6 ms·

Look, if you are already in business with Oracle then you have my condolences. But if you aren't in business with them then there is absolutely no world where y

by zaphar 3y ago

Look, if you are already in business with Oracle then you have my condolences. But if you aren't in business with them then there is absolutely no world where you should ever under any circumstances consider getting into business with them. Nothing their database does can't be done with a different database. Even paying for a proprietary database can be done with a different party than Oracle. Do not, I repeat, do not do business with Oracle under any circumstances. If you are already an Oracle customer and you have the opportunity to drop them from your stack. Do not hesitate, Do not pause, Immediately take that opportunity. There is no downside only upside in not doing business with Oracle.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
codeslave13 3y ago
Just dont go SAP about as bad as oracle haveing worked in both shops.
- zaphar 3y ago
  I have no experience with SAP. But I've heard that you could just substitute SAP for Oracle in the above and it would be just as true.
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    My father worked on a multi year project to replace their darling (but very old mainframe system) with SAP. Apparently it's just awful and basically everything required a custom and tons of SAP consultants. By the time you're done, you had to reimplement the entire system on top of SAP with a ton of workarounds. That was his experience anyway.
whiterknight 3y ago
How is there such a big disconnect between HN opinion on Oracle and business use? Is it maybe the least bad of all the bad options? Does it cover some edge cases which the obvious FOSS solutions don’t?
- zaphar 3y ago
  I honestly don't know. I don't know how they stay in business since every developer I've ever met had a bordering on irrational hatred of them. The only people I've met who like them were all Oracle consultants of some sort and not what I would call developers. When I've been forced to use an Oracle database it was because the company had a contract with Oracle and didn't want to allow any other database to be used. The decision was always several levels above my paygrade. I no longer accept positions at the kind of place that will do business with Oracle. It tends to signal that leadership of that place has some serious problems and too much money to realize they have those problems.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    I never worked for Oracle or as an Oracle consultant, but used to develop on Oracle RDBMS. I liked it quite a lot and it was very powerful. But today, I'd use Postgres.
    - zaphar 3y ago
      In purely technical terms Oracle is fine, really good even. The company comes with massive legal and cost risks though.
  - rstuart4133 3y ago
    > I don't know how they stay in business since every developer I've ever met had a bordering on irrational hatred of them. I'm sure you know the answer. Oracle doesn't sell to developers. They sell to the management of non-tech companies whose upper echelons are staffed by people with expertise whatever they do, which might be selling dresses or making plastic pipes. For what it's with SAP uses exactly the same technique. For something truly difficult to explain, try Google replacing Oracle with SAP. https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-migrates-from-oracle-financial-software-to-sap/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-migrates-from-oracle-fi... Years ago when I invoiced Google they asked me to enter the invoice into their portal. (Generally, transcribing a vendors invoice into your accounting systems is something you pay your own employees to do of course, but big companies know how to apply the screws.) I remember that web form. It proudly said is was created by a summer of code student. It was ugly, it was concise, it was straightforward, and it just worked first go. Then Google moved to SAP, and used SAP's Aruba service to do the same thing. Aruba is layer upon layer of poor design, outages and bugs. Now, if a Google employee sends you an purchase they often offer to "get it into the system" for you. The reason is Aruba is almost unusable, so it they need whatever service is being offered badly enough they shepherd it through. I can only guess, but my explanation is assume SAP sold the system to Google's accounting department. Somehow, SAP's sales found a way to bypass the ocean of expertise inside one of the greatest software engineering companies on the planet and sell the system to a pocket of people who had no idea about what they were buying. Colour me impressed with SAP sales.
inemesitaffia 3y ago
>Nothing Thier transactions and rollbacks and logging actually work
- zaphar 3y ago
  They work just fine on Postgres and MS SQL too.
  - mianos 3y ago
    Not in MySQL. DDL is not transacted last time I looked Postgres is a great choice over Oracle these days though
    - zaphar 3y ago
      Yeah, well MySQL or Oracle aren't the only database choices you have. And those two aren't even a choice between Oracle and something else. Both are Oracle the company properties now. Unless you meant MariaDB or something.
      - mianos 3y ago
        Yes, my mistake, I miss-read MS SQL as MySQL. MS SQL, being derived from Sybase, fully supports transactions. I'm not a fan of the price, but it's good.

