Randolf,
You probably won't want to hear this, but this decision likely has nothing to do with brands, models, performance or applications.
You are up against a pro salesman who is likely very good at what he does. Instead spewing all sorts of "facts" and statistics to your client, the salesman is probably trying to figure out what is driving your client. Do you know what is driving your client? Why does he want to switch? Why now? Why not next quarter? Why not last quarter? Why does he want to do the application at all?
Forget the expected answers, e.g., "We need this application to enhance our competitiveness in the marketplace and increase the blah blah blah."
Why does YOUR CLIENT actually care about any of this? Is he trying to impress his boss? Build his career? Demonstrate that he can manage a significant project? Is he trying to get rid of old code from an ex-coworker that he hated? Is it spite? Pride? Is he angling for a bigger budget next year? Is there someone who will be assigned to this project that your client wants to lord over?
The list goes on and on, and there is no way that your client is going to admit the truth and say something like, "The real reason I want to do this right now is that my childhood rival at XYZ corp just did a project like this. I need to boost my ego, so I *MUST* do a bigger project, right now."
You gotta read between the lines. How important is this and why? How urgent and why? Who all is behind this project? What are each individual's personal motivations? Does anyone resent a leader on the team and secretly wish for this project to fail?
Once you know what is actually going on in people's heads, you can begin to build rapport and influence them. You can establish your own credibility and safety with your solution, while planting seeds of doubt about another solution.
At its core, this decision is (very likely) not at all about RDBMS performance or anything else related to computing.
Have you asked yourself why you care about one solution over another? What's driving you to push Pg over MS? Why? You might want to start answering those questions before you even talk to your client.
Good Luck, Marty
Randolf Richardson wrote:
I'm looking for recent performance statistics on PostgreSQL vs. Oracle
vs. Microsoft SQL Server. Recently someone has been trying to convince my
client to switch from SyBASE to Microsoft SQL Server (they originally wanted
to go with Oracle but have since fallen in love with Microsoft). All this
time I've been recommending PostgreSQL for cost and stability (my own testing
has shown it to be better at handling abnormal shutdowns and using fewer
system resources) in addition to true cross-platform compatibility.
If I can show my client some statistics that PostgreSQL outperforms
these (I'm more concerned about it beating Oracle because I know that
Microsoft's stuff is always slower, but I need the information anyway to
protect my client from falling victim to a 'sales job'), then PostgreSQL will
be the solution of choice as the client has always believed that they need a
high-performance solution.
I've already convinced them on the usual price, cross-platform
compatibility, open source, long history, etc. points, and I've been assured
that if the performance is the same or better than Oracle's and Microsoft's
solutions that PostgreSQL is what they'll choose.
Thanks in advance.
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