I'm looking for some good comparisons between Oracle and SQL Server. Can
anyone provide some good links? I'm looking to answer "which is better for
me", as opposed to, "which is better". Most of the stuff I've found with
Google tends to be quite biased, and it's hard to separate fact from
marketing.
My original app design was to be an all-MS solution (due to cost and my
familiarity with MS products). However, it has become apparent that I'll
likely need record-based security, and Oracle seems to be the only one to
provide that. Even if I went with an Oracle DB, I'd still want to use
..NET/ASP.NET for the other tiers of my app (a web based app).
From what I've read (after trying to sort through the marketing hype, and
biased opinions), is that SQLServer is a little better suited for small to
medium sized solutions, and Oracle is better suited for the bigger end of
the spectrum (in terms of number of records and concurrent users). The
confusion starts as MS and Oracle try to move in on each others' territory.
I'm not entirely sure what class my app will fall into. My app will have
several customers, generally with 500-2000 users each. It will store
sensitive health-related data about individuals. I'd like all customers to
share the same database(s), yet generally allow only a particular customer's
users to access it's own data. I think this will put me into the league of
the 'big guys'. Initially the project will pilot with one customer of about
500-700 users (roughly 200 using the system concurrently at any given time),
but will need to quickly scale up over a year or so as we add customers. If
I can believe what I've read so far, adding servers in an Oracle cluster is
an easier process (although the cost of the hardware/software is higher).
Security is probably the number 1 concern, but money isn't too far behind.
It may be a case where the most cost effective thing is for me to build my
own record-based security in SQL Server. I guess it depends how relevant
the other stuff Oracle may have to offer is.
I hope this is the best place to post this, since I do plan on using .NET
for most of my app. I figured it might be a bit inflammatory to post this
in the SQL Server groups.
