SQL Server outperforms Oracle by a factor of 2
SQL Server being one of the 3 words I pronounce most everyday (alongside with IDEAS & Empower), a piece of news kept me smiling for a few days.
An independent benchmarking organization, TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council), just released (-H, May 21st 2007) results proving that Microsoft’s database SQL Server 2005 outperforms its archrival Oracle Database by a factor of 2 in terms of value for money, in other words price / performance – a metric that all good CIOs are keen on optimizing.
Here is some rogue comparative data, drawn from the benchmark:
- Microsoft > Oracle in terms of requests per hour (QphH): 60,359 vs. 37,813. Almost a factor of 2 in favor of Microsoft!
- And that’s not it yet. Stressing the system with 3To of data, Microsoft’s flagship database also happens to be 20% more cost-effective than Oracle’s solution: $38 (Price/QphH) for Oracle against $32.60 for SQL Server 2005.
In a nutshell, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is twice as fast as Oracle’s Database 10g Enterprise Edition, and yet sells at a much lower cost (shareholder speaking: why doesn’t Microsoft raise its prices then?).
I’m quite impressed by Microsoft’s responsiveness. 10 years ago, Microsoft had no competitive solution in critical systems. Today, Microsoft probably has the most scalable and manageable database on the market – that embeds a very appealing BI solution (more on this tomorrow). Who would’ve bet on Microsoft ability to go, fight and win against IBM DB/2 and most of all Oracle? I’m not even mentioning MySQL here as, although it’s very easy to deploy and administrate, the scalability & robustness capabilities of MySQL are severely limited – unless you feel like seeing your TCO (total cost of ownership = product + parameterizing + maintenance & upgrades) growing at snowball rates like Second Life currently does. More and more key accounts are turning to SQL Server 2005: French construction & mobile telco giant Bouygues has just launched an SMS management platform in which SQL Server constitutes its architecture’s database layout; European second biggest bank Crédit Agricole – Crédit Lyonnais just migrated 6To. of critical data from a mainframe/DB2 architecture to a more agile, clusterized SQL Server 2005-supported structure, etc. I could also mention MySpace & Facebook for instance. The stories are just countless.
SQL Server 2005 is now a top of mind product when CIOs think of a quality database. And it’s only the beginning: 2008 will see SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 & a new version of Visual Studio coming out of the wood.
When it comes to Microsoft, there’s one saying I like, and that is Mahatma Gandi’s “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”. What Microsoft did with MS Dos & Excel just seems to be repeating with SQL Server & XBox. Soon to come in the same vein: Zune & Dynamics.
If you don’t mind (ie unless you think this post really is advertising, and I can tell you it’s not: I’m just being enthusiastic about a product), I’ll make sure I explain what exactly comes with the SQL Server package in an upcoming post, from a Business Intelligence angle. Last but not least, if you feel like trying SQL Server without paying the license upfront, try it’s free (and obviously limited) version SQL Express, available right here.
Related posts:
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hi J !
Plentyoffish is a nice example of SQL (and IIS) scalability vs Mysql :
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/10/microsoft-aspnet-20-performance/
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/10/08/digg-is-doomed-unless-they-fire-their-tech-staff/
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/12/07/scaling-sql-server-2005-national-tv-usa-canada/
Maybe not a rule but a strong case study (maybe it has already been done @ Redmond)
As a software developer, I think that SQL Server is an amazing RDBMS. Even if I develop on Oracle (professional obligation), if I had to develop an application today, I would choose SQL Server for all the reasons that Jeremy mentioned but also for the SQL Server 2005 Developer Productivity (I’m a Software developer !!). Besides, with SQL Server 2005, Microsoft included a service of analysis (with OLAP and Data Mining) which is definitely a plus.
When SQL Server was launched, a lot of people considered that it was dedicated to small businesses whereas Oracle and DB2 (IBM) were dedicated to big companies. With the recent events and the future version (SQL Server 2008), the RDBMS market will probably evolve on that point.
Thanks for your value adding contributions guys.
Xuoan> thanks for the links, interesting stuff from PlentyOfFish. No case study yet at my knowledge, but fortunately PlentyOfFish has many , many readers. I guess everybody knows MySQL isn’t scalable (although it’s a very nice database).
Remy> I should elaborate soon on the different modules included in SQL Server 2005. And you’re right: more and more big companies are migrating to SQL Server 2005.
Hello Jeremy,
Interesting article, though I’m not convinced by sentences like “Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is twice as fast as Oracle’s Database 10g Enterprise Edition”.
Benchmarks might sometimes be a quite objective way to compare performances, but the performance of a given application working with a given DB depends much more from the developers than from the DB system! Furthermore some requests can be faster on a DB system, and other requests on another.
