Noel Yuhanna Senior Analyst Forrester Research

TeleconferenceChoosing The Right Enterprise DBMS For Your ApplicationNoel Yuhanna

Senior Analyst

Forrester Research

September 28, 2006. Call in at 12:55 p.m. Eastern Time

2Entire contents © 2006 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

Theme

Choosing the right DBMS for your application

remains important to ensure reliability,

performance, availability, and lower cost.


Agenda

• DBMS drivers and trends

• DBMS products — vendor landscape

• How to choose the right DBMS?

• What factors matter the most?

• Key recommendations


Drivers and trends: 2006

• Drivers

» Data volumes are growing — doubles every two years

» Increasing compliance pressure

» Growing data complexity

» Increasing cost concerns

• Trends

» Adoption of open source databases will increase

» Standardization and consolidation of databases

» Database security becomes a top priority

» Need for real-time information sharing

» Need for long-term data retention


Trends 2007 to 2010:

• Popularity of XML databases grows

• Unstructured data moves into databases for better data mgmt

• Demand for in-memory/cache database grows

• Requirements for automated self-managing databases grows

• Open source databases will account for 10% of DBMS market

• High available databases — true 24x7 DBMS

• Grid databases will come of age — information fabric


What are the top three database management challenges?

Delivering high availability 56%

High data volume growth 51%

Data integration issues 51%

Lack of resources 49%

Securing private data 44%

Delivering improved performance 40%

High data management costs 33%

Lack of database tools 27%

Too many database patches 24%

Others 9%

Source: Forrester (DBMS Survey – 68 Enterprises)


What key factors influence your DBMS decision?

Performance 77%

DBMS features 74%

HA features 57%

Lower cost 51%

Vendor viability 45%

Manageability and automation 36%

XML data management 21%

Product road map 19%

Grid computing and virtualization 11%

Others 5%

Source: Forrester (DBMS Survey – 68 Enterprises)


Which DBMS is used in production?

DBMS product% of enterprises

using DBMS

SQL Server 81%

Oracle 77%

DB2 53%

Access 28%

Sybase 23%

IMS 19%

Informix 19%

MySQL 17%

Teradata 13%

Adabas 9%

IDMS 8%

PostgreSQL 4%

Filemaker 2%

Ingres 2%

Progress 2%

Source: Forrester (68 Enterprises)


DBMS survey: revenue versus DBMS used

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Less than $100 million

$100 million to less than

$500 million

$500 million to less than $1 billion

$1 billion to $10 billion

More than $10 billion

SQL Server Oracle DB2


Oracle

Strengths

+ 10g a radical shift — simplification, integration, automation

+ Oracle chooses a new battlefield — “Linux”

+ RAC finally gets attention and becomes a key differentiator

+ Focusing on innovation — security, grid, app-db integration

+ Fortune 500 prefer Oracle

Weaknesses

- 10g adoption has been slow

- Too many vulnerabilities, customers unhappy about frequent patches

- Pricing still a major concern

- Oracle starting to offer more and more “add-ons.”


IBM DB2

Strengths

+ Focusing on information management — broader vision

+ DB2 V9 — XML, automation and performance

+ Leader in performance — TPC-C and TPC-H benchmarks

+ Easier to work with partners

+ Many mainframe customers expanding onto distributed platforms

Weaknesses

- Seen as a follower in DBMS technology

- Focusing more on “information as a service”

- Adoption of DB2 is average

- Security solutions still remain weak


Microsoft

Strengths

+ SQL Server 2005 gains momentum — 17% upgrades so far

+ Overall has the largest adoption of enterprises DBMS

+ Low-cost and ease-of-use are key strengths

+ Integration of development tools

+ Higher customer satisfaction than other DBMSes

+ Almost caught up with Oracle on the technology front

Weaknesses

- High-end scalability concern still exists — although that’s changing

- Concerns over SQL Server 2005 complexity

- Narrow focus on the Windows world

- Areas that fall short — HA, security, clustering (scale-out)


SybaseStrengths

+ Highly reliable database technology

+ Good performance in medium- to large-sized database deployments.

+ Dominates financial sector with 60% deployments.

+ Continues to extend coverage on mobile and data services.

+ Expanding its solutions to support other DBMSes.

