Re: Oracle and Postgresql

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 12:29 PM, M2Y <mailtoyahoo(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am a CS graduate and I have a brief idea of Postgres and Oracle.
> But, I dont have an in-depth knowledge in any of them. I have a couple
> of questions and
>
> I want to compare both of them in terms of functionality, performance,
> advantages and disadvantages.
>
> Why most enterprises prefer Oracle than Postgres even though it is
> free and has a decent enough user community.

I got started using PostgreSQL for a "throw away" project. One that
needed to be done fast and cheap and if it didn't work out it was ok,
because we were only gonna spend a week or so setting it up. After
setting up pgsql to handle the single project, we started building
more things for that server, and it eventually grew into the corporate
intranet server, backending other apaches behind it, handling LDAP
auth for all the major apps in the company, storing files for
different groups, especially files that needed to be on the corporate
intranet, and running postgresql in the background too.

With that kind of project, free often wins out because it lowers your
cost of ownership on a low budget project.

When you get into the multi-million dollar integration projects
involving every sub group in an organization the budget is often huge,
and the bosses want something they've heard of / seen in action and
know can handle the load. A bad db choice could sink the whole
multi-million dollar project. A $200k insurance policy (I.e. Oracle)
is a small price to pay.

I think some of it is inertia. We've always used Oracle, let's just
keep on using it. The more conservative the IT department is, the
less likely they are to take chances with new technology.

It used to be there was about an 80/20 split between what things you
could do with either postgresql or oracle, and the other 20% was
oracle only land. I think that number is dropping quickly, and we're
into the 1 or 2% club of what Oracle can do that PostgreSQL isn't fast
enough for.

The other thing that holds back PostgreSQL right now is a lack of
experienced pgsql DBAs and application developers. That will change
over time.

As more people become familiar with using and maintaining pg servers,
and the usage starts to take up, there will be a multiplying effect as
more PHBs hear the name with good things said about it.