
The Register has an interesting interview with the vp of Microsoft's SQL
Server team:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/21003.html

Near the end he gets specifically asked about "Red Hat Database" as a
competitive threat, and he responds that he doesn't think anyone can match
their "investment" of "800 professionals" to work on SQL Server.

Now I'm sure he didn't mean it to sound this way, but what I conclude from
that is that you fellows are all an order of magnitude or two more
productive than anyone at Microsoft :-).

Tim

-- 
-----------------------------------------------
Tim Allen          tim@proximity.com.au
Proximity Pty Ltd  http://www.proximity.com.au/
  http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/rita_tim/


Wed, 15 Aug 2001 10:49:37 +1000 (EST)
Tim Allen <tim@proximity.com.au>
MS interview
What is OLAP and why is it so good?  (According to MS)

Chris

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Tim Allen
> Sent: Wednesday, 15 August 2001 8:50 AM
> To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
> Subject: [HACKERS] MS interview
>
>
>
> The Register has an interesting interview with the vp of Microsoft's SQL
> Server team:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/21003.html
>
> Near the end he gets specifically asked about "Red Hat Database" as a
> competitive threat, and he responds that he doesn't think anyone can match
> their "investment" of "800 professionals" to work on SQL Server.
>
> Now I'm sure he didn't mean it to sound this way, but what I conclude from
> that is that you fellows are all an order of magnitude or two more
> productive than anyone at Microsoft :-).
>
> Tim
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------
> Tim Allen          tim@proximity.com.au
> Proximity Pty Ltd  http://www.proximity.com.au/
>   http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/rita_tim/
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
>


Wed, 15 Aug 2001 09:23:08 +0800
"Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>
RE: MS interview
I'm sure that "800 professionals" equates to something like  4 
developers, 1 tester (part-time), 2 documentation specialist, and 792 
marketing, sales, administration, legal staff and others required to 
justify its cost, and 1 CEO who has his fingers into everything at MS.

Tim Allen wrote:

>The Register has an interesting interview with the vp of Microsoft's SQL
>Server team:
>
>http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/21003.html
>
>Near the end he gets specifically asked about "Red Hat Database" as a
>competitive threat, and he responds that he doesn't think anyone can match
>their "investment" of "800 professionals" to work on SQL Server.
>
>Now I'm sure he didn't mean it to sound this way, but what I conclude from
>that is that you fellows are all an order of magnitude or two more
>productive than anyone at Microsoft :-).
>
>Tim
>



Tue, 14 Aug 2001 21:55:02 -0400
Dwayne Miller <dmiller@espgroup.net>
Re: MS interview
     OLAP Council White Paper

     Introduction

     The purpose of the paper that follows is to define On-Line
     Analytical Processing (OLAP), who uses it and why, and to review
     the key features required for OLAP software as referenced in the
     OLAP Council benchmark specification.

http://www.olapcouncil.org/research/whtpapco.htm

And

                           Data Warehousing and OLAP

                A Research-Oriented Bibliography (in progress)

   Alberto Mendelzon
   University of Toronto


http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~mendel/dwbib.html

Seems like a fairly large amount of talk about stuff which should be taken
care of internally by corporations who have such interests.

Gavin

On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

> What is OLAP and why is it so good?  (According to MS)
> 
> Chris
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org
> > [mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Tim Allen
> > Sent: Wednesday, 15 August 2001 8:50 AM
> > To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
> > Subject: [HACKERS] MS interview
> >
> >
> >
> > The Register has an interesting interview with the vp of Microsoft's SQL
> > Server team:
> >
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/21003.html
> >
> > Near the end he gets specifically asked about "Red Hat Database" as a
> > competitive threat, and he responds that he doesn't think anyone can match
> > their "investment" of "800 professionals" to work on SQL Server.
> >
> > Now I'm sure he didn't mean it to sound this way, but what I conclude from
> > that is that you fellows are all an order of magnitude or two more
> > productive than anyone at Microsoft :-).
> >
> > Tim
> >
> > --
> > -----------------------------------------------
> > Tim Allen          tim@proximity.com.au
> > Proximity Pty Ltd  http://www.proximity.com.au/
> >   http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/rita_tim/
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> > TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
> >
> 
> 
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command
>     (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to majordomo@postgresql.org)
> 


Wed, 15 Aug 2001 11:58:12 +1000 (EST)
Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au>
RE: MS interview
Tim Allen <tim@proximity.com.au> writes:
> Near the end he gets specifically asked about "Red Hat Database" as a
> competitive threat, and he responds that he doesn't think anyone can match
> their "investment" of "800 professionals" to work on SQL Server.

ROTFL ...

