Oracle & Microsoft data platforms - are they really that different?

Jon Cowling 05-Feb-2016 15:15:03

Oracle & Microsoft data platforms – are they really that different?

Oracle and SQL have done much development to integrate the two systems and alignment has been achieved in regard to hardware, operating systems, database files, database applications; they’re also very similar in terms of day to day management.

The beauty of operating a purple estate (Red for Oracle, Blue for Microsoft) is that key applications can be suited to the right technology, so DBAs don’t have to spend excessive time trying to make a square peg fit a round hole.

Question: If you run a purple data platform, are there cost savings to be made?

If DBAs are trained to use both Oracle and Microsoft SQL, our studies show, they should quickly be able to resolve 90% of the issues from either system. This could be used to make key savings. The architecture of each system, though different, is more alike than not, for example, both can run SQL without any difference in syntax as both systems comply with ANSI standards. When companies use both systems they can free up resources from having to dedicate a DBA from working with one system or the other and contain costs from both operating the applications and obtaining licenses.

dsp sees the purple environment an opportunity to employ a single pane of glass through which to see things: when DBAs can provide both Oracle DBA support and SQL Server support, it means that more pairs of eyes can see things and notice changes or problems when they happen and potentially saving costs, development time and embarrassing outages.