Advanced Business Database Systems: A Comparative Analysis

This project provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of three leading database systems: Oracle, IBM, and MySQL. The analysis covers the history and evolution of each product, tracing their development from inception to their current state, highlighting key milestones and technological advancements. It then delves into the target markets of each database, identifying the specific industries and customer segments they cater to, and exploring the strategic approaches they employ to reach their target audiences. The project also examines the unique selling points of each database, pinpointing the features and advantages that differentiate them from competitors. Furthermore, it outlines the functionality of each system, focusing on key features, capabilities, and areas of differentiation. Real-world customer examples are provided to illustrate how each database is utilized in practical scenarios, showcasing the functional areas where they are deployed. Finally, the project explores the future directions of each database, anticipating their potential developments, emerging trends, and strategic plans for the years to come. This detailed comparison equips students with a thorough understanding of these critical database systems and their roles in the modern business landscape.

Running head: ADVANCED BUSINESS DATABASE SYSTEMS
Advanced Business Database Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
History and Evolution of the Products:...........................................................................................2
Target Market:.................................................................................................................................5
Unique Selling Point:.......................................................................................................................7
Functionality:.................................................................................................................................10
Customers of the Product:.............................................................................................................12
Future Direction:............................................................................................................................15
Architecture of the Databases:.......................................................................................................17
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................19
References:....................................................................................................................................22

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Introduction:
In the current business situations, database has become one of important aspects. Most of
the organizations are moving towards an online environment for better management of their
business and for establishment of this type online environment database is essential (Elmasri and
Navathe 2017). The database system can be considered as an organized type of data collection
which are stored mainly in an electronic form. For storing a database system computer system
are used. Database can be both complex and simple in nature. The complex type of database is
developed using formal type of design and modelling technique.
Currently, there are various of organizations which provides these database solutions for
the business purposes and for other purposes as requested by the users. In the current market
there are mainly three big and reliable organizations which are Oracle, IBM and MySQL
(Coronel and Morris 2016). In the following section of this report these three database products
will be evaluated briefly and a comparison will be made among these organization depending on
various types of metrics. First, history and evaluation of these products will be assessed.
Following that target market of these products will be analysed. A more detailed discussion of
the other important aspects of these products will be done in the further section of this report.
History and Evolution of the Products:
 Oracle: The current oracle database is innovative development of approximate 30 years.
The journey of oracle started in 1977 when Ed Oates and Bob Milner started a
consultancy software development laboratory which later become Relational Software
Inc. (Batra 2018). In 1983 this organization become the Oracle System Corporation. The
journey of the oracle database system started with a RDBMS which become

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commercially available in 1979. This was the Oracle V2 which was a SQL based
RDBMS. Later oracle developed a portable version of the Oracle Database which was
Oracle version 3 or V3 and it was released in 1983. This database was the first relational
database which was prepared to function on the minicomputers, mainframes and PCs. C
language was used for developing this database. Later oracle introduced the version 4 of
their existing product which bring scalability, data distribution and concurrency control.
The version 5 of the Oracle was having support for the client server computing and the
distributed database system. In the version 6 there was enhancements regarding row
locking, backup and recovery, scalability and disk I/O. In the version 7 there was a
support for PL/SQL stored triggers and procedures. Next, oracle released the object
relational database which came into the market as version 8 of their product and it was
supporting various of new data types. Next, support for the internet computing was
included in the oracle products (Zhang 2017). After that, in 2001 Oracle Real Application
Cluster was introduced in the database to enable multiple of instances. Oracle added the
support for the grid computer in their products in 2003. After that various of new features
were introduced in their product which improved the availability and manageability of
these database systems.
 IBM: Like the oracle, IBM is also having a brief history. IBM launches their first
commercial relational database products which was SQL/DS in 1981. The database was
designed to run on the VM/CMS and DOS/VSE operating system. Before this, in 1976
IBM released Query for Example and it was developed for the VM platform. In this case
a linier syntax language has produced and this was produced through table oriented front
end (Lécuyer 2019). Through this, transactions were introduced to the relational database.

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In the latter case real SQL was produced using the QMF feature of the DB2. Here, it
introduced both the feeling and the look of QBE to the DB2. The DB2 is actually the
IBM Database 2 and this name was implemented within the database management
systems in 1983 during the release of DB2 on the platform MVS mainframe. Initially the
DB2 was available only on IBM mainframes but later released for other platforms which
was including UNIX, OS/2 and the MS Windows Server. In the next improvements new
architecture for the DB2 introduced which was having a dedicated database language for
the manipulation purpose and IBM DL/I. This DB2 was also embedded within the i5/OS
operating system for the IBM System and for the other z/VM and z/VSE (Rasmussen et
al. 2016). Several of time IBM has extended the functionality of a Database Manager. In
this aspect IBM has added distributed functionality for the database. Through this
database was controllable from a remote location on LAN.
 MySQL: The development of MySQL stated in 1994 and it was developed by MySQL
AB which was a Swedish organization. After one year of starting the development
process, first MySQL arrived in the market in 1995 (Nash and Olmsted 2017). In the
initial stages the MySQL was developed for personal usage and it was based on some
low-level language which was known as ISAM. As per the creators this inflexible and too
slow in nature. For this, a new SQL interface was developed which was consisting same
API with the MySQL. As the API was consistent for the MySQL system, most of the
developers were capable of using MySQL rather than mSQL antecedent. Next, MySQL
was released for Windows version on January 1998 and the supported OS was Windows
NT and 95. Version 4 of the MySQL was released on 2002 which was a beta release and
production release started in 2003. The Version 5 was released in 2005. The MySQL AB

