SQL Server – Cheaper than Open SourceTerry Bunio

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• Terry Bunio

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Agenda

• The Project

• The Investigation

• The Candidates

• Lessons Learned

• Questions

The Project

• Enterprise Data Warehouse project• Their existing Data Warehouse was:

– A combination of application databases, reporting database, and data warehouse

• With a hockey pool database to boot

– In Sybase– Reports created in Impromptu 7.0– They needed to get off of Impromptu because of licensing costs

• They had a history of using Open Source products– Linux– Jasper Reports– Java

• Although they had a history of Open Source products they were open to other options

The Objectives

• Implement lessons that have been learned over the past 11

years since the Data Warehouse has been in production.

• Eliminate many potentially unneeded reports that have been

created over the past 11 years and minimize the maintenance

effort of the Data Warehouse

• Implement a Data Dictionary for the Data Warehouse that will

enable individual business departments to be much more

efficient at creating self-service reports

• Eliminate redundant data from the Data Warehouse that has

caused misunderstandings and difficulties in creating reports

from the Data Warehouse

• Improve the design of the data structures in the Data

Warehouse to address inconsistencies and less than optimal

design.

• Possibly reduce the license cost of the Data Warehouse.

The Requirements

• The Data Warehouse serves up 100% operational reports

• There is no Big Data requirement

• Advanced DBMS and Reporting tools really aren’t needed

• Just require a platform for non-sexy textual, operational reports

• Not a huge amount of data either – 1 Terabyte

Database Investigation

Database Investigation

• Due to the cost of DB2 and the operational requirements, the following options were identified as candidates and evaluated:

• Sybase ASE Enterprise Edition – Current Data Warehouse

Technology

• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition

• Oracle Enterprise Edition with Partitioning option

• Open Source Community Edition

• Open Source Supported Edition

Database Factors

• Cost– Initial Cost

– Annual Cost

– DBA Efficiency

• Non Cost– Client Required Functionality

– Technical Functionality

– DBMS Management Functionality

– People and Future Flexibility

– Performance Functionality

Cost Investigation Scenarios

• 2 Servers with 2 quad core CPUs on each Server – 16 cores in

total

• 2 Servers with 2 hex core CPUs on each Server – 32 cores in

total

• 2 Servers with 4 hex core CPUs on each Server – 64 cores in

total

Investigation Constraints

• This investigation did not include the functionality or cost of:

– Disaster Recover

– Hot or Warm Failover functionality

• This is because this was not a requirement of their current environment

Cost per CPU core

Open Source Community

versus Supported Editions

• Community Editions– As is. No support outside of general

community and message boards in case of issues

• Supported Editions – 3rd party provides additional support in cae

of questions or errors. And example of this is EnterpriseDB that

provides this type of support for PostgreSQL.

Open Source Community

versus Supported Editions

• No sane corporate enterprise would run solely a community

edition of a database. Maybe other frameworks, but not a

database.

• So for a corporate enterprise, we will not consider the

Community Edition of Open Source DBMS

DBA Efficiency Rating

Annual Estimated Costs

• License Support costs – These costs are the support and

maintenance costs for both the Production and Development

environments.

• Estimated Annual Maintenance Costs – It is estimated that

there will be additional ongoing effort to maintain the different

DBMS solutions as compared to the current Sybase solution.

This is due to the different complexities of the DBMS solution,

the available tools for the DBMS solution, and the available

support in the DBMS user communities.

Annual Estimated Costs

10 year Total Cost of

Ownership

Voted off the island

• Due to the large cost of Oracle, Oracle was included from the next phase of investigation

Risks to Strategic Database

Selection

• A change in the strategic technologies of the corporation.

• A limitation in the current technology as compared to its

competitors.

• A requirement to re-sell the database asset to another

company and the current strategic Database technology is not

consistent across companies.

• A requirement to re-use (i.e. host services) the database asset

externally and the current strategic Database technology is not

consistent across companies.

Mitigation activities to

minimize Risk

• 100% usage of only ANSI-compliant SQL to eliminate the

requirement to convert SQL if a change in database technology

is required.

• 100% usage of only ANSI-compliant Database features to

eliminate the requirement to convert away from these features

if a change in database technology is required.

