enterprise level database management systems you owe it to your employer to carefully consider at least the 3 big players in the field: Microsoft's SQL Server, Oracle's Oracle and IBM's DB2. When reading this keep in mind that we are not an impartial observer/judge but rather biased partisans of the Microsoft's SQL Server so don't take our word for it - list the factors that are important for your organization and then score each of the solutions on each of the factors.

SQL Server versus Oracle

• Security: SQL Server provides all the security features out of the box in all its editions whereas Oracle provides only basic security features with more advanced features offered as extra cost options. You can read an in-depth comparison of the security features between SQL Server 2005 and Oracle 10g R2 at: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/oracle/ss2005oracle10gsecuritycompare.mspx
• High Availability: The strongest point here is apparently the lower cost of ownership and potentially less complexity for SQL Server. Microsft also points out that its high availability features are available in more versions of SQL Server.
• Performance and Scalability: SQL Server comes in many editions targeting different customer needs and it can scale reliably to meet the needs of largest enterprises in most demanding environment. There are many performance benchmarks that are conducted by different vendors and each claims to set records with the particular tests performed. However, SQL Server 2005 has performed very well in may of those benchmarks.
• Developer Productivity: with the tight integration of SQL Server with Visual Studio, .NET and CLR, with the integration of business intelligence features with Visual Studio etc. we think SQL Server wins this category hands down.
• Total Cost of Ownership: there are many factors to consider when comparing prices between SQL Server and Oracle. Licensing model and straight license prices are one factor but as important are the ongoing costs associated with each. How much does it cost to administer SQL Server versus Oracle? Would developing applications with a SQL Server backend provide a cost advantage compared to Oracle etc. There is plenty of documentation on Microsoft's site that supports the claim that overall you will be better off cost-wise going with SQL Server.

SQL Server versus DB2

• Security: SQL Server has more out of the box security features with less complexity. All SQL Server security features are included in all editions of SQL Server.
• High Availability: SQL Server 2005 has more high-availability features compared to DB2 UDB 8.2, including data mirroring with automatic failover, fast recovery, and page-level restore. Furthermore, SQL Server 2005 includes tools that facilitate backup and restore, making SQL Server 2005 a better choice for high-availability applications than IBM UDB 8.2.
• Performance and Scalability: The claim here is similar to the one made in the case of Oracle, that is SQL Server comes in many editions targeting different customer needs and it can scale reliably to meet the needs of largest enterprises in most demanding environment.
• Developer Productivity: while both SQL Server 2005 and DB2 provide the capability to embed .NET logic in the database, SQL Server 2005 has several significant advantages over DB2 UDB 8.2. The deeper support of SQL Server 2005 for the common language runtime (CLR) provides a more effective total solution, improving memory use, threading, and garbage collection capabilities of the CLR in ways that DB2 implementation does not allow.
• Total Cost of Ownership: SQL Server 2005 provides lower cost than DB2 in each of the major areas that contribute to total cost of ownership (TCO) - initial acquisition, hardware costs and administration costs. Initial acquisition costs and license fees for SQL Server are lower than for DB2; SQL Server offers a superior price-to-performance ratio thus lowering hardware costs; and, SQL Server 2005 automates, streamlines, or eliminates many routine database management tasks, reducing database administration costs.

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