Oracle vs SQL Server : High Availability, Licensing, Performance and security

High Availability
SQL Server 2008:
Database-mirroring :
Use a rolling upgrade process to upgrade database instances in a database-mirroring session.
Take advantage of write-ahead functionality on the incoming log stream on the mirror server.
Use page read-ahead capability during the undo phase to further improve performance.
Provide reporting capabilities with a database snapshot as a source for reports on the mirror server.

Failover clustering:
Enable failover support by sharing access among nodes and restarting SQL Server on a working node.
Increase scalability with support of up to 16 nodes in a single failover cluster.
Support a rolling upgrade process for servers participating in a failover-clustering configuration.

Peer-to-peer replication:
Replicate changes in near real time, while all databases also handle their primary responsibilities.
Boost scalability, availability, and processing capacity by configuring applications to use peers and to fail over to another peer.
Protect against accidental conflicts with built-in conflict detection.
Increase availability by dynamically adding a new node to an existing topology.

Log shipping:
Provide database redundancy by using standby servers to automatically back up transaction logs.
Increase availability by providing multiple failover sites.
Reduce the load on the primary server by using a secondary server for read-only query processing.

Oracle 11g:

Oracle Provides following features for high availability.

Real Application Clusters
Clusterware
Data Guard
GoldenGate
Streams
Secure Backup
Recovery Manager (RMAN)
Flashback Technologies
VM
Cloud Computing
Cloud Storage
Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespace
Edition-Based Redefinition
Online Reorganization

License cost

Oracle 11g license cost

- Per Processor = $17,500
- Support (22%) = $3,850
- Total (Per Processor) = $21,350
- Total (4 Processors) = $85,400


license cost of SQL Server

- Per Processor = $5,999
- Total (4 Processors) = $23,996

Security:

SQL Server features role-based security for server, database and application profiles; integrated tools for security auditing, tracking 18 different security events and additional sub-events; plus support for sophisticated file and network encryption, including SSL, Kerberos and delegation.

Oracles provides powerful security features such as database activity monitoring and blocking, privileged user and multi-factor access control, data classification, transparent data encryption, consolidated auditing and reporting, secure configuration management, and data masking, customers can deploy reliable data security solutions that do not require any changes to existing applications, saving time and money.

ORACLE DATABASE SECURITY PRODUCTS:
Oracle Advanced Security
Oracle Audit Vault
Oracle Label Security
Oracle Configuration Management
Oracle Secure Backup
Oracle Database Firewall
Oracle Database Vault
Oracle Data Masking
Oracle Total Recall

Performance:

In SQL Server, the DBA has no "real" control over sorting and cache memory allocation. The memory allocation is decided only globally in the server properties memory folder, and that applies for ALL memory and not CACHING, SORTING, etc.


Following Oracle features do not exist in SQL Server.
There are no bitmap indexes
There are no reverse key indexes in SQL Server.
There are no function-based indexes in SQL Server.