+ Increase in revenue — 33% last quarter

Weaknesses

- Seen as less innovative than Oracle/Microsoft, but that is changing

- Not seen as aggressive to go after other DBMS vendors

- Focusing less on DBMS, more on data services


MySQL

Strengths

+ Largest mindshare/community in OSDB category

+ High adoption rate

+ Largest ecosystem — tools and partners

+ Ease of use and deployment

+ High code quality

Weaknesses

- Average features, not cutting edge

- Putting its act together on transactional engine

- Strong commercial DBMS sales putting pressure on MySQL

- Slow in rolling out new features


PostgreSQL

Strengths

+ Good DBMS technology and features

+ Good support for transactions

+ Reliable, stable, and strong product rollouts

+ More vendors supporting the project — SUN, Pervasive, Fujitsu

+ Second largest community behind MySQL

Weaknesses

- Had been leaderless, trying to get back in the race

- Overshadowed by MySQL

- Ecosystem is lagging behind — tools, apps, partners

- No clear driver for PostgreSQL


Strengths

+ Mature and proven DBMS — long track record

+ Good performance and scalability

+ Feature-rich DBMS technology, including unstructured data

+ More than 10,000 paying customers

+ Being used for mission-critical deployments

Weaknesses

- Community small but growing

- Overshadowed by MySQL

- Lags behind in ecosystem — tools, apps, partners

- Source code quality unknown

Ingres


Size and scope of adoption

Tec

hn

olo

gy

Low

High

High

Berkeley DB

PostgreSQL

Ingres

MySQL

DB2OracleSQL

Server

Eighty percent of apps typically only require 30% of closed source database

features.

Eighty percent of apps typically only require 30% of closed source database

features.

Derby

Firebird

SybaseInformix

EnterpriseDB

Comparing open source with closed source


How to choose an enterprise DBMS?

• DBMS technology has matured

• Does a DBMS need 10,000 features?

• Eighty percent of apps require only basic DBMS functionality

• Basic DBMS functionality — all have it

» Triggers, SP, views, indexes, backup, locking . . .

• There a dozen DBMSes that can meet your requirement

• Have a DBMS strategy — identifying which DBMS to use

• But keep in mind that limits enterprise DBMS to two and at the most three


What factors matter the most when comparing?

• Performance and scalability — high end, Terabytes?

• Security — encryption, auditing, role separation?

• Availability — zero downtime, <30 minutes?

• XML — store and access XML efficiently, Xquery/Xpath?

• Unstructured data management — logs, fax, audio, video?

• Tools — archiving, performance, monitoring, vendors?

• Cost — whether it delivers the best DBMS for the cost?

• Staffing — can I get trained DBAs?

• Support for packaged applications — SAP, Oracle?

• Integration — other systems, data source, applications

• And meeting application requirements . . .


Comparing the top enterprise OLTP DBMSes DB2 Oracle SQL

ServerSybase MySQL Ingres PostgreSQL EnterpriseDB

Availability 4 5 4 4 4 3 2 2

Performance 5 5 4 4 3 4 2 2

Scalability 5 5 3 4 3 3 2 2

Reliability 5 5 5 5 4 4 3 3

Support 4 3 5 4 3 4 2 4

Skills available 4 5 5 3 4 2 3 1

Manageability 4 3 5 4 4 3 3 4

Tools 4 4 5 3 5 2 3 3

Security 3 5 4 4 2 3 2 2

Multi-Terabyte DB 5 5 4 4 2 3 2 2

Innovation 3 5 4 4 3 3 2 3

Cost 2 1 3 2 4 4 5 4

Migration tools 3 4 4 2 3 3 3 5

XML 5 4 4 3 2 3 2 2

Programmability 4 4 5 3 4 3 3 3

(1=Poor, 2 = Below average, 3=Average, 4= Good, 5=Best)


Where do you draw the line?

• Performance and scalability (OLTP)

» Open Source < 500gb, SQL Server < 4TB, Oracle and DB2 < 8TB

• Availability

» Zero downtime — Oracle RAC

» < 15 Mins downtime — Fail-over Clustering, SQL Server Database Mirroring, Sybase Mirror Activator, DB2 HADR

• Security

» Encryption — Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase

» Granular auditing — Oracle and SQL Server

• Cost

» Lowest — Open source databases

» Moderate — SQL Server and Sybase

• Packaged applications

» Best DBMS — SQL Server and Oracle

• XML solutions

» Best DBMS — DB2 and Oracle


Noel Yuhanna

+1 650/581-3807

[email protected]

Thank you

Noel Yuhanna Senior Analyst Forrester Research

Documents

dbms dbms product

dbms features

right dbms

dbms vendors

dbms decision

good dbms technology

forrester dbms survey

right enterprise dbms