This has two consequences:
1 – a developer cannot make fast softwares if he doesn’t know its DB system really good
2 – a DB system can be great for an application, and unadapted for another.
Last but not least, I’m not sure there’s such a robusteness problem in MySQL. Just take a look here : http://www.mysql.com/customers/ There’s a lot of interesting links, which I think can be considered as solid references for MySQL
Hey Ghislain,
- you’re right, my title was somewhat a bit of a teaser. But MySQL isn’t too far from achieving this level of performance actually.
- you’re also right about the developers running the database: but I guess the benchmark is thoroughly checked and balanced so the very same independent developers must have stressed the systems.
- Can you tell me more about RDBMS being better for certain applications than others? I didn’t know about that. If you feel like having an access on Tech IT Easy to blog about it, you’re more than welcome (long term thing man, no constraint whatsoever. Only rule = no rule).
- Wow, what an impressive list MySQL has. But you know, I don’t think you can just plug MySQL and see it work. You have to keep people working on it to support the load and the actual TCO of MySQL may be much higher than if proprietary databases like Sybase, Oracle, DB2 or MySQL had been used.
What I think is really important to remember when one starts to compare MySQL with SQL Server or Oracle, is just what Jeremy you said above. None of this are just plug’n'play.
I’m a bit surprised that you fell into this “A RDBMS outperforms X times An another RBMS”-propaganda. As Ghislain pointed out, this depends on so much on the application and benchmark objectives that they’re quite useless statements. I’d guess that selection criteria vary a lot between users.
This might be a bit elitist, but, come on, MySQL? I heard they finally got transactions! Why not use Postgres instead?
Hi Kari, I know my “A RDBMS outperforms X times An another RBMS” is a little bit far-fetched. I wanted to come up with a sexy title. Apparently, I failed in my will to appear sexy, and I look spoiled, if not arrogant.
Oracle sells an excellent database, everybody knows that. So do MySQL, Sybase & IBM. My point is that Microsoft, with SQL Server, has improved a great deal over years. And now, the chance is high that SQL Server has everything it takes to lead the market in a few years from now.
I hope I’m making myself clearer. I apologize to you, Ghislain, & Xu for appearing (maybe) a little arrogant on the database issue.
…exactly which market are you talking about? High-availability? General enterprise? Web dev? All of them? =) (just kidding)
sql server started supporting concurrent access,error handling feature , dynamic views, only after sql server 2005 all of the above is was supported by oracle way long before in oracle version 7.
t-sql is the worst (non programming )language i have seen.
the programming, exception handling feature of oracle is absolutely great. sql server is trying hard to implement in sql server 2005
sql server is no match for feature rich oracle which can run in any platform
there are many feature in oracle which microsoft is trying to implement and the syntax in sql server is miserable whereas syntax in oracle is so simple to implement and you can write complex procedure in oracle which sql server will never be able to copy
you cannot compare sql server to oracle. it is a unfair comparison
oracle is a different league. sql server is not worthy enough to be compared to the mighty oracle
I think you’re mistaking Susheel.
First, you can compare SQL Server & Oracle. As a proof, the Transaction Processing Performance Council did it, and it is an independent organization.
Second, SQL Server can run on any platform as well. You’re wrong about this.
Third, in terms of features available and ability to store large data (from 20To to 100To with SQL Server 2008), SQL Server competes with Oracle frontally.
Fourth, LINQ to SQL will be of huge value to integrate queries in C#, for the Visual Studio developer community.
Last, I haven’t said Oracle is a bad database. It’s on the contrary an excellent product. SQL Server just happens to gain momentum, and nobody can neglect that the product has improved a lot until reaching and maybe outperforming Oracle with its 2005 & 2008 versions.
[...] Linden Labs (the publisher of Second Life), Flickr & Facebook that have proven wrong those, like me (although I still think the TCO of MySQL is a lot larger than with MS SQL Server or Oracle [...]
“SQL Server can run on any platform as well. You’re wrong about this.”
Umm, SQL Server on Linux? I don’t think so.
Speaking about features that both have, dont forget the BI sulotion that comes standard with SQL Server for Reporting and Analysis. No extra payment to use or implement, and then adding those to any of your other bussines sulotions like Office and sharepoint provides a complete sulotion to run your bussines.
In a personal opinion I dont think Oracle will be able to dominate the Db world.
Here is an interesting reports regarding DB Revenue in the latest versions from Both
http://www.crn.com/software/204300352
so Postgres – can it run with the big dogs?
Seriously! SQL Server can run on any platform? I don't recall SQL Server running on UNIX, LINUX, or even on Mac OS X server, except only MS Windows.