In a survey of over 1400 developers and IT managers almost evenly split between North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific (with the remaining 10% coming from Latin America), surprise, surprise, Evans Data Corp. ranked Oracle as the top ranked SQL database. Actually, what was surprising was that Oracle took top honors in all categories, which ranged from performance to security, scalability, quality of data modeling tools, programming language support, and support of ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties.

The irony is that the study comes a couple years after a companion report on IDEs ranked Oracle development tools uniformly the lowest when it came to quality, functionality, and usability. Although the top rankings, with Oracle leading (in order) IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, and MySQL, were based on features, not size of installed base, overall results ironically reflected popularity. (Other databases covered by the survey included IBM’s Informix Dynamic Server, Postgres, and Sybase.) 

In general, the report delivered results that could be expected for a mature market, because few customers are willing to brave the disruption that would accompany replacing a database. The bottom line is that databases are awfully sticky products; if you replace one, you may as well replace your DBAs, because each requires unique skillsets when it comes to optimization.

Given that Oracle consistently topped the rankings in every category, the obvious area of note is looking at which databases ranked next best with each of the functional areas surveyed. Performance, which customers rated the most important category, was actually a pretty close race; excluding SQL Server, each of the other databases drew at least 200 favorable responses. Scalability, also rated high priority, was an area where Oracle was head and shoulders above DB2, followed by Postgres and SQL Server which were largely tied.

By contrast, there was a marked stratification when it came to security; Oracle and IBM DB2 (which are also known as the most scalable enterprise SQL databases), ranked head and shoulders above the rest, with Informix coming up last. Significantly, results for scalability were almost identical, except that MySQL traded places with Informix for lowest ranking.

Probably the tightest competition was in data modeling tools, where Oracle narrowly surpasses SQL Server and DB2, with the others lagging far behind; XML support, where SQL Server was tied with Oracle; and multi-platform support, where MySQL and Informix closely trailed Oracle (DB2 was far down the list, and obviously, SQL Server was last).

Beyond Oracle, which of course topped everything, what were the strong and weak points of each of the databases? Overall, for all databases, quality of management tooling (third party and native) was by far the weakest area, providing an obvious market gap for third parties like BMC. By database, strengths and weaknesses were as follows:

Oracle’s strengths were in scalability, security, performance, and acid properties,  but weakest from data modeling tools support.

IBM DB2 ranked highest for security, performance, and ACID properties, while trailing with management tools and multi-platform support;

Microsoft SQL Server scored best in performance, and consistently well in security and programming language support, and ACID, but weak in management tools, and of course, multi-platform support

MySQL’s greatest strength by far was in performance, which is probably attributable to the fact that the bulk of its installations are modest web databases that should score well compared to large, complex enterprise databases. It was weakest in XML support, and support from data modeling and management tools.

Informix Dynamic Server, Postgres, and Sybase consistently scored best in performance and multi-platform support, and worst when it came to management and data modeling tooling

The takeaway from this survey is that there is a clear relationship between market leadership and capability. Of course, Oracle is the prime example of the benefits that uninterrupted market dominance can provide (in this case, it provides deep pockets for developing stronger capabilities). By contrast, Sybase and Informix, both shadows of their former selves, have lost their technological edge.

The other interesting point is the high ratings accorded MySQL. Known as an accessible, simple web database, MySQL’s high ratings are likely attributable to the fact that as the right sized database for the task (and we emphasize, task). For instance, while you will often see Oracle or DB2 serving as enterprise databases, you won't see MySQL there – and when you must support an entire enterprise or large division of it, you’ll see more problems either in performance or in managing complexity. One critique is that the survey didn’t distinguish between the mainframe and distributed versions of IBM DB2, which are in actuality separate products, which may have skewed the results.

Copies of the report are avialable online (registration required).

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