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I'm not heavily involved with databases from a development point of view, is someone able to explain why Oracle is as successful as it is? What sets them apart

by Nerada 8y ago

I'm not heavily involved with databases from a development point of view, is someone able to explain why Oracle is as successful as it is? What sets them apart from what seems like a plethora of other DB systems?

zjaffee 8y ago
They have been around virtually forever, they had a very aggressive sales organization, and their database does generally perform better than the competition for most standard SQL workloads.
jacques_chester 8y ago
Putting aside business practices, Oracle database has features that don't show up in opensource systems, often for years. The one I miss most is resource constraints on queries. It's nice to be able to guarantee that some queries will get more resources than others. On the other hand, Oracle's SQL dialect is (or was, I stopped using it about 5 years ago) full of frustrating backwardness. No boolean type, so you get a mix of CHAR(1)s or INTs, depending on the prevailing DBA's opinion. And there's no serial or autoincrementing type, so for every table you wind up copying and pasting the same code over and over (create index, create sequence, insert trigger, update trigger). The most head-scratching part is that you can find apologists for these flaws.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  Oracle has auto increment: https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DRDAA/migr_tools_feat.htm#DRDAA109 https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DRDAA/migr_tools_feat.h...
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    Ah, at last, after only 40 years. So there should be a boolean type by 2058 or so.
- thibautg 8y ago
  They were also very good with geographical data (Oracle Spatial). Now PostGIS is as good if not better. We have a lot of applications running on Oracle databases at my company, and therefore a lot of Oracle DBAs. Now they prefer MariaDB or PostgreSQL for most new projects because Oracle has become too aggressive with their business practices, pricing and audits. But now the DBAs must learn PostgreSQL and that requires some non trivial effort on their part to become as proficient as they were with Oracle.
- andyroid 8y ago
  My personal favorite - the inability to store an empty string, instead converting it to NULL leading to null-checks in code even though the value is known to be non-null when inserted.
blihp 8y ago
They are viewed as a 'safe' choice for enterprise customers in that they've been around forever, run on pretty much everything, and have product offerings that can tick off pretty much every vendor selection checkbox. They're essentially the IBM of databases (if you're not already tied to DB/2 as a 'big blue' shop or SQL Server as a Microsoft shop)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
org3432 8y ago
Best explanation I've heard is Oracle makes simple problems complex, but hard problems possible.
mathattack 8y ago
They were first to get big, and became a standard. Hard to kick out an entrenched standard.

by Nerada 8y ago

zjaffee 8y ago

They have been around virtually forever, they had a very aggressive sales organization, and their database does generally perform better than the competition for most standard SQL workloads.

jacques_chester 8y ago

Putting aside business practices, Oracle database has features that don't show up in opensource systems, often for years. The one I miss most is resource constraints on queries. It's nice to be able to guarantee that some queries will get more resources than others. On the other hand, Oracle's SQL dialect is (or was, I stopped using it about 5 years ago) full of frustrating backwardness. No boolean type, so you get a mix of CHAR(1)s or INTs, depending on the prevailing DBA's opinion. And there's no serial or autoincrementing type, so for every table you wind up copying and pasting the same code over and over (create index, create sequence, insert trigger, update trigger). The most head-scratching part is that you can find apologists for these flaws.

aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
Oracle has auto increment: https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DRDAA/migr_tools_feat.htm#DRDAA109 https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DRDAA/migr_tools_feat.h...
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  Ah, at last, after only 40 years. So there should be a boolean type by 2058 or so.
thibautg 8y ago
They were also very good with geographical data (Oracle Spatial). Now PostGIS is as good if not better. We have a lot of applications running on Oracle databases at my company, and therefore a lot of Oracle DBAs. Now they prefer MariaDB or PostgreSQL for most new projects because Oracle has become too aggressive with their business practices, pricing and audits. But now the DBAs must learn PostgreSQL and that requires some non trivial effort on their part to become as proficient as they were with Oracle.
andyroid 8y ago
My personal favorite - the inability to store an empty string, instead converting it to NULL leading to null-checks in code even though the value is known to be non-null when inserted.

blihp 8y ago

They are viewed as a 'safe' choice for enterprise customers in that they've been around forever, run on pretty much everything, and have product offerings that can tick off pretty much every vendor selection checkbox. They're essentially the IBM of databases (if you're not already tied to DB/2 as a 'big blue' shop or SQL Server as a Microsoft shop)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

org3432 8y ago

Best explanation I've heard is Oracle makes simple problems complex, but hard problems possible.

mathattack 8y ago

They were first to get big, and became a standard. Hard to kick out an entrenched standard.