The longer that Oracle, MS, et al don't believe we're a threat, the
better.  But I wonder how they *really* see us.  This article was too
obviously a pile of marketing BS to be taken seriously by anyone.
What's their real internal perception of us, do you think?

			regards, tom lane

Wed, 15 Aug 2001 00:09:00 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: MS interview 
> The longer that Oracle, MS, et al don't believe we're a threat, the
> better.  But I wonder how they *really* see us.  This article was
> too obviously a pile of marketing BS to be taken seriously by
> anyone.

Not necessarily - business guys are incredibly naive when it comes to
technology options.

I had to fight tooth and nail to use PostgreSQL/Linux on a recent project.
The business didn't care about feature comparisons, they cared about two
things:

1) Putting Oracle+Solaris logos on our technology page
2) Support

I got it through by arguing about the cost difference and the fact that
RedHat is on board (they knew who RedHat was from Business Review Weekly
*sigh*).

I forwarded that article to them, and their response to the quote of

...Open source systems "are a great way for our future customers to learn
about relational databases," says Bob Shimp, Oracle's senior director of
database marketing

was "that makes sense, after all Oracle has many more features than
PostgreSQL".

So, I guess the point I am trying to make is that image is everything - 800
people working on MS SQL Server is much more impressive to a business guy
than a couple of dozen people all over the world. Remember, these are the
people that still believe that all programmers are alike and can just be
swapped around on projects without any impact.

Hopefully, RedHat's involvement will boost the mindshare and image of
PostgreSQL and I don't have to keep doing Oracle admin :)


Mark Pritchard
Senior Technical Architect
Tangent Systems Australia
--------------------------------------------------
email  mark@tangent.net.au
ph     +61 3 9809 1311
fax    +61 3 9809 1322
mob    0411 402 034
--------------------------------------------------
The central task of a natural science is to make the wonderful commonplace:
to show that complexity, correctly viewed, is only a mask for simplicity; to
find pattern hidden in apparent chaos. ï¿½ Herb Simon


Wed, 15 Aug 2001 15:07:48 +1000
"Mark Pritchard" <mark@tangent.net.au>
RE: MS interview 
> Hopefully, RedHat's involvement will boost the mindshare and image of
> PostgreSQL and I don't have to keep doing Oracle admin :)

We had four articles in one day today.  That shows some major momentum.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Wed, 15 Aug 2001 01:54:15 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: MS interview
On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Mark Pritchard wrote:

> > The longer that Oracle, MS, et al don't believe we're a threat, the
> > better.  But I wonder how they *really* see us.  This article was
> > too obviously a pile of marketing BS to be taken seriously by
> > anyone.
> 
> Not necessarily - business guys are incredibly naive when it comes to
> technology options.

Some of the companies I've worked with have been seriously over committed
to vendors - one had a 2 processor license for a trivial internal
application which, had their app been designed correctly, should have
needed only a flat file data storage system. Yet all of these companies
have been extremely concerned about moving off of expensive RDBMS
software citing 'support' and 'safe-guards' ('if it breaks, we'll
sue!'). But none of this is every actually worth the cost.

The problem is more complicated, however.

Many of the Oracle DBAs who I've worked with or am friends with will curse
Oracle, for example, to the end but defend it to the death if someone else
starts criticising it. Oracle, IBM, Sybase and the like take people
earning pretty average money doing pretty average IT work and start them
out to big bucks (just like MS, Cisco, etc). These databases are their
financial livelihood and when they push product, they get paid well.

To earn this kind of money with Postgres or any open source software
requires skill, insight, enthusiasm and commitment. So, PostgreSQL does not 
immediately affect Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase etc. It affects certified DBAs
and developers working with these products. 

By the same token, many of the programmers currently working on
the development of these RDBMSs have probably taken a good look at
Postgres. But this would not have been any kind of policy and therefore,
in the scheme of things, the quality of of Postgres wouldn't have
infiltrated the decision markers.

As such, the big vendors will only really take notice of Postgres once
their certified professions start to push less proprietary product. Who
knows what will happen if this takes place - maybe the same thing as is
happening with Linux and IBM and HP. That is, they'll stop ignoring it and
take it on as an 'induction' or 'entry level' system, packaging some
useless crud with it but all the time intending to sell, in the long run,
more expensive licenses.

Gavin


Wed, 15 Aug 2001 16:39:08 +1000 (EST)
Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au>
RE: MS interview 
Gavin Sherry wrote:
 > Seems like a fairly large amount of talk about stuff which should be 
taken
 > care of internally by corporations who have such interests.

Not entirely. As a freelancer, I've used OLAP (front-end only, ie pivot
tables in Excel) to help me produce invoices from my timesheet data.
It's *very* useful. I found out, almost by accident, which client I've
spent the most time working for, and which client has the largest ratio
of unpaid to paid hours :-(

AFAIK, OLAP backends essentially provide a cache of denormalised data
that provide fast access (no need to re-run complex queries) to large
data sets, and a set of aggregate functions to analyse the data.

