COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MYSQL AND ORACLE 11G DBMS: CASE STUDY (STUDENT RECORD)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

DBMS short for database management system plays a major role in most real-world projects that require storing, retrieving, and querying digital data. For instance, dynamic websites, accounting information systems, payroll systems, stock management systems all rely on internal databases as a container to store and manage their data (Jeffrey et al, 2008). Many software development firms are today developing and producing DBMS systems that cost between zero dollars in case of free and open-source DBMSs, and thousands of dollars in case of proprietary DBMSs. In particular, each DBMS is characterized by a set of diverse functional and non-functional features and specs each having their advantages and disadvantages. One of which is performance which determines how fast a DBMS can process and execute queries. This study presents the comparative analysis of MYSQL and Oracle 11G.

There are five different DBMSs available today on the market. They are namely MS SQL Server 2008, Oracle 11g, IBM DB2, MySQL5.5, and MS Access 2010. For this reason, several SQL queries with different level of complexities were crafted and tested against all these well-known DBMSs.

Additionally, a performance benchmark was used to measure the execution time of every executed SQL query, in addition to CPU utilization, memory usage, virtual memory usage, and threads count (MySQL, 2008).

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) produced by Microsoft. Its primary query language is Transact-SQL, an implementation of the ANSI/ISO standard Structured Query Language (SQL) used by both Microsoft and Sybase. Microsoft SQL Server supports atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable transactions. It includes support for database mirroring and clustering. An SQL server cluster is a collection of identically configured servers, which help distribute the workload among multiple servers. SQL server also supports data partitioning for distributed databases, in addition to database mirroring which allows the creation of mirrors of database contents, along with transaction logs, on another instance of SQL Server, based on certain predefined triggers.

MySQL 5.5 is a free, open-source, multithreaded, and multi-user SQL database management system which has more than 10 million installations. The basic program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. MySQL includes a broad subset of ANSI SQL 99, as well as extensions, cross-platform support, stored procedures, triggers, cursors, updatable views, and X/Open XA distributed transaction processing support. Moreover, it supports two phase commit engine, independent storage engines, SSL support, query caching, replication with one master per slave, many slaves per master, embedded database library, and ACID compliance using the InnoDB cluster engines

Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle RDBMS or simply as Oracle), is a relational database management system (RDBMS) released by Oracle Corporation, and it comprises at least one instance of the application, along with data storage. An instance comprises a set of operating system processes and memory structures that interact with the storage. In addition to storage, the database consists of online redo logs which hold the transactional history. Processes can in turn archive the online redo logs into archive logs, which provide the basis for data recovery and for some forms of data replication.

The Oracle RDBMS stores data logically in the form of table-spaces and physically in the form of data files. At the physical level, data files comprise one or more data blocks, where the block size can vary between data files. Oracle features data dictionary, indexes, and clusters. Versions Subsequent to 10g, introduced grid computing capabilities in which an instance application can use CPU resources from another node in the grid.

1.2   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

MySQL is the world’s second most used Database management system, and the most popular of all open-source RDBMS systems. It provides many features, the most valuable of which is its platform independence. The various features of MySQL includes the fact that it can work on multiple platforms, uses Multi-layered server design with independent modules, executes very fast, supports many data types, uses a very fast thread-based memory allocation system, supports fixed-length and variable-length records. However Oracle Databases power a vast majority of the world’s most demanding environments and continue to build an all-around lead across various industry benchmarks. Oracle currently owns most of the world records for TPC, SAP and other such benchmarks. Hence, this study is comparing the performance of MYSQL with Oracle 11g.

1.3   OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The following are the objectives of this study:

1. To analyze the performance of MySQL using student records.
2. To analyze the performance of Oracle 11g using student records
3. To examine the differences in performance of MySQL and Oracle 11g using students record.

1.4   RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. What is the performance of MySQL using student records?
2. What is the performance of Oracle 11g using student records?
3. What are the differences in performance of MySQL and Oracle 11g using students record?

1.5   SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The following are the significance of this study:

1. This study will sensitize the database managers and the general public on the qualities of MySQL and Oracle 11g. This study will also reveal the better option out of the two by comparing their performance using students records.
2. This research will be a contribution to the body of literature in the area of the effect of personality trait on student’s academic performance, thereby constituting the empirical literature for future research in the subject area

1.6   SCOPE/LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

This study is limited to MySQL and Oracle 11g.

LIMITATION OF STUDY

Financial constraint– Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

Time constraint– The researcher will simultaneously engage in this study with other academic work. This consequently will cut down on the time devoted for the research work.