by zaphar 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

codeslave13 3y ago

Just dont go SAP about as bad as oracle haveing worked in both shops.

zaphar 3y ago
I have no experience with SAP. But I've heard that you could just substitute SAP for Oracle in the above and it would be just as true.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  My father worked on a multi year project to replace their darling (but very old mainframe system) with SAP. Apparently it's just awful and basically everything required a custom and tons of SAP consultants. By the time you're done, you had to reimplement the entire system on top of SAP with a ton of workarounds. That was his experience anyway.

whiterknight 3y ago

How is there such a big disconnect between HN opinion on Oracle and business use? Is it maybe the least bad of all the bad options? Does it cover some edge cases which the obvious FOSS solutions don’t?

zaphar 3y ago
I honestly don't know. I don't know how they stay in business since every developer I've ever met had a bordering on irrational hatred of them. The only people I've met who like them were all Oracle consultants of some sort and not what I would call developers. When I've been forced to use an Oracle database it was because the company had a contract with Oracle and didn't want to allow any other database to be used. The decision was always several levels above my paygrade. I no longer accept positions at the kind of place that will do business with Oracle. It tends to signal that leadership of that place has some serious problems and too much money to realize they have those problems.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I never worked for Oracle or as an Oracle consultant, but used to develop on Oracle RDBMS. I liked it quite a lot and it was very powerful. But today, I'd use Postgres.
  - zaphar 3y ago
    In purely technical terms Oracle is fine, really good even. The company comes with massive legal and cost risks though.
- rstuart4133 3y ago
  > I don't know how they stay in business since every developer I've ever met had a bordering on irrational hatred of them. I'm sure you know the answer. Oracle doesn't sell to developers. They sell to the management of non-tech companies whose upper echelons are staffed by people with expertise whatever they do, which might be selling dresses or making plastic pipes. For what it's with SAP uses exactly the same technique. For something truly difficult to explain, try Google replacing Oracle with SAP. https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-migrates-from-oracle-financial-software-to-sap/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-migrates-from-oracle-fi... Years ago when I invoiced Google they asked me to enter the invoice into their portal. (Generally, transcribing a vendors invoice into your accounting systems is something you pay your own employees to do of course, but big companies know how to apply the screws.) I remember that web form. It proudly said is was created by a summer of code student. It was ugly, it was concise, it was straightforward, and it just worked first go. Then Google moved to SAP, and used SAP's Aruba service to do the same thing. Aruba is layer upon layer of poor design, outages and bugs. Now, if a Google employee sends you an purchase they often offer to "get it into the system" for you. The reason is Aruba is almost unusable, so it they need whatever service is being offered badly enough they shepherd it through. I can only guess, but my explanation is assume SAP sold the system to Google's accounting department. Somehow, SAP's sales found a way to bypass the ocean of expertise inside one of the greatest software engineering companies on the planet and sell the system to a pocket of people who had no idea about what they were buying. Colour me impressed with SAP sales.

inemesitaffia 3y ago

>Nothing Thier transactions and rollbacks and logging actually work

zaphar 3y ago
They work just fine on Postgres and MS SQL too.
- mianos 3y ago
  Not in MySQL. DDL is not transacted last time I looked Postgres is a great choice over Oracle these days though
  - zaphar 3y ago
    Yeah, well MySQL or Oracle aren't the only database choices you have. And those two aren't even a choice between Oracle and something else. Both are Oracle the company properties now. Unless you meant MariaDB or something.
    - mianos 3y ago
      Yes, my mistake, I miss-read MS SQL as MySQL. MS SQL, being derived from Sybase, fully supports transactions. I'm not a fan of the price, but it's good.