RESEARCH AND EVALUATION OF ORACLE AND MS SQL SERVER VERSUS INGRES
 
             A Proposal for CPAC Consideration - 11/98
 
 Statement of Need
 
 WRD currently uses Computer Associates' Ingres RDBMS for its corporate
 databases, including NWIS and AIS.  DIS has a Division-wide licensing
 and maintenance contract in place for Ingres through September 30,
 2001.  WRD's computing environment continues to evolve and our
 corporate database requirements are changing.  The commercial database
 software systems are also evolving, and at differing rates.  It is
 important that WRD begin to research and evaluate commercial database
 systems versus Ingres so that wise decisions can be made on future
 direction prior to the end of the current WRD Ingres contract.  This
 proposal does not imply that Ingres will not be considered for
 continued use after 2001.  The goal is to identify the most
 cost-effective database system for meeting WRD's needs over the next
 several years.
 
 Possible Approach
 
 DIS is willing to coordinate an evaluation of Oracle and SQL Server
 versus Ingres as potential future database systems for WRD.  Selected
 members of the NWIS Staff, AIS Staff, ingres_help, and field personnel
 will be sought out to participate in the evaluation.
 
 Activities of the evaluation will include:
 
 - exhaustive research of the Gartner Interactive repository for
   relevant information.
 
 - load of NWIS test database into Oracle.
 
 - recompile NWIS release with Oracle libraries.
 
 - prototype web delivery of NWIS data from Oracle (build on Townsend's
   work)
 
 - multi-platform access, for example, if the database resides on Sun,
   can it be accessed from NT/DG/Sun.
 
 - load of AIS test database into Oracle.
 
 - Access to Oracle DB using AIS OpenRoad applications.
 
 - load NWIS/SWUDS test database into SQL Server.
 
 - Develop cost analysis of the 3 database systems.