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Honestly curious: Is there any objective reason for going with Oracle DB over PostgreSQL? Putting emotions aside :). Or is it that Oracle runs on the fumes of

Honestly curious: Is there any objective reason for going with Oracle DB over PostgreSQL? Putting emotions aside :). Or is it that Oracle runs on the fumes of legacy lock ins?

cdmckay 6y ago
The first that comes to mind is cost.
- Drdrdrq 6y ago
  I think he was asking the other way around. Unless you are getting a sales commission, of course - then it does make sense to go with Oracle because of the cost. :)
pydry 6y ago
Also Oracle salespeople.
- forinti 6y ago
  I can deal with the salespeople, they are actually very nice. I'm fed up with support (it takes so much work to open a ticket) and with the documentation (excessively verbose and full of marketing).
crb002 6y ago
PL/SQL - also if you plan on using Oracle Cloud which seems to have a decent serverless compute offering. I'm still curious why IBM hasn't gotten Amazon to host some System Z DB2 mainframes to compete. Mainframe is the CA of CAP. Personally I chose SQLite sharded on S3 and dynamodb.
- theta_d 6y ago
  > I'm still curious why IBM hasn't gotten Amazon to host some System Z DB2 mainframes to compete. Why would they use AWS? They have their own cloud: https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog#services https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog#services
- my123 6y ago
  Not System Z but Power: https://cloud.google.com/ibm/ https://cloud.google.com/ibm/
- castorp 6y ago
  There are some areas where Oracle indeed offers more features (mainly in the administration/monitoring area) compared to Postgres, but PL/SQL vs. PL/pgSQL as a procedural language PL/pgSQL is not one of them. Both languages are pretty much on par
- awiesenhofer 6y ago
  > Personally I chose SQLite sharded on S3 This sounds interesting, would you mind sharing details?
- Graphguy 6y ago
  https://www.ibm.com/cloud/hyper-protect-dbaas https://www.ibm.com/cloud/hyper-protect-dbaas is built on Z
forinti 6y ago
If you are starting from zero, there is no reason to choose Oracle. But you can do a lot with Oracle XE and Apex (which are free). and you can link them up with Postgresql through HA or FDW.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Apparently there are some certifications that make Oracle one of a handful of options for regulated industries.
robjan 6y ago
Oracle provide a lot of other software, similar to SAP, which are often used by enterprises. A lot of the time it all comes bundled together including a support contract. The database also has a few proprietary features which no other RDBMS provides. The support is pretty good although it's usually only needed because the products themselves are filled with obscure bugs, edge cases and combinations of features which don't work well together.
mrweasel 6y ago
I think many tend to forget that Oracle actually offers an excellent database product, with extremely good replication/failover feature and really good performance. It's not a bad database, and it scales amazingly well. The answer is still: No, not really. The price tag of Oracles database license is simply to high, compared to any benefit you might get. It's much better to try to redesign your application to work around any feature you might be missing in Postgresql, or MariaDB.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  I mostly agree with this comment. Oracle makes a fantastic RDBMS (so does Microsoft, if we're talking about expensive enterprise RDBMS), but while Postgres has caught up with a lot of the more important features, I disagree with your conclusion. For many organisations, the licensing costs of an Oracle or Microsoft RDBMS are trivial compared to the costs of the projects they're supporting, and it's easy to find where the value might be. Everything that's difficult about running an RDBMS at scale (clustering, failover/replication, statistics collection, plan management, monitoring, online index rebuilding, table partitioning...) is easier with the features and management tools those companies provide. Add actually decent support to that, and you've got a very clear value proposition. A Postgres instance will require a lot more hands on management, and a deeper understanding of how the database engine works. At smaller scale, these factors are much less likely to cause problems, and many organisations are unlikely to ever reach actually large scales (many TB instance, running hundreds or thousands of transactions per second). But if you want to start scaling an RDBMS application up, you're going to have to confront those costs in one way or another. After a point, licensing expensive features can start to look better than deploying more specialised labor.
ThePadawan 6y ago
I'm not sure if I remember this correctly, so don't take this at face value: I remember some colleagues rolling out a project to thousands of postal service branch offices. Oracle was very happy to provide 24/7 emergency DBA services in case anything went wrong with any of the instances (local to the branch offices). Just an additional guarantee of "if one of them behaves weirdly, we will be right on it" (as a service). Unless you get a Postgres-based consultancy to do the same for you (and ofc they're not first party), that support is just unbeatable (in terms of what you're selling to your customer, the post offices).
- pkaye 6y ago
  What happens when the Oracle staff doesn't perform to your expectations and the contract?
  - owaislone 6y ago
    You use Ora2Pg
  - mjw1007 6y ago
    This is the aspect that baffles me. I've heard people say with a straight face that they'd prefer to use Oracle "so there's somebody to sue" if things go wrong. But it also seems to be uncontroversial that no good could plausibly come out of attempting to sue Oracle.
  - ThePadawan 6y ago
    Good question. I don't know. You have to live with them anyway? You obviously don't try to sue them, their company is 90% legal staff [0]. (Sorry I can't find the original source) [0] https://am21.mediaite.com/tms/cnt/uploads/2011/06/org-charts.jpeg https://am21.mediaite.com/tms/cnt/uploads/2011/06/org-charts...
eitland 6y ago
If you bill your clients for licenses and add some markup on that then you make money from it. Also some customers feel more safe when they know they've paid $10 000 or probably more for an oracle license. Source: I once suggested to my boss that maybe we could save around $10 000 pr customer site and also save ourselves tons of work by using Postgres instead.
needusername 6y ago
No need to deal with vacuum and a lot of other performance related features. A TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type that makes sense and is usable.
irrational 6y ago
In my experience, no. I used Oracle in a professional setting for 15 years. I’ve only used Postgres for 2-3 years, but so far it has been superior to a Oracle in every way.
racecar789 6y ago
Oracle's "package" feature is useful for organizing methods. A package is the SQL equivalent of a static class. One can put SQL methods inside a package. Firebird db is the only other database I know of that has package functionality. For a portable database, that is pretty impressive...

