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> Oracle and MS SQL have the same clause and it's pretty hard to believe they aren't competitive with postgres and mysql given the resources behind the former.

> Oracle and MS SQL have the same clause and it's pretty hard to believe they aren't competitive with postgres and mysql given the resources behind the former. I'm not trying to refute you here, just add some nuance. I've used Oracle extensively for 3 years: installation, configuration, tuning, writing code against, querying for reporting, updating customer configuration etc. There are things you can do in Oracle that can't be done in Postgres yet. But I've never ever experienced a practical performance problem on Postgres that would magically disappear with Oracle. I assume they are there (I'm not into running huge DBs with thousands of subscribers). Also in my opinion it all comes down to knowing your database: In 2009 I saw a Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere -> MSSQL at the time migration fail miserably at the first migration attempt. Everything was ported correctly but it turns out Sybase ASA had "implicit indexes" that we needed to replicate. In most cases I'd choose Postgres (or even SQLite) myself and in the rest I wouldn't immediately choose Oracle or MSSQL but rather stop and think carefully, do some tests and only then decide, I do not take it for granted that commercial databases perform better and they absolutely are more painful to manage.

eatonphil 5y ago
> I do not take it for granted that commercial databases perform better and they absolutely are more painful to manage. Oh for sure. It took me forever to figure out how to get Oracle running in a docker image as a new Oracle user. I'm not sure if I ever even figured out how to create a table. Postgres was hard to learn initially coming from the simplicity of MySQL and Oracle feels another step harder. I didn't say I expect commercial software to perform better though, just that I expect them to be competitive. I also wouldn't choose a commercial db personally but dunking on them doesn't make sense either. The engineers behind them are just as good as those behind OSS.

eatonphil 5y ago

> I do not take it for granted that commercial databases perform better and they absolutely are more painful to manage. Oh for sure. It took me forever to figure out how to get Oracle running in a docker image as a new Oracle user. I'm not sure if I ever even figured out how to create a table. Postgres was hard to learn initially coming from the simplicity of MySQL and Oracle feels another step harder. I didn't say I expect commercial software to perform better though, just that I expect them to be competitive. I also wouldn't choose a commercial db personally but dunking on them doesn't make sense either. The engineers behind them are just as good as those behind OSS.