Microsoft NT and How It Compares to UNIX

Microsoft’s NT, at first, was a way to defeat Novell and the small office networks Novell could offer. Soon it became apparent that the modular design of this operating system could be scaled to much larger hardware. Today companies, such as Unisys, are offering machines that run hundreds of CPUs and store terabytes of data, all clustered around the NT operating system.

The attraction to NT is that it is simpler for most people to use. The look and feel is not like the 70s command-line style of UNIX, but a GUI interface modeled after Windows 95. It also is designed with networking and Web-addressing concepts in place, not as extensions as with UNIX.

The disadvantages NT has versus UNIX are the following:

•  NT is owned, controlled, produced, and managed by one company, Microsoft; many companies maintain their own flavors of UNIX. This makes your NT effort very dependent on the whims of Microsoft.

•  64-bit UNIX, for instance, is simply faster when running intensive database operations. With NT, the RDBMS and the System Administrator cannot really manage things at quite as low a level with NT (raw disks for instance). With UNIX, more low-level control is possible, thus allowing for better performance.

•  UNIX also comes with powerful GUI interfaces, such as HP’s SAM utility. A UNIX server can be managed through these tools with no need to memorize strange commands designed by some people in Bell Labs 30 years ago.

•  UNIX allows the purchaser to modify the “kernel,” meaning the UNIX operating system itself. NT is a black-box that is much harder to customize.

The advantages NT has over UNIX are the following:

•  Many hardware vendors are focusing their hardware for NT now. If you have found the perfect piece of hardware for your server, don’t shy away from it just because it is running on NT.

•  Because most client machines are Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 workstations, it is obviously easier to hook Microsoft-to-Microsoft client/server configurations together than UNIX-to-Microsoft. This uniformity makes the network connections more seamless since you are dealing with one standard interface. This advantage is small, though, because both OSs use TCP/IP as their network protocol.

•  UNIX is more hybrid. By accepting the freedom of many UNIX vendors, you are opening up the chances of small differences between different flavors of UNIX that might in some way either affect software you are writing for more than one UNIX machine, or even software you are purchasing. NT is a marriage to Microsoft, but it does give you uniformity, since there is only one NT.

•  The time to train an NT Administrator is less than the time to train the UNIX System Administrator. This is because UNIX gives you much more control over the operating system and, therefore, the low-level architecture of UNIX must be more fully understood than the architecture of NT, which for the most part, is unalterable by the Administrator. This difference, of course, can be minimized by a GUI tool that a hardware vendor provides with their flavor of UNIX.

I hope this sheds no light on the battle between UNIX and NT, because the dawn has not broken on the battlefield. These points are only offered as considerations for you to keep in mind as the war goes on. I am sure this short analysis would get us both shot if we were to venture into one of the warring camps. It is important to focus not on the war but on your application and system needs which will be served by the different OS choices. Ask yourself: How will these different OSs benefit me, given scale, architecture, and utility? Don’t be afraid to ask your hardware vendor for testimonials of others who have already purchased their OS in this glorious battle.

Summary

Yes we should de-mystify the purchase of a database…these tools are driven by your needs and by the type of hardware you have purchased. Never plan your IS strategy around a database, find one that will fit into your existing plans.

Remember your constraints are scale, architecture, and utility. If you understand the scale, the size and power needs of your database, if you have a fixed type of architecture, and if know how your database will be most commonly used, you can steer clear of all but the necessary options that Oracle offers with its RDBMS.

Fortunately Oracle has addressed the computing needs that face us as we move into the 21st Century. The trends that were discussed and how Oracle addresses them, show us that Oracle is ready to support systems that we not only need but will need in the coming years.