Following the discusion on whether Oracle DBA’s are worth special treatment, there are well known advantages of using Oracle within major ebusiness enterprises. For one, Oracle is cheaper to buy, yet its running costs are externsively greater than other products. for exaple, Ingres is more expensive to buy, but needs few manpower to run and is by far less complex in its architecture, and does the same jobs better and efficiently. Due to less complexity, maintenance of INGRES is cheap. Given this argument, should major businesses be relying on Oracle as their future or should they be looking at dynamic strategies to out-do competitors. Personally, I have used both products and find INGRES a more reliable product dispite its acquisition costs. This is not a selling point but I have started this discussion to get feedback from all interested in databases to air their views on the way forward in DBMS.