3 ms·

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

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...

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...