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was then acquired by Sun Microsystem in 2008. Eventually, the Sun Microsystem was
also acquired by Oracle in 2010. In that year MySQL server version 5.5 was released
with some major enhancements including InnoDB as default engine for storage,
improved input and output system, improved support for SMP and support for
supplementary Unicode characters (Bell 2018). Semi-synchronous replication was also
included in this version. After that MySQL Server 6.0.11-alpha introduced in the market
on 2009. Following the release of server MySQL 5.6 was introduced in 2013 with having
some major improvements in performance. The latest version of the MySQL is 8.0 which
is introduced in 2018.
Target Market:
 Oracle: Oracle is a large and a diverse organization and depending on that their target
market actually varies. There are some important metrics which defines the target market
for Oracle. These metrics are the need of the customers, demand of the customer,
industry, geography and the overall budget of an average customer. In a simplified
manner, the current market target for the oracle is middle to large size organizations. In
this aspect oracle is very much focused on CRM market and currently it is their main
targeted market (König and Milanov 2017). In this aspect, oracle is providing various of
important services which includes Oracle Fusion CRM, Rightnow Cloud Service, Oracle
applications and Oracle CRM. Through all of these services Oracle has targeted one of
the emerging markets which is the B2B marketing. Here, main aim of Oracle through the
implementation of CRM system is automation of the B2B sector. With major focus on
the B2B sector, Oracle is also targeting the B2C sector which is having one of the largest
markets currently (Gupta and Mudgal 2017). Currently, the Oracle is the leader in the

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market of database and targeting the CRM sector. This will make Oracle more dominant
in the current database market. Also, the acquisition process and the strategic initiative
market of Oracle will help Oracle to focus on the rapidly growing areas which will also
add new market for the Oracle.
 IBM: In the current aspects, IBM has divided the current market segment depending on
the demanding of the customers. Based on the customer demands, customers have been
divided in different types of segment. Based on the customer segment, IBM decides, how
it will be focusing on the market. IBM uses this customer segment for personalising the
activities related with the market. In this way it becomes more relevant for the targeted
audience (Hamilton 2018). In this way, IBM actually targets all type of customers
available in the market. Considering some specific type of market, IBM is very much
focused on SMB market which is actually small and medium size markets. In the current
aspect it has been observed that IBM is currently realigning the Technology and System
Group of it so that one sales group can be created for the selling purpose to the large
enterprise customers. Thus, from this it can be also seen that IBM is also targeting the
large organizations with having the main focus on small and medium size organizations.
Another sales group is also created in this case for the selling purpose to the small and
medium size organization and in this case the limit for the customers are maximum to
1000. IBM is also designing the products specifically to fulfil the needs of small and
medium size organizations. The main focus in this case is the IT systems for the small
and medium size organizations. Thus, from the activities of IBM it can be clearly seen
that IBM is giving the main priority to the small and the large size organizations.

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 MySQL: The MySQL is not having any type of specific type targeted market. Instead,
MySQL tries to focus on almost every type of organizations which requires the database
systems including all type of organizations. MySQL provides services from very small
organizations to large type of organizations. There are several of large organizations and
small organizations which are currently using the services of MySQL (Gabryel 2016).
Though it has been assessed that there is no specific type of target market for the
MySQL, still it is quite focused on medium type to enterprise type of market. In the
aspect of this medium size organizations, MySQL is providing a tough competition to the
Oracle. The target market of the MySQL has been also changed with the time. In the
initial stages the main target for the MySQL was small and size organizations in which it
was mainly developed for the web applications. These web applications were including
consumer goods microsite and the content management systems. In the current aspect
features of the MySQL has been developed further and it can provide important services
to the big organizations also (Kumar, Rajawat and Joshi 2015). The MySQL is currently
capable of handling large size of database, can handle all the transactions effectively and
can take online backups. By providing these services, MySQL is also currently targeting
large organizations.
Unique Selling Point:
 Oracle: While considering Oracle there are some unique selling point of this type of
database which is making Oracle quite different compared with the other type of
database. The main unique selling point of Oracle is that it is quite flexible in nature
while it is also providing a tight support to Java (Raj et al. 2019). This is making Oracle
quite different from the other types of database. Here, another unique selling point of the

