1) Customers don't seem to care about theoretical relative performance
numbers, all they seem to care about is that the can achieve what they
think
of as acceptable performance for THEIR applications.  All of our
customers
seem to have clear ideas about that and they put that expectation in
contracts.  We meet those contractual obligations.

  No, they care if it has a GUI (browser based), and has access to the
internet (in some fashion).

2) As I mentioned previously, fast machines are really inexpensive
today.

  But you always have to buy several of them, so while one machine is
cheap,     30 of them are not (nor are the people that maintain them).


I think it is difficult today to find a customer who will spend
$200,000 in labor to avoid spending an extra $10,000 on hardware.

  None of them started out to spend 200,000 on labor, but it almost
always happens, and moreover, the 10,000 they agreed to spend on
hardware ends up 100,000 and that amount in eclipsed by the outrageous
license costs that ORACLE and everyone else down the line collects for
all those CPU's you had to add because the 10,000 of original hardware
could only run two apps.

Let's face it kids, you and I (old tech folks) are not the one's making
the decisions to buy DB's, or hardware, or software, etc.  The BOD's
does that nowadays, and the BOD suffers from one very slick process I
call:  "Professional sellers vs. amateur buyers."

Have a great weekend!


Ray Shahan


-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Charles Finley
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 10:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Migration recommendations; PRELIMINARY INQUIRY

Tony Summers wrote:


"I assume all vendors of such tools would be prepared to publish how
fast
their software is at delivering data back to the calling application.
:)

Let me guess the answer ... "It depends".

The fundamental point is .... that trying to use Cursors on a RDMBS will
never give you the performance you can get from native SQL approach.
Indeed most books on SQL, including M$soft SQL advise against this
approach. "

I agree with you Tony.  However, I would suggest that in the contexts we
have experienced the above does not matter.

1) Customers don't seem to care about theoretical relative performance
numbers, all they seem to care about is that the can achieve what they
think
of as acceptable performance for THEIR applications.  All of our
customers
seem to have clear ideas about that and they put that expectation in
contracts.  We meet those contractual obligations.

2) As I mentioned previously, fast machines are really inexpensive
today.

Therefore, if a customer can achieve the performance they feel they need
for
their application and the hardware is really cheap, why would one care
about
relative performance of pure SQL access versus cursor based access?

3) It is more expensive in terms of labor costs to redesign your
application
to perform faster.  For example, a migration that cost $100,000  going
the
simple route using cursors, could conceivably cost as $300-$500,000 with
a
redesign!  Moreover, any redesign is more risky than a simple migration.

Customers who like our approach are first and foremost risk averse.
Secondly, I think it is difficult today to find a customer who will
spend
$200,000 in labor to avoid spending an extra $10,000 on hardware.


Charles Finley
619-795-0720

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