Survey of the use of DBMSs in Polytechnics and Industry

Don Kannangara

Linda Fraser

Momir Radicevic

Department of Business Computing

Waiariki Institute of Technology

Rotorua, NZ

Don.Kannanga@waiariki.ac.nz

ABSTRACT

The School of Business Computing at Waiariki Institute of Technology had to decide on a new Database Management System to be purchased last year. A survey was conducted using a questionnaire to find out

the DBMSs that are being used in educational institutions and industrial establishments in New Zealand. The survey was also aimed at finding out reasons for their choice. The findings were useful in deciding on a DBMS for Waiariki. This paper reveals the findings of the survey.

KEYWORDS

DBMS _ Database Management System, popular, tertiary education, industry.

1. INTRODUCTION

In 2002 The School of Business Computing at Waiariki Institute of Technology offered a bachelor's degree programme for the first time. This precipitated the need to invest in a new Database Management System for teaching. We had been using Microsoft Access for our certificate and diploma courses and this new purchase had been on the wish list for several years. As this was to be a large investment we wanted to be sure that we were buying the best tool for our teaching needs as well as giving our students the opportunity to learn on what we hoped would be the industry standard in this area.

We decided to find out what other tertiary institutions were using for teaching purposes and also what industry in New Zealand is currently using. The survey was also aimed at finding out reasons for their choice. In addition we thought it would be useful to know the tools which people were using to interface with their DBMSs.

2. METHODOLOGY

A survey was conducted using the questionnaire. Questions asked were:

a) What DBMS are you currently using?

b) Why did you decide to use it?

c) How long have you been using it?

d) How does the current DBMS meet your needs?

e) Are you planning to change it soon?

f) What languages are used as a front end?

g) If you had a choice of DBMS which would you prefer?

We e-mailed this document to course controllers in the computing departments of all the Polytechnics, Institutes of Technology and universities in New Zealand to find out the DBMSs that are being used in educational institutions. We then chose a selection of business and industrial establishments in New Zealand.

We sent out 27 questionnaires to tertiary educational institutions and 40 to industry. From these 11 questionnaires were returned from the educators and 18 from the industry.

3. FINDINGS

We found that the most popular database management system in use in tertiary education was Oracle with 31% and second was Microsoft Access with 25%. In industry Microsoft SQL Server was the

Table 1 - Reasons for choice

most popular at 26% and Microsoft Access second with 21%. See figures 1 and 2.

Out of the suggested reasons for the choice of DBMS, the reasons most commonly given for the choice of DBMS in both groups was "DBMS suits our needs" and "DBMS features satisfy our needs". See Table 1.

Almost all respondents said that they had no plans to change their current database systems in the near future.

The most commonly used programming language used to interface with a DBMS in tertiary institutes was SQL/PL and in industry was XML. See figures 4 and 5.

4. ANALYSIS

4.1 Which of the following DBMS is currently being used in your workplace?

The two most popular DBMS overall (see Figure 3) were Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server which rated highly in each of the two groups, even though Microsoft Access was not the most popular for either group. Microsoft SQL Server was the most popular for industry and came only third in the tertiary institutions. Oracle was by far the most popular in the education sector. Some systems that were being used in industry were not represented in the figures for our tertiary education group. These were Paradox, IBM DB2, Informix, Ingres and Filemaker.

4.2 Which of the following describe your choice?

Some interesting differences appear when the answers from the two groups are compared. As mentioned above both groups rated Statements 3 and 7, about the DBMS and its features meeting their needs, the most highly. Statement 2, relating to the cost was indicated twice as frequently by the tertiary educators than their industry counterparts. The same high percentage of both groups indicated the Statement

5, "It is widely used" was a factor in their choice decision.

The ability to port data from the previous system (Statement 8) did not have such a high priority amongst the educators as industry representatives. Familiarity with the product (Statement 4) was important to 45% the educators but only 35% of the other group. After

sales service (Statement 6) was not a major factor for either group and none of the educators indicated it was important to their choice. The term licence agreement (Statement 9) was a factor for 40% of the educators but did not figure at all from the industry representatives. Compatibility with systems of

organisation. In addition, the cost factor could also be significant for the tertiary education sector.

The choice of programming language for use as a front end to the database will have been influenced by the choice of DBMS.

We bought Oracle for Waiariki Institute of Technology.

business partners (Statement 10) did not figure highly for either group with the industry representatives.

4.3 Programming languages

The most commonly used programming language used to interface with a DBMS in tertiary institutes was SQL/PL and in industry was XML. The tertiary Institutes favoured Java in second place, while Java Script and Visual Basic Script figured more highly with industry representatives.

5. CONCLUSION

Although Oracle proved to be the most popular DBMS for the tertiary providers group this was not the case for the industry group. We felt this might be explained by the different pricing structures of this product as the academic version of this software is significantly cheaper.

The factors such as suitability of the DBMS to user needs, wide local usage, and compatibility with existing hardware and software seem to be most important in deciding on a new DBMS for an