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Enterprise dba shops have deep expertise with oracle (and sometimes sql server). I have personally run into serious resistance from these teams when I explicitl

Enterprise dba shops have deep expertise with oracle (and sometimes sql server). I have personally run into serious resistance from these teams when I explicitly ask for postgres. They try to warn me that oracle is the recommended option for real production use cases because of the deep in-house expertise and that I am pretty much on my own if I go with postgres. Most people back off at that point.

derekp7 6y ago
I've seen this so much, and can empathize with them. When you have a product that took you years to master, the value that you bring to your employer is wrapped up in that product. So it isn't so much that someone is a DBA, they are an Oracle Database software specialist. You've learned all the quirks so that when something goes south, you "have the answer". So naturally you will have a number of reasons why another product isn't as good. I feel the same way with Unix/Linux. At one point I was told that my organization may be migrating away from Linux, and redeploy everything under Windows. The management layer really couldn't understand that they would lose nearly every Linux admin on staff (that happened to also have deep understanding of their apps and infrastructure). "Why would someone have a problem with switching platforms -- we'll provide you the training" was their answer. Fortunately we were able to come up with a number of technical (and cost related) issues that the project was shot down.
- lumost 6y ago
  At sufficiently large companies, deep in-house experience with a given DB technology may be roughly equivalent to a startup engineers deep experience on their companies current monolith. Companies with large and complex db installations often need the complexity for various reasons that are difficult to escape, even if you're working on a green field project.
matwood 6y ago
PG over mysql is obvious IMO. PG over mssql, not so obvious. People often forget the 'management system' part of RDBMS. MSSQL provides an enormous amount of tooling in the typical enterprise install. Analysis services, data tools, etc... provide a lot of value beyond a data store. Of course if you don't need any of these additional tools or can't afford them, then yeah pg is a great choice.
- runako 6y ago
  Cost is a really solid argument against MSSQL. Even at Azure, MSSQL costs ~6x as much as the open-source databases. For even relatively small workloads, it's not hard for the MSSQL license to cost as much as an FTE. Aside from the raw cost, the licensing model and cost considerations can drive design decisions. In my experience, most shops that use MSSQL do so because nobody on staff has experience with other databases.
  - matwood 6y ago
    Sure, but we're talking about enterprises. Back when I could walk down the hall to the datacenter, paying $30k for the hardware and $60k for licenses was normal. Every time I bought a new server I tried to make a case for pg or mysql, but the cost to replace SSIS, SSAS, or SSRS either with another product or to build a replacement was always more.
  - tomnipotent 6y ago
    > Cost is a really solid argument against MSSQL If you're a small 2-5 person team, sure. But once dev payroll breaks $1M/yr, paying ~$100k for SQL Server doesn't seem so bad anymore.
    - runako 6y ago
      That doesn't match the economics at any company I've seen. Dev payroll of $1mm/yr gets you something like 6 devs or fewer in the US. I have yet to encounter a team that would rather have SQL Server than another developer given the explicit choice between the two (assuming easy migration, etc.).
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  Are there no equivalents to these tools for PG? I've only interacted with Analysis Services and Reporting Services for maybe five minutes, but the impression I was left with is that they're extremely clunky, even by Windows standards. I also remember a weird situation with SSL wildcard certificate configuration, where the interface said the configuration wasn't applied, but it actually was. My client subcontracts this to a supposedly "expert DBA" shop, and they always seem to take ages to do what look like simple things on the surface. (I rarely if ever interact with them, so I don't know whether they're actually competent or not.)
Spivak 6y ago
Or the same issue form the other side. It's damn near impossible to hire a good DBA in some areas and so if you find someone who has deep magics with MySQL then you go with MySQL. In a huge complex app they're all good options except for Mongo and so going with what your team knows is far more productive.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Enterprise dba shops have deep expertise with oracle (and sometimes sql server). IME, that “deep experience” often means “a very expensive support contract and internal technical staff who walk through decade+ out of date cargo cult rituals by rote without understanding the rationale and why it has been gone longer than they've been employed”.

derekp7 6y ago

I've seen this so much, and can empathize with them. When you have a product that took you years to master, the value that you bring to your employer is wrapped up in that product. So it isn't so much that someone is a DBA, they are an Oracle Database software specialist. You've learned all the quirks so that when something goes south, you "have the answer". So naturally you will have a number of reasons why another product isn't as good. I feel the same way with Unix/Linux. At one point I was told that my organization may be migrating away from Linux, and redeploy everything under Windows. The management layer really couldn't understand that they would lose nearly every Linux admin on staff (that happened to also have deep understanding of their apps and infrastructure). "Why would someone have a problem with switching platforms -- we'll provide you the training" was their answer. Fortunately we were able to come up with a number of technical (and cost related) issues that the project was shot down.

lumost 6y ago
At sufficiently large companies, deep in-house experience with a given DB technology may be roughly equivalent to a startup engineers deep experience on their companies current monolith. Companies with large and complex db installations often need the complexity for various reasons that are difficult to escape, even if you're working on a green field project.

matwood 6y ago

PG over mysql is obvious IMO. PG over mssql, not so obvious. People often forget the 'management system' part of RDBMS. MSSQL provides an enormous amount of tooling in the typical enterprise install. Analysis services, data tools, etc... provide a lot of value beyond a data store. Of course if you don't need any of these additional tools or can't afford them, then yeah pg is a great choice.

runako 6y ago
Cost is a really solid argument against MSSQL. Even at Azure, MSSQL costs ~6x as much as the open-source databases. For even relatively small workloads, it's not hard for the MSSQL license to cost as much as an FTE. Aside from the raw cost, the licensing model and cost considerations can drive design decisions. In my experience, most shops that use MSSQL do so because nobody on staff has experience with other databases.
- matwood 6y ago
  Sure, but we're talking about enterprises. Back when I could walk down the hall to the datacenter, paying $30k for the hardware and $60k for licenses was normal. Every time I bought a new server I tried to make a case for pg or mysql, but the cost to replace SSIS, SSAS, or SSRS either with another product or to build a replacement was always more.
- tomnipotent 6y ago
  > Cost is a really solid argument against MSSQL If you're a small 2-5 person team, sure. But once dev payroll breaks $1M/yr, paying ~$100k for SQL Server doesn't seem so bad anymore.
  - runako 6y ago
    That doesn't match the economics at any company I've seen. Dev payroll of $1mm/yr gets you something like 6 devs or fewer in the US. I have yet to encounter a team that would rather have SQL Server than another developer given the explicit choice between the two (assuming easy migration, etc.).
vladvasiliu 6y ago
Are there no equivalents to these tools for PG? I've only interacted with Analysis Services and Reporting Services for maybe five minutes, but the impression I was left with is that they're extremely clunky, even by Windows standards. I also remember a weird situation with SSL wildcard certificate configuration, where the interface said the configuration wasn't applied, but it actually was. My client subcontracts this to a supposedly "expert DBA" shop, and they always seem to take ages to do what look like simple things on the surface. (I rarely if ever interact with them, so I don't know whether they're actually competent or not.)

Spivak 6y ago

Or the same issue form the other side. It's damn near impossible to hire a good DBA in some areas and so if you find someone who has deep magics with MySQL then you go with MySQL. In a huge complex app they're all good options except for Mongo and so going with what your team knows is far more productive.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Enterprise dba shops have deep expertise with oracle (and sometimes sql server). IME, that “deep experience” often means “a very expensive support contract and internal technical staff who walk through decade+ out of date cargo cult rituals by rote without understanding the rationale and why it has been gone longer than they've been employed”.