plinehan wrote:

>
> 1) too strict an adherence to the SQL standards
> (look at Oracle's massacre of those!)
>
> and
>
> 2) trying to too resource economical
>
>
> Any thoughts or ideas anyone?

Very flattering, but I don't think so. Oracle is absolutely
first rate at customer control. They also had a head start in
the market - well Ingres may have been ahead of them, but Ingres
picked QUEL rather than SQL. In the early eighties there was a
rumor of a study done of learning QUEL and SQL - end-users
favored QUEL slightly, but it could not be taught to programmers.
Anyway, Oracle had much more aggressive marketing, did a better
job of working with upper management, and used SQL as an effective
weapon. The unique InterBase features were available only through
GDML and Oracle convinced anyone we competed for that a non-SQL
interface was the kiss of death.

InterBase and Sybase started at within a month of each other.
We turned down venture funding at the beginning because it
scared us. They were braver (or more experienced, or maybe
just lacked imagination) and got much more exposure.


Cheers,

Ann