• Full source code control and versioning of all Database Data

Definition Language (DDL) statements.

• Minimal usage of Database triggers and stored procedures as

most databases have stored procedures and triggers written in

a proprietary language.

• Creation of a Database isolation layer using views that can help

to mitigate changes required to the database for the new

consumer.

Non-Cost Evaluation Criteria

Client Required Functionality

Technical Functionality

DBMS Management

Functionality

People and Future Flexibility

Performance Functionality

Evaluation Criteria

• Were reviewed and approved by the client

• This included the relative weights assigned to each

Yeah, but what does Gartner

say?

Gartner Comparison

• The criteria listed have been compared to the Gartner criteria recommended to evaluate Data Warehouse solutions. The percentages are different due to the fact that 30% of our evaluation contains factors that Gartner does not consider. These factors are:

Gartner Comparison

Gartner Comparison

• The two factors that differ greatly between the two ranking

methodologies are:– Performance

– Administration and Manageability

• The only factor that is weighted more in the Gartner ranking

methodology is the Administration and Manageability factor.

This factor is addressed in two areas on our document, Cost

and Functionality. A material part of the cost factor takes into

consideration the additional administration and management

that would be required.

• With this in mind, it is our opinion that the Administration and

Manageability factors are being weighted consistently across

the two ranking methodologies.

• It is our opinion that performance is rated too low in the Gartner

criteria

Non-Performance

Functionality

Client Required Functionality

Technical Functionality

MySQL InnoDB

DBMS Management

Functionality

People and Future Flexibility

MyISAM and InnoDB engines

Performance Functionality

Performance Table Structure

Performance point allocation

Performance Observations

Bulk Performance

Basic Query Performance

Extended Query Performance

Update/Delete Performance

Correlated Sub-Query

Performance

Recommendation

Lessons Learned

• I undertook this investigation in the formal manner I did

because I was disappointed with the lack of impartial reviews in

the market with enough detail

• Gartner has high level reviews, but nothing at a practitioner

level

• Any reports at the practitioner level has been ‘tuned’ to promote

a certain DBMS

– MySQL reports using MyISAM engine

– Oracle and Sybase reports using SQL built to perform best

on their configurations

Lessons Learned

• Open Source DBMSs are not the bargain they initially appear

to be

• Know your requirements

• Do your own tests

• Read the fine print

• Oracle really is expensive

References• The State of Data Warehousing in 2011 – Gartner

• Data Warehousing Trends for the CIO, 2011-2012 – Gartner

• Comparison of Data Warehousing DBMS Platforms – Illuminate

• Next Generation Data Warehouse Platforms – The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) – Phillip

Russom

• Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems – Gartner

• PostgreSQL versus MySQL - http://www-css.fnal.gov/dsg/external/freeware/pgsql-vs-mysql.html

• MySQL versus PostgreSQL - http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/MySQL_vs_PostgreSQL

• Why PostgreSQL instead of MySQL 2009 -

http://wiki.PostgreSQL.org/wiki/Why_PostgreSQL_Instead_of_MySQL_2009

• Open Source Feature Comparison Matrix -

http://www.devx.com/dbzone/Article/29480?trk=DXRSS_DB

• The Open Source Data Warehouse Revolution -

http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Open_Source_Data_Warehouse.htm

• MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual - http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/index.html

• PostgreSQL 9.1 Reference Manual - http://www.PostgreSQL.org/docs/9.1/static/index.html

• PostgreSQL vs. MySQL vs. Commercial Databases: It's All About What You Need -

http://www.devx.com/dbzone/Article/20743/0/page/1

• Cross Compare of PostgreSQL 8.4, SQL Server 2008, MySQL 5.1 -

http://www.Postgresonline.com/journal/index.php?/archives/130-Cross-Compare-of-PostgreSQL-

8.4,-SQL-Server-2008,-MySQL-5.1.html

• MySQL versus PostgreSQL - http://www.mysqlvsPostgreSQL.com/

• PostgreSQL versus MySQL: which is better -

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3288951/PostgreSQL-vs-MySQL-

Which-is-better.htm

• Comparison of Relational Database Management Systems -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systems

Questions?