Database reliability stays at the top

According to a survey conducted by Evans Data Corporation, to examine the usage patterns and attitudes of database developers, 'reliability' is the most important factor a database manager considers before zeroing in on a database package for its company.

About 23% of respondents are of this view and 'reliability' has got the top slot in all the surveys conducted in the past. However, cost is another important aspect that one considers in the database decision-making process, and about 20% of the respondents agreed to that. Total cost of ownership is followed by the integration capabilities of the product at the third place. About 15% of developers consider the integration capabilities of the database package before finalizing

Another important concern of enterprises is the time taken to restore in case of a system failure. Companies are willing to spend on various failover technologies, enterprise storage management and data mirroring between sites such that transactions can be captured within minutes. Database vendors are aware of this need and are providing automated backup and recovery techniques. Some vendors claim that failover can be accomplished within 30 seconds of a system outage. A majority of 59% say that mission-critical data can be restored within an hour of an incident.

According to the survey report industry experts are not too sure about the Linux being a cost-saving option as the total cost of ownership may be much higher because of back-end costs attached to it. However a big chunk of 62% say that some costs can be saved by implementing Linux, about 11% expect a dramatic cost saving of about 50%, while 23% expect a modest saving of 10% by using Linux.