-=> On 23 Feb 97  17:05:12 David Noon said to Andrew Grillet <=-

 DN> On Thursday, 97/02/20, Andrew Grillet wrote to Mike Bilow about

 DN> Do you have a UK number from which I can obtain my free copy of Oracle
 DN> for OS/2?

Unfortunately not, but I got it from a full page ad in 'computing' 

 DN> I don't need front ends; I currently use DB2/2.

I'd like to hear an informed comparison.
 
 AG> IBM could go far on this. I presume they are afraid of
 AG> taking market from mainframes - this is a doomed strategy.
 AG> They should know from the history of the mini and micro that
 AG> the technology will take the business if its cheaper, even if
 AG> IBM dont supply the product. (Same to DEC with knobs on).

 DN> It is also handy if you can rewrite the rules. IBM invented a new
 DN> metric a few years ago, called TCC (Total Cost of Computing). This
 DN> highlighted the overblown nature of the claims of client/server and
 DN> made the mainframe once more the weapon of choice for corporate
 DN> computing.

 DN> It also killed what little was left of the VAX market.

I think DEC caused their own problems without IBM. 
 
 AG>  MB> On the other hand, there are
 AG>  MB> people who take NT seriously as a database server, and that is
 AG>  MB> inexplicable. 
 AG> 
 AG> Never tried it, but the magazines said it handled more users than
 AG> OS/2  on the same hardware. 

 DN> All the benchmarks I've seen have indicated that you need 4 or more NT
 DN> servers for the same DB2 workload as you get from Warp Server
 DN> Advanced.

I saw a survey in a relatively reputable mag which compared (I think)
four servers, including Novell 4, Lan Manager, Lanserver. It said
at higher numbers of users (> 250), Lan Manager just curls up and dies.

I did wonder how a FAT based product could handle more users than HPFS,
but I was not there when the brown envelopes were exchanged :-)

ANdrew


 
 AG> Given the fact that the number of database servers must be growing
 AG>  fast, while the games market mst be saturating, IBM really ought to
 AG> try to get OS/2 into the server market.

 DN> Ever seen around the back rooms of a branch of Lloyds Bank?

 DN> [For non-UK readers: Lloyds Bank is a _huge_ company.]
 
 AG> Compaines with less than 100
 AG> people are really not going to go for big iron, cos they don't have
 AG> the skills to support it. They normally have PC literate people
 AG> though.

 DN> They _might_ have PC-literate people, but then again ...

 DN> [Incidentally, re-reading your previous sentence makes the adjective
 DN> 'literate' seem quite humourous. ... :-) ]

 DN> Regards

 DN> Dave
 DN> 

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