Which RDBMS to choose?

[tommy]

Does anybody know why Oracle is the most often used RDBMS?

When we compare prices Oracle is 3 times more expensive than DB2.

[saburns]

we are using UDB, which is DB2 for Unix...

[lh21979r]

Having spoken to our DBAs about this matter they said this...

Oracle is rock solid, easy to administer and very recoverable compared to other RDBMS's. Personally I wouldn't know, but this is what I've been told. That must be why it is so expensive.

[pcasey]

It's the market leader, which means you can always find somebody who knows how Oracle works if you need to hire a new DBA and/or bring in a consultant the help tune it. On something like Informix, you may have a horrible time finding expertise.

As for functionality, I think a lot of Oracle DBAs try to make a virtue of necessity. In my experience, Oracle is neither the easier RDBMS to administer (MS-SQL Server is), nor the fastest when running ServiceCenter (Informix is).

Nobody ever got fired for choosing Oracle though, hence it's prevalence. Push your company to bring in Informix just to run SC, and if you ever have any problems, it's your fault. If you chose Oracle though, well, it's either SC's or Oracles fault, not yours.