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Because despite its predatory pricing and quirks, it's actually a pretty good database? There's an enormous amount of larger businesses for whom the database _

Because despite its predatory pricing and quirks, it's actually a pretty good database? There's an enormous amount of larger businesses for whom the database _is_ the business. (Well, databases plural, they'll inevitably have many.) I've worked for places where the vendor of the software that sits on top of the DB is either defunct, gone AWOL or too pricey to consider upgrading what ever version of software we were using. I worked one place where we had to large hadron collide data from Sybase and Oracle together. Live. No batching. The whole thing had to plug into some decades old Delphi crud apps + some financial software somewhere else. Oracle + dblink made that possible. It even, as I recall, did proper two-phase across the dblink. I merely queried -- yes, I know PG kinda has the same feature nowadays -- across the database boundaries and wrote some pg/Sql to make things work. 10 minutes and $10k (or w/e the Sybase connector cost) later and we had a POC, and later that month, a working system. Pretty? No. But it worked well, and two disparate software products written in different eras that were never meant to talk to one another now did. And it saves us millions in licencing + bespoke software and expensive consultants. There are few limits to what you can do with Oracle, and that is its strength. When you have weirdo requirements, you can probably do it with Oracle + some skilled DBAs and be assured it'll still run in 20 years. As for PG: I love PG, and use it for everything greenfield. But its replication is still a planet-sized joke. There are more competing methods and processes than there are JS frameworks. With Oracle, you've got DBAs who know this stuff inside out, and it works, and it has a million-billion ways of matching the needs of your business. With PG? I don't even know who to call if things are up the creek.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
It's not really a good database. By most actual database-related metrics, it's worse than most of its competitors on durability, performance, cost, etc. It's just one that has people to call when it breaks.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > it's worse than most of its competitors on durability, performance, cost, etc. When you say competitors, do you mean: 1. paid competitors like DB2/MSSQL 2. free competitors like Postgres/MariaDB 3. both
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    I generally mean the free competitors, but also the "NewSQL" DBs, cloud company offerings, and data warehousing companies. The traditional "enterprise" databases like MSSQL and Oracle all look kind of silly (from a technical perspective) in comparison.
- trollied 4y ago
  I don't think that's true. RAC/data guard are solid, and I don't think have any competition.
  - hans_castorp 4y ago
    > I don't think that's true. RAC/data guard are solid, and I don't think have any competition. RAC does not indeed. But the equivalent of an active data guard can be setup in minutes (even less with the right tools) with Postgres. I am sure this is possible with other databases as well.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      It can be setup, but will it work?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    RAC's PostgreSQL-based competitors are CockroachDB, Amazon Aurora, and Google's AlloyDB. I'm sure there will be an open-source PG plugin that does the same thing soon. These are all scale-out, globally consistent databases. Also, they have fewer bugs than Oracle.
- narrator 4y ago
  You can get commercial support for PostgreSQL that's pretty good.
- frou_dh 4y ago
  From this classic HN comment it sounds like working on the Oracle codebase is an exercise in clusterfuckery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941
  - seanw444 4y ago
    Sounds like they spend 80% of their CPU cycles checking flags...
pantulis 4y ago
Great insights there. I would add that enterprise CIOs paying Oracle through the nose are not idiots, and would have analysed the tradeoffs. Of course there is no company that does not have a migration plan for its workloads but, like mainframe migrations, this stuff is not easy and it could very possibly not make sense.
- mickeyp 4y ago
  Indeed. It's easy to laugh at CIOs and CTOs, but many of them try their best with the options they have available. I'm reminded of this anecdote I had with a colleague a while back. He was railing against MS Exchange's rise back in the 90s, and how Novell Netware was better and that he was forced to switch their org to MS Exchange, back then, solely because "His CIO read it was the future in a magazine." And so it was. Today, Netware's dead.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > solely because "His CIO read it was the future in a magazine." And so it was. Today, Netware's dead. Could have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, and not something that would have happened without CIOs reading that magazine.
    - owl57 4y ago
      Could be. That would mean it was good judgement to read the magazine that the other CIOs were also reading.
      - naasking 4y ago
        I'm not sure sprinting towards a self-fulfilling prophecy should count as good judgment. It seems like there's a fallacy in there.
        aserafini 4y ago
        It makes sense if the self-fulfilling prophecy is outside your control.
ilyt 4y ago
All your example are pretty much "we already have some old ancient shit that works only with Oracle", not actual features anyone might miss... > With PG? I don't even know who to call if things are up the creek. The core developers literally sell support...
- acomjean 4y ago
  My only experience with Oracle was we were using it at a startup at the turn of the century. I got tasked with asking them for a quote. They came back with one but offered pretty strong technical support. My boss, wise in the way of databases indicated that their support would involve using there apis locking us to them as opposed to the odbc drivers that let you switch databases easily. Those odbc drivers weren’t great on Linux at the time. The startup ran out of money a couple months later..
- dagw 4y ago
  The core developers literally sell support... One 'feature' Oracle has, that is very important to some large companies, is that they offer truly full stack support, from the hardware up to the application layer. If I buy support from some PG developers and they diagnose that the problem is actually with my RAID controller firmware or a bug in my inventory management software, will they still take responsibility for fixing it? Edit: Another aspect is how long will it take for one of those PG core developers to show up on site? Oracle already has a team of support engineers (either first or third party) in most major cities in the world.
  - lazyfanatic 4y ago
    Oracle Support has gotten absolutely terrible over the last four years. I support a full Oracle stack, and seeing all that beautiful Sun engineering turned to sludge because of poor support is really sad in many ways.
    - nnurmanov 4y ago
hans_castorp 4y ago
> With PG? I don't even know who to call if things are up the creek. There are plenty of companies offering commercial support contracts. Most of them are also active contributors to Postgres so they do have the ability to create bug fixes and patches.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