Honestly curious: Is there any objective reason for going with Oracle DB over PostgreSQL? Putting emotions aside :). Or is it that Oracle runs on the fumes of legacy lock ins?

cdmckay 6y ago

The first that comes to mind is cost.

Drdrdrq 6y ago
I think he was asking the other way around. Unless you are getting a sales commission, of course - then it does make sense to go with Oracle because of the cost. :)

pydry 6y ago

Also Oracle salespeople.

forinti 6y ago
I can deal with the salespeople, they are actually very nice. I'm fed up with support (it takes so much work to open a ticket) and with the documentation (excessively verbose and full of marketing).

crb002 6y ago

PL/SQL - also if you plan on using Oracle Cloud which seems to have a decent serverless compute offering. I'm still curious why IBM hasn't gotten Amazon to host some System Z DB2 mainframes to compete. Mainframe is the CA of CAP. Personally I chose SQLite sharded on S3 and dynamodb.

theta_d 6y ago
> I'm still curious why IBM hasn't gotten Amazon to host some System Z DB2 mainframes to compete. Why would they use AWS? They have their own cloud: https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog#services https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog#services
my123 6y ago
Not System Z but Power: https://cloud.google.com/ibm/ https://cloud.google.com/ibm/
castorp 6y ago
There are some areas where Oracle indeed offers more features (mainly in the administration/monitoring area) compared to Postgres, but PL/SQL vs. PL/pgSQL as a procedural language PL/pgSQL is not one of them. Both languages are pretty much on par
awiesenhofer 6y ago
> Personally I chose SQLite sharded on S3 This sounds interesting, would you mind sharing details?
Graphguy 6y ago
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/hyper-protect-dbaas https://www.ibm.com/cloud/hyper-protect-dbaas is built on Z

forinti 6y ago

If you are starting from zero, there is no reason to choose Oracle. But you can do a lot with Oracle XE and Apex (which are free). and you can link them up with Postgresql through HA or FDW.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Apparently there are some certifications that make Oracle one of a handful of options for regulated industries.

