Richards, Robert B. schrieb:
If we were looking to replace Microsoft's SQL Server with something on System z, what would my options be and how much effort would be required to move it there?
Well migrating to another DBMS is mostly a big challenge. If you are using just plain valinna stuff (i. e. no properitary column types, stored procedures, triggers, ...) then changin the DBMS is mostly painless...
But if there are a lot of special things (see samples above), then... eh... have fun ;->
As we are an ISV our products have to support a wide range of DBMS. We used MS-SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and DB2 (unix and z/OS) in the past and they all have pros and cons.
For example: DB2 is rock-solid and very, very close on the SQL-92 standard (well, but that is not always a gift - for example SQL-92 states that leading spaces from CHAR(n) columns should not be removed and so DB2 doesn't removes them on retrieval - most other DBMS (as MS-SQL) do so). But administrating DB2 is not that easy imho.
Oracle is somehow rock-solid also, but I personally *HATE* tha Java Frontend that comes with Oracle. Furthermore I *HATE* the fact that you need a GUI to install Oracle (or I was too stupid to do without a GUI). I had to install X11 on a server just to install Oracle. Oracle also has its own datatypes (no INTEGER, SMALLINT and so on... Oracle knows "NUMBER). And what is sometimes really a pain: Oracle doesn't know columns containiung NULL.
PostgreSQL... a great performer, great fetures but the ODBC driver is (sorry) crap, crap, crap.... If you really need ODBC, I pers. would avoid PostgreSQL.
MS-SQL.... Hmmm.... The system is somehow "ok", the ODBC-Driver is stable but stupid (supports mostly just the base that is needed).
MySQL.... Well.... from a users, administrators and coders view, this is my favorite. Most of MySQL-Stuff is just so simple. The Server is installed in just one or two minutes, the ODBC-Driver is just a dream and using/administrating MySQL is *VERY* simple. But I've heard from some colleagues that they had problems with MySQL when they used rather big databases (multiple Gigs). But I don't remember exactly the problems they had...
As you see..... The answer to your questing is "it depends" as always. I pers. would try MySQL on z/Linux. If ODBC is not needed you could/should try PostgreSQL also. DB2 is also great - I like this DBMS, but administrating is more overhead as for PostgreSQL and MySQL....
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