It's not really a good database. By most actual database-related metrics, it's worse than most of its competitors on durability, performance, cost, etc. It's just one that has people to call when it breaks.

nordsieck 4y ago
> it's worse than most of its competitors on durability, performance, cost, etc. When you say competitors, do you mean: 1. paid competitors like DB2/MSSQL 2. free competitors like Postgres/MariaDB 3. both
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  I generally mean the free competitors, but also the "NewSQL" DBs, cloud company offerings, and data warehousing companies. The traditional "enterprise" databases like MSSQL and Oracle all look kind of silly (from a technical perspective) in comparison.
trollied 4y ago
I don't think that's true. RAC/data guard are solid, and I don't think have any competition.
- hans_castorp 4y ago
  > I don't think that's true. RAC/data guard are solid, and I don't think have any competition. RAC does not indeed. But the equivalent of an active data guard can be setup in minutes (even less with the right tools) with Postgres. I am sure this is possible with other databases as well.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    It can be setup, but will it work?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  RAC's PostgreSQL-based competitors are CockroachDB, Amazon Aurora, and Google's AlloyDB. I'm sure there will be an open-source PG plugin that does the same thing soon. These are all scale-out, globally consistent databases. Also, they have fewer bugs than Oracle.
narrator 4y ago
You can get commercial support for PostgreSQL that's pretty good.
frou_dh 4y ago
From this classic HN comment it sounds like working on the Oracle codebase is an exercise in clusterfuckery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941
- seanw444 4y ago
  Sounds like they spend 80% of their CPU cycles checking flags...

pantulis 4y ago

Great insights there. I would add that enterprise CIOs paying Oracle through the nose are not idiots, and would have analysed the tradeoffs. Of course there is no company that does not have a migration plan for its workloads but, like mainframe migrations, this stuff is not easy and it could very possibly not make sense.

mickeyp 4y ago
Indeed. It's easy to laugh at CIOs and CTOs, but many of them try their best with the options they have available. I'm reminded of this anecdote I had with a colleague a while back. He was railing against MS Exchange's rise back in the 90s, and how Novell Netware was better and that he was forced to switch their org to MS Exchange, back then, solely because "His CIO read it was the future in a magazine." And so it was. Today, Netware's dead.
- naasking 4y ago
  > solely because "His CIO read it was the future in a magazine." And so it was. Today, Netware's dead. Could have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, and not something that would have happened without CIOs reading that magazine.
  - owl57 4y ago
    Could be. That would mean it was good judgement to read the magazine that the other CIOs were also reading.
    - naasking 4y ago
      I'm not sure sprinting towards a self-fulfilling prophecy should count as good judgment. It seems like there's a fallacy in there.
      - aserafini 4y ago
        It makes sense if the self-fulfilling prophecy is outside your control.

ilyt 4y ago

All your example are pretty much "we already have some old ancient shit that works only with Oracle", not actual features anyone might miss... > With PG? I don't even know who to call if things are up the creek. The core developers literally sell support...

acomjean 4y ago
My only experience with Oracle was we were using it at a startup at the turn of the century. I got tasked with asking them for a quote. They came back with one but offered pretty strong technical support. My boss, wise in the way of databases indicated that their support would involve using there apis locking us to them as opposed to the odbc drivers that let you switch databases easily. Those odbc drivers weren’t great on Linux at the time. The startup ran out of money a couple months later..
dagw 4y ago
The core developers literally sell support... One 'feature' Oracle has, that is very important to some large companies, is that they offer truly full stack support, from the hardware up to the application layer. If I buy support from some PG developers and they diagnose that the problem is actually with my RAID controller firmware or a bug in my inventory management software, will they still take responsibility for fixing it? Edit: Another aspect is how long will it take for one of those PG core developers to show up on site? Oracle already has a team of support engineers (either first or third party) in most major cities in the world.
- lazyfanatic 4y ago
  Oracle Support has gotten absolutely terrible over the last four years. I support a full Oracle stack, and seeing all that beautiful Sun engineering turned to sludge because of poor support is really sad in many ways.
  - nnurmanov 4y ago

hans_castorp 4y ago

> With PG? I don't even know who to call if things are up the creek. There are plenty of companies offering commercial support contracts. Most of them are also active contributors to Postgres so they do have the ability to create bug fixes and patches.