robjan 6y ago

Oracle provide a lot of other software, similar to SAP, which are often used by enterprises. A lot of the time it all comes bundled together including a support contract. The database also has a few proprietary features which no other RDBMS provides. The support is pretty good although it's usually only needed because the products themselves are filled with obscure bugs, edge cases and combinations of features which don't work well together.

mrweasel 6y ago

I think many tend to forget that Oracle actually offers an excellent database product, with extremely good replication/failover feature and really good performance. It's not a bad database, and it scales amazingly well. The answer is still: No, not really. The price tag of Oracles database license is simply to high, compared to any benefit you might get. It's much better to try to redesign your application to work around any feature you might be missing in Postgresql, or MariaDB.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
I mostly agree with this comment. Oracle makes a fantastic RDBMS (so does Microsoft, if we're talking about expensive enterprise RDBMS), but while Postgres has caught up with a lot of the more important features, I disagree with your conclusion. For many organisations, the licensing costs of an Oracle or Microsoft RDBMS are trivial compared to the costs of the projects they're supporting, and it's easy to find where the value might be. Everything that's difficult about running an RDBMS at scale (clustering, failover/replication, statistics collection, plan management, monitoring, online index rebuilding, table partitioning...) is easier with the features and management tools those companies provide. Add actually decent support to that, and you've got a very clear value proposition. A Postgres instance will require a lot more hands on management, and a deeper understanding of how the database engine works. At smaller scale, these factors are much less likely to cause problems, and many organisations are unlikely to ever reach actually large scales (many TB instance, running hundreds or thousands of transactions per second). But if you want to start scaling an RDBMS application up, you're going to have to confront those costs in one way or another. After a point, licensing expensive features can start to look better than deploying more specialised labor.

ThePadawan 6y ago

I'm not sure if I remember this correctly, so don't take this at face value: I remember some colleagues rolling out a project to thousands of postal service branch offices. Oracle was very happy to provide 24/7 emergency DBA services in case anything went wrong with any of the instances (local to the branch offices). Just an additional guarantee of "if one of them behaves weirdly, we will be right on it" (as a service). Unless you get a Postgres-based consultancy to do the same for you (and ofc they're not first party), that support is just unbeatable (in terms of what you're selling to your customer, the post offices).

pkaye 6y ago
What happens when the Oracle staff doesn't perform to your expectations and the contract?
- owaislone 6y ago
  You use Ora2Pg
- mjw1007 6y ago
  This is the aspect that baffles me. I've heard people say with a straight face that they'd prefer to use Oracle "so there's somebody to sue" if things go wrong. But it also seems to be uncontroversial that no good could plausibly come out of attempting to sue Oracle.
- ThePadawan 6y ago
  Good question. I don't know. You have to live with them anyway? You obviously don't try to sue them, their company is 90% legal staff [0]. (Sorry I can't find the original source) [0] https://am21.mediaite.com/tms/cnt/uploads/2011/06/org-charts.jpeg https://am21.mediaite.com/tms/cnt/uploads/2011/06/org-charts...

eitland 6y ago

If you bill your clients for licenses and add some markup on that then you make money from it. Also some customers feel more safe when they know they've paid $10 000 or probably more for an oracle license. Source: I once suggested to my boss that maybe we could save around $10 000 pr customer site and also save ourselves tons of work by using Postgres instead.

needusername 6y ago

No need to deal with vacuum and a lot of other performance related features. A TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type that makes sense and is usable.

irrational 6y ago

In my experience, no. I used Oracle in a professional setting for 15 years. I’ve only used Postgres for 2-3 years, but so far it has been superior to a Oracle in every way.

racecar789 6y ago

Oracle's "package" feature is useful for organizing methods. A package is the SQL equivalent of a static class. One can put SQL methods inside a package. Firebird db is the only other database I know of that has package functionality. For a portable database, that is pretty impressive...