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We use Oracle. When starting a new project you are told to use Oracle because that is strategic plan of the company. There are teams of Oracle specialists in ho

by rb808 10y ago

We use Oracle. When starting a new project you are told to use Oracle because that is strategic plan of the company. There are teams of Oracle specialists in house that assist us. There are Sybase, SQL Server apps around but would ideally be migrated. I think its probably time to move off to a free open source platform like PostGres, esp for non critical apps. Don't underestimate the power of corporate support. I had a problem with IBM DB2 in a previous job - to diagnose IBM went out and bought an exact copy of our hardware, installed the exact copy of our build and ran automated queries to match our load and recreated the problem. You don't get that support from stackoverflow.

andrewbinstock 10y ago
This! Enterprise DB vendors like Oracle will send a team of engineers to your site and work with you until the problem is solved. For IT managers, knowing they can rely on this level of commitment is something they will happily pay for.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  So, IT managers like Oracle because they can pay someone else to do their job for them? What are they getting paid for then? They take the TPS reports from the in-house engineers to the Oracle managers? They're people people?
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Almost all companies need databases. Very few companies can or want to hire highly skilled database engineers with years of experience of debugging and performance profiling complex applications.
    - AndyNemmity 10y ago
      Right, when I go to major client sites, often their people don't know anything about databases really. It's in some random city, and they hire the people that are local. You get very wildly different levels of skill, and many times very low levels of skill. Then they hire consultants, because we can make the thing go.
- tensor 10y ago
  There are such vendors for Postgres too.
- rconti 10y ago
  I guess the number of millions you need to spend per year to get this service is in the double digits, because it sure ain't in the single digits. Oracle will let the ticket bounce around Tier 1 asking you basic questions for months until you just give up, just like every other vendor. Sure, we've had our reps bring in pizza and beer during huge Oracle downtimes, but they never actually SOLVE anything. "Escalation" means "get a manager really mad at the poor support person", not "give it to somebody who knows what they're doing", because those support orgs don't have those people anymore. OTOH, Oracle knows you're not about to stop your business for a year or two so you can figure out how to migrate a 150TB DB, and figure out how every little piece of code written over the past decade or two will handle the migration to different software.
- matt_heimer 10y ago
  With Oracle that team is know as the A-Team. http://www.ateam-oracle.com http://www.ateam-oracle.com
kstrauser 10y ago
The support point is well made, but IBM isn't doing that for free: you're paying them enough that they're eager and able to do so. I'd wager that EnterpriseDB would do the same if you threw sufficient money at them to fix a PostgreSQL installation.
- AndyNemmity 10y ago
  I doubt it, there are a ton of things already in place due to the size of the companies that you get essentially for free. Like COEs, and all sorts of other things that a EnterpriseDB can't compete with due to the money involved. It just isn't the same.

by rb808 10y ago

andrewbinstock 10y ago

This! Enterprise DB vendors like Oracle will send a team of engineers to your site and work with you until the problem is solved. For IT managers, knowing they can rely on this level of commitment is something they will happily pay for.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
So, IT managers like Oracle because they can pay someone else to do their job for them? What are they getting paid for then? They take the TPS reports from the in-house engineers to the Oracle managers? They're people people?
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Almost all companies need databases. Very few companies can or want to hire highly skilled database engineers with years of experience of debugging and performance profiling complex applications.
  - AndyNemmity 10y ago
    Right, when I go to major client sites, often their people don't know anything about databases really. It's in some random city, and they hire the people that are local. You get very wildly different levels of skill, and many times very low levels of skill. Then they hire consultants, because we can make the thing go.
tensor 10y ago
There are such vendors for Postgres too.
rconti 10y ago
I guess the number of millions you need to spend per year to get this service is in the double digits, because it sure ain't in the single digits. Oracle will let the ticket bounce around Tier 1 asking you basic questions for months until you just give up, just like every other vendor. Sure, we've had our reps bring in pizza and beer during huge Oracle downtimes, but they never actually SOLVE anything. "Escalation" means "get a manager really mad at the poor support person", not "give it to somebody who knows what they're doing", because those support orgs don't have those people anymore. OTOH, Oracle knows you're not about to stop your business for a year or two so you can figure out how to migrate a 150TB DB, and figure out how every little piece of code written over the past decade or two will handle the migration to different software.
matt_heimer 10y ago
With Oracle that team is know as the A-Team. http://www.ateam-oracle.com http://www.ateam-oracle.com

kstrauser 10y ago

The support point is well made, but IBM isn't doing that for free: you're paying them enough that they're eager and able to do so. I'd wager that EnterpriseDB would do the same if you threw sufficient money at them to fix a PostgreSQL installation.

AndyNemmity 10y ago
I doubt it, there are a ton of things already in place due to the size of the companies that you get essentially for free. Like COEs, and all sorts of other things that a EnterpriseDB can't compete with due to the money involved. It just isn't the same.