There's also a language called MDX that goes with it, but I haven't
worked with that.

bye
John



Wed, 15 Aug 2001 10:39:24 +0200
John Anderson <panic-postgres@semiosix.com>
Re: MS interview

tim@proximity.com.au (Tim Allen) writes:

: [...]  Near the end he gets specifically asked about "Red Hat
: Database" as a competitive threat, and he responds that he doesn't
: think anyone can match their "investment" of "800 professionals" to
: work on SQL Server.  [...]

It would be naive to dismiss Microsoft's (or Oracle's, or IBM's)
database teams.  They have many very smart developers/researchers
working full time on these systems.  The investment is quite real.


tgl wrote:

: The longer that Oracle, MS, et al don't believe we're a threat, the
: better.  But I wonder how they *really* see us.  [...]

Good question.


- FChE

15 Aug 2001 12:13:48 -0400
fche@redhat.com (Frank Ch. Eigler)
Re: MS interview
On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 10:39:24AM +0200, John Anderson allegedly wrote:
> AFAIK, OLAP backends essentially provide a cache of denormalised data
> that provide fast access (no need to re-run complex queries) to large
> data sets, and a set of aggregate functions to analyse the data.
> 
> There's also a language called MDX that goes with it, but I haven't
> worked with that.

MDX is the query language used for querying cubes of data in an multi
dimensional database. MDX is usually automatically generated, as it is
far more complex than SQL.

Cheers,

Mathijs
-- 
Beauty and music seduce us first...
Later, ashamed of our own sensuality, we insist on meaning.
 -- Clive Barker

Thu, 16 Aug 2001 11:24:14 +0200
Mathijs Brands <mathijs@ilse.nl>
Re: MS interview
> > >
> > > Near the end he gets specifically asked about "Red Hat Database" as a
> > > competitive threat, and he responds that he doesn't think anyone can match
> > > their "investment" of "800 professionals" to work on SQL Server.
> > >
> > > Now I'm sure he didn't mean it to sound this way, but what I conclude from
> > > that is that you fellows are all an order of magnitude or two more
> > > productive than anyone at Microsoft :-).

There is a basic reality to IT purchasing, Microsoft, Oracle, DB2, and to a
lesser extent informix, and Sybase have an amount of "clout" that PostgreSQL
does not. This clout isn't based on functionality so much as a big company that
you can "sue." Nobody can sue these companies, of course, because the license
agreements indicate that you can not. It is also based on support, "who will
support you when you have trouble?" This is a quaint notion, but Oracle support
is very expensive.

The war for PostgreSQL, IMHO, is the same war that Linux fought and won over
the last couple years, perception. Three years ago, it would have been risky
for an IT guy to suggest, openly, that the infrastructure rely upon Linux.
Today, while it isn't a forgone conclusion, you can raise that point in a
meeting and not be ridiculed. People would consider it.

I use PostgreSQL all the time, I think it is a great system, and you guys do
great work. I am currently using Postgres for data analysis and as the
presentation system for a text search and music ID engine. However, I would
hesitate to move it to replace an Oracle or a DB2 because if Oracle or DB2
fail, everyone gets to blame the vendor, if PostgreSQL fails, everyone gets to
blame me.

IMHO, if The PostgreSQL team is serious about moving PostgreSQL out of the
niche tool market and into the general SQL market place along side of Oracle,
DB2, and MSSQL there is a lot of work to be done. 

Think about a website, where you have session management. 10,000 users online
at one time each doing something that affects their account once a minute. That
is about 166 updates a second on a session table. How often would you need to
run vacuum for these operations to remain efficient? I submit that PostgreSQL
will never be able to perform well in this environment as long as updates
affect performance prior to a vacuum.

Of late the 32 bit OID issue. If you have an OID wrap around, you have some
probability that two records in a table could have the same OID. The
probability, of course, is based on the number of tables and the distribution
of activity on the tables, but it is likely to happen. Is this a problem?

Then there is data security. Oracle is very good here. One can restore from
their last backup, and using the REDO logs, bring the database to the point
just before the crash. When I've had to answer this in meetings, I have to
shrug and concede that point. (I have actually seen this work and it is cool.)

Then there is the laundry list of functionality, queries across databases,
functions like cube and rollup, etc. 

Believe me, I'm not knocking PostgreSQL, but if I am to recommend PostgreSQL in
place of an Oracle or a DB2 or an MSSQL, it needs these things, even if they
are never used, I have to convince people that PostgreSQL is "safe" to deploy.

Thu, 16 Aug 2001 10:56:07 -0400
mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
Re: MS interview