Conference ulysse::rdb_vms_competition

    
    >>Do you know of any competitive knock-offs against Oracle PC both
    >>on the short term and long term basis?
    
    I, too, would be greatly interested in the pro's and con's.  Just
    Friday I was in an account where they are considering Oracle PC,
    and had a bit of a time coming out with a good arguement against it.
    
    Granted, we could get Oracle on price (probably), support (definitely),
    and they won't win any nice_guy awards, but, to the customer, the point
    is that they can drop their Oracle-developed application on the PC, and
    it will look and feel the same as on other systems.  Although with VMS 
    we can go down to the desktop with VMS, we can't seem to provide the same 
    thing for PCs with any of our products.  (This is an OEM, selling to 
    customers who already have PC's)
    
    I could consider SQL Services, but it won't fit all of their needs...
    
    How do we get around this?
    
    Bob
    
    

    Boy...do you guys need to talk to Deb Wasserman!
    
    Here are a few counterpoints....
    
    SQL Services is designed to let us migrate most any application from
    the MSDOS environment talking with it's local database to talking with
    Rdb on a VAX.  This means that the customer isn't locked into Oracle in
    the PC world.  As with the Rdb strategy on the VAX, we supply the
    database engine with multi-user access, locking, integrity, recovery
    etc, and they use whatever tools are right for the job (as opposed to
    the "whatever the job is, Oracle is the answer" syndrome).  
    
    Running software on a small system that looks like software for a big
    system does a few things (I'm talking about Oracle on a PC or VMS)...
    
    	o reduces functionality to a lowest common denominator
    	o Doesn't take advantage of specific features of either system
    	o Locks you into one toolset, regardless of the application needed
    	o Usually involves the use of enhancements that go beyond ANSI,
    making it TOUGHER to migrate to other platforms.
    
    We should NOT lose to Oracle because of their PC stuff....SQL services
    is a MUCH better story.

Is ORACLE PC V5 or V6?  I think it is still V5, in which case your
customer may want to ask ORACLE over why one year after announcement the
latest version of ORACLE isn't available on the PC.  If ORACLE PC is so 
important, why aren't there compatible versions on VAX and on the PC?

    SQL Services is not the strategy we are using with the customer.
    We want to develop the customer's application on a two VAXstation
    3100's, RDB, Rally  vs 4 PC tied together using Novell.
    
    So far the knock-offs are:
    
    * No remote Database management
    
    * No remote network management
    
    * PC is not the long term target development tool
    
    * Support of Oracle Questionable
    
    * Digital tools now or later the same
    
    * maintenance/optimization weak with Oracle PC
    
    Is there anything else?
    
    Regards,
    
    Larry
    

    You said the competition was 4 PC's tied together using Novell.  What
    is the exact configuration?  A Novell file server will not run the
    ORACLE database engine.  In this case they would be using it as a file
    server and storing the database files on the file server.  If they do
    this they will get terrible performance.  The other possibility is that
    they have a Novell on Token Ring and they want to connect to a database
    server on Ethernet.  In this case they will put a MICOM/INTERLAN
    Gateway card in the file server.  This second scenario has many
    knock-offs.
    
    Dale

    One of my friends who works for Oracle support in Holland told me that
    there will be NO availability of Oracle V6 on MS-DOS, the only PC's
    they will support need OS/2
    
    
    Good news!