We have done an internal assessment for the same issue in my institution, and we have found 3 main competitors:
PostGIS; Oracle with Oracle Spatial; MS Sql Server 2008 with the Spatial Features. - In term of DataBase Capabilities we have found that Oracle had more functions than the others, the second in the list is PostGIS and the difference was around 30-40 functionalities (we were anyway in the order of 200 features/functionalities, the objects are different and are difficult to compare as you do not have the code of Oracle), most of them are not so relevant, are only specialized functions which have been implemented in 11g to improve Oracle Spatial. We decided not to go for SQL Server because of the number of limitations due to the early stage of this product, in our opinion, anyway was tested. - We tested the scalability on a reduced data set, and Oracle and PostGIS were more or less comparable, for some reasons SQL Server was very slow, I have re-tested and the performances are increasing every new release/PatchSet. - In term of performances for a medium data set (we have tested with 100 GB Data) PostGIS was better, growing in size and with a good hardware, you see the Oracle advantage, which could be located in the field of Scalability; - Manageability: SQL Server was the first (after 3 months there were a lot of graphical tools made by a lot of users to manage all the things in the DB), but also Oracle was very good as there were a lot of tools to manage data input, output, database and most of them were Web Based. We have found it a little bit difficult with PostGIS, but if you like Command Line, then it is absolutely ok; - Bugs: SQL Server was at the early stage, and it had a lot of bugs, some of them were affecting heavily the tests, Oracle had problems as well, some of them are well known, I wondered of the time needed to correct them, sometimes can happen that you open a bug report and they schedule to solve in 1 release, which means at least 1 year. In PostGIS the speed to correct a bug is higher, which would say that if you have a big issue the competitive advantage could be to use PostGIS (the OS Community has a fast response!); - Bugs and Issues with MapGuide and FDO: I wonder about the availability and easy installation with PostGIS. With Oracle I have seen a lot of problems and limitations, but we decided to have a WFS/WMS to hide all the problems and to mode them to another layer. For SQL Server there was no FDO at that stage, we tested exposing data thru WMS/WFS. If this is a must, PostGIS is the obvious choice in my view. This just to briefly summarize the Spatial DB World related to MapGuide :) On the end we went for Oracle because we already had users trained to use it and who were knowing quite well the Oracle Functions to run their own researches. PostGIS has been added anyway in the last six months to our SDI, so people can choose. I wonder if could be a good investment to have a bridge between Oracle and PostGIS (in Oracle it is call gateway), just to have one single point of access, but I think this will remain a dream. HTH. Stefano -----Original Message----- From: mapguide-users-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:mapguide-users-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Steve G Sent: Tuesday, 31 August, 2010 00:38 To: mapguide-users@lists.osgeo.org Subject: [mapguide-users] Database Comparisons/Reviews/Recommendations Sorry if this has already been posted before (I did a search, but didn't find much). I am currently running MGOS 2.1 on a Win2003 Server with all of my geospatial data in shapefiles (about 60 layers; unmanaged resources on a network file server; probably will upgrade to Win2008 Server soon). It actually runs quite well with the data I have, however, just looking into the future and thinking about migrating the data into an actual spatial database. I was wondering if there are any case studies/reviews/comparisons, etc of the freely available databases or if you just want to respond with your own experiences. I know it ultimately depends on what I want the database to do, but hoping to leverage the knowledge of other users before making a decision. Some things I would be interested in are: -Database capabilities -Scalability (size limitations; connection limmitations; schema locking when editing; etc) -How easy to manage? -Performance/Speed -Major Bugs/Issues using with Mapguide -Major Bugs/Issues using with current FDO providers Thanks for any input. If there is a lot of feedback, I will try to combine and place in a better spot (back in the Mapguide OSGEO website). -- View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/Database-Comparisons-Reviews-Reco mmendations-tp5480460p5480460.html Sent from the MapGuide Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ mapguide-users mailing list mapguide-users@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapguide-users _______________________________________________ mapguide-users mailing list mapguide-users@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapguide-users