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Oracle database is that it provides a full spectrum of the products for various of business
solutions while this support is provided right from ERP to hardware to Java. These two
advantages of the Oracle over the other products has become the unique selling point for
the Oracle. There are also several of other advantages of using the Oracle. One of the
important advantages of the Oracle is the flashback technology. The flashback
technology is a vital advantage for the Oracle. The flashback technology of the Oracle
ensures an effective data recovery system which can effectively recover important data
which somehow lost or deleted. The system of Oracle is very much popular within the
banking industry and used mostly in this sector. The Oracle is very much famous in this
sector due to one of the important functional advantage. As a functional advantage Oracle
provides appropriate combination of integrated business solution and a high-level
technology (Hasan 2018). This is one of the crucial requirements for the corporations for
dealing with a large amount of data for the access and storage purpose. These are the
unique selling point for Oracle database system.
 IBM: Like the Oracle database system, IBM is also having some of the important selling
point of its. It has been assessed that database system of IBM is very much useful for the
consolidated passengers and for the freight delivery. For this reason, the selling rate of
the IBM database system or the DB2 is quite high. Also, on demand business strategy
offered by the IBM is another important unique selling point of the organization. The on-
demand business is actually is a specific way through which the clients of IBM will be
able to reducing the cost for operations, achieve a better minimization of the risks and
becomes capable of improving speed and agility of them within the marketplace
(Baumbach et al. 2015). In this way the DB2 of IBM makes businesses of their client

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very much easy which is one of the important unique selling points for the IBM. Here,
some other unique advantages are also provided by the IBM DB2. Data compression is
one of these advantages that is provided by the IBM DB2. The DB2 also provides some
other unique advantages over the others which includes pureXML enhancements,
autonomous transactions and optimization of the performance. The pureXML
enhancement allows to store the XML documents within the database table columns
which are having the XML type of data. Also, the autonomous transaction provided by
the IBM DB2 can commit statement blocks independent of transaction invoking. Thus,
there are the important unique selling point for the IBM DB2.
 MySQL: Currently, the MySQL is targeting all types of organization including large,
small and medium type of organizations. In these three types of organization MySQL
provides various of cost-effective operations due to which this database system becomes
appropriate type solution for the small type of organization which requires cost effective
type of database operations. This cost-effective nature of the MySQL creates a unique
selling point for the MySQL within the small type of organizations. MySQL is also
consisting other unique selling points also. Currently, the MySQL supports multiple
storage units which is one of the important unique selling points for the MySQL in the
market. By the multiple storage units, users will be able to use the top-level SQL
interface while the data can be stored through different of methods (Győrödi et al. 2015).
This is a unique feature available in the MySQL and for this reason, this feature has
become unique selling point for the MySQL. There are several of other advantages of
MySQL over other type of database system. One of the main advantages of this database
system is that it is a client/server system. In this type database a proper database

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communication it established where various of clients can operate from a same computer
system while the server system run from a different computer system. MySQL supports
the SQL, and through proper SQL mode setting the MySQL server can become
compatible with the different of others database systems mostly. Thus, these are the
unique selling point for the MySQL database system.
Functionality:
 Oracle: The Oracle database system is actually a relational database system. In the field
of database systems, the Oracle database system is consisting various of important
functionality. One of the important functionalities of this type of database system is the
online transaction processing. This Oracle database can be used for execution of the
online transaction processing (Lahiri et al. 2015). This database system also provides
several of other functionalities which includes mixed database workloads and data
warehousing. The latest Oracle database also provides on-premise functionalities and the
functionality of hybrid cloud environment. This database system also provides the
functionality of polymorphic tables and active directory integration. The above discussed
functionalities are very much important for the Oracle database system. Apart from these
functionalities, several of other standard functionalities are there for the Oracle database
system. The standard functionalities associated with this database system are automatic
management of the workloads, management of the lifecycle of the database, tuning the
overall performance, partitioning, compression of data, online analytical processing and
spatial and graph data management. Current functionality of the Oracle database also
provides support for the open source R algorithms and in database SQL querying so that
a wider range of analytical processing can be achieved. The high availability functions

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for this type of database consists tools for automatic repair of the blocks and continuity of
the applications. Oracle database also provides active data guard functionality which
provides various of database backup services for the protection against any type of data
corruption event. Data encryption functionality is also included in the Oracle database.
 IBM: The database system offered by IBM is known as DB2. Like the Oracle database
system, DB2 is also a relational database management system consisting various of
important functionalities. The DB2 is primarily designed for analysing, storing and
retrieving the data in an efficient way. This product from IBM supports features related
with object oriented and support the non-relational type of structures with XML. This
DB2 also provides various of important functionalities in this context. One of the
important functionalities of this database system is the High Availability Disaster
Recovery and Multidimensional Clustering Connection. This functionality of the DB2
provides pure XML backup compression (Bruni et al. 2015). Another important
functionality possessed by the DB2 is the zero charge. Through this system functionality
any of the virtual system or physical system can be executed with having any size of
configuration. The DB2 is a great option for the hybrid data management procedures. In
this aspect, the DB2 provides the functionality of high impact data insights, seamless
continuity for the business and real transformation of the business. Different types of
scalar functionalities are also provided by the DB2. Another important functionality
provided by the DB2 is that calculations can be performed in the database on both the
datetime data and the numeric data. Functionality of the database also improves the
performance of the applications and the analytics so that faster decision can be taken.