Please do not shout at me. Best dB??

[Former Member]

We are looking at a new install of SAP ERP on Windows.

Dual quad core Pentium, 64Gb Ram, WS2K3 x64 - 350 users (ish)

Best dB?

Research says DB2 best value but no skill base, SQL Server 2005 best skill base but not fastest & Oracle "best" but most expensive and there is an obvious advantage to SAPdB/MySQL/MaxDB (delete as appropriate).

Anyone know how SQL Server 2008 will change things?

Do I toss a three sided coin or is there a "best"?

As I said - please don't shout at me.

[markus_doehr2]

> Best dB?

Dependent on your skills I would say

> Research says DB2 best value but no skill base, SQL Server 2005 best skill base but not fastest & Oracle "best" but most expensive and there is an obvious advantage to SAPdB/MySQL/MaxDB (delete as appropriate).

Every DB has it pros and cons, it is REALLY a matter what you're looking to into.

<personal opinion>

For 350 users any of those may fit. Oracle is pretty complicated and it can be really a nightmare fighting with the 500+ parameters, SQL-Server is something like Start - Next - Next - Finish - so is MaxDB, DB2 is a bit "special" but if you're not a total beginner working with software and not lazy one can get into that as well. MaxDB is developed FOR SAP products and since it's the "cheapest" and the support is really superiour... consider it too.

I'm not sure, if you really have 64GB memory in the system, if you will see any REAL difference between the databases. 64 GB is really a LOT of memory and fine tuning is necessary for all.

Making Windows use that memory efficiently can be a much more challenging thing (speaking of Windows kernel patches for paging etc.)

</personal opinion>

> Anyone know how SQL Server 2008 will change things?

ETA is set to Q3/2008 (as far as I can see in the Powerpoint-PAM), if you can wait that long

> Do I toss a three sided coin or is there a "best"?

If you're skilled at SQL server I'd go for this one - if you have the choice.

> As I said - please don't shout at me.

Nobody shout - you've done your research already

Markus

[Former Member]

Thanks Markus - I think I knew the answer before asking the question, never mind.

My gut says SQL Server (due to better MS Office / SharePoint integration in the future - and everything looks good for SQL 2008 which will be what we would go live on).

I just can't help thinking that DB2 is such a good offer in terms of price/performance and I hate giving money away!

By the way 64Gb RAM was a bit of a typo (64bit on the brain!) - 32GB is what the server has.

Mark