Oracle Database is a typical enterprise product if there ever was one. The people buying it won't be the ones using it. From a developer's or systems administr

Oracle Database is a typical enterprise product if there ever was one. The people buying it won't be the ones using it. From a developer's or systems administrator's point of view PostgeSQL for instance certainly offers a similar - if not superior - feature set and better usability. That's not the main selling point for enterprise software, though. For enterprise customers aspects such as maintenance, service contracts and having a large company that can be held accountable if anything goes wrong are far more important. Another reason is the way enterprise sales processes work. In general, they take far longer than sales decisions in SMEs and involve a variety of stakeholders. Oracle employs a large number of smart salespeople and Oracle can afford wooing prospective customers for months or even years before a deal is made. That said, Oracle Database is a fine product that generally performs very well.