EXPERT RESPONSE
I can only answer about Oracle 8i since I do not have
too much experience with SQL Server. Hopefully, your
question can be posed to a SQL Server expert.
Oracle has no problems scaling into the terabyte
range. In fact, Oracle supports up to 512 petabytes,
or 524,288 terabytes. While Oracle has no problems
scaling linearly to this range, you mileage may vary
due to hardware or application configurations. But a
properly configured system should have no problems
scaling to this range if Oracle is your backed.
As for reliability or data protection
features... Oracle supports multiplexing of critical
files (control file and online redo logs). Oracle also
supports online block checking, but this can incur
unwanted overhead. If high reliability is of key
concern to you, then you'd want to employ Oracle
Parallel Server (OPS). This lets you run multiple
instances of the same database on multiple servers.
Oracle has done much more for reliability and data
protection with Oracle 9i. Oracle 9i introduced many
new features for realiability and data protection
including Flashback Queries and Data Guard. Also, OPS
was replaced with an easier to configure Real
Application Clusters (RAC). You might want to check
those out.
Does Oracle 8i have the ability to rollback to a point
in time? Yes, but to a point. You can either restore
from a backup and roll forward to that point in time,
or you can use Oracle's Log Miner utility to generate
SQL statements to undo transactions back to your point
in time. Oracle 9i does have Data Guard and Flashback
Queries which make rolling back to a point in time
much easier.
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