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Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

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Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#21

Post by arethuza »

drchopchop wrote: post #10
jcadam wrote: post #2

I've been on a project where we were forced to migrate the opposite direction: From PostgreSQL to Oracle, because the client was already paying for Oracle licenses and really, really , wanted us to use Oracle to justify the expense. It was actually a pretty big setback. We were using PostGIS to support spatial queries (a key requirement), and Oracle Spatial was just not at the same level (both in performance and feat…

I've spent a fair amount of time at the Sofitel in Redwood Shores, and I'd often chat with Oracle "sales engineers" at the bar. A simple "so, what do you work on" question would inevitably generate an hour's worth of them explaining some convoluted acronym-heavy product with a pushy sales model, and I'd eventually be like "ok... so it's a database?".

To be fair to Oracle (not something I say very often) - I suspect most of their sales are business applications (ERP, CRM, financial) that happen to use their database engine as a back end.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#22

Post by bjpirt »

I'm a happy Postgres user and recently did some work with a government agency using Oracle - the thing that shocked me most about Oracle was the lack of transactional DDL operations which was something I'd just taken for granted in the Postgres world.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#23

Post by ibejoeb »

rpedela wrote: post #5
dx034 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't like Oracle from a DBA perspective but it's still often far ahead of PostgreSQL when it comes to query performance. In Postgres, the query structure can make huge differences in terms of performance and it can take a lot of tuning to find the right query to optimize performance (especially when subqueries are involved). Oracle (and SQLServer) are usually pretty good at optimizing the query exactly the…

PG community has put a lot effort into performance the last few years, including JIT compilation in PG12. Is that criticism still true today?

One of the big changes in 12 allows the optimizer to work properly with CTEs, which was a major barrier to using the more expressive language features. There a good writeup here: https://paquier.xyz/postgresql-2/postgres-12-with-materializ...

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#24

Post by F_J_H »

markab21 wrote: post #14

Why anyone would use Oracle for anything other than supporting legacy systems is beyond me.

I have not been an Oracle fan in the past, especially because of their complicated (and expensive) licensing, but late last year we moved to their hosted autonomous database. The on demand pricing model makes it quite economical, and the performance is amazing.

However, the killer feature for me is that it has application Express (or APEX) included, which is a complete web application development framework, as well as Oracle restful data services (ORDS). With built-in application development and deployment, it is the only complete, full-stack data management platform I am aware of (enterprise level).

YRMV, but it has been incredible for us, both to support our data science initiatives, and for rapidly deploying applications. I couldn't imagine going back to anything else.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#25

Post by jordigh »

zozbot234 wrote: post #13
MrHamdulay wrote: post #7

Why are the table and field names in the examples between Oracle and PostgreSQL different? It makes it harder to compare the two.

IIRC, Oracle licensing forbids publishing direct comparisons with competing products. I guess they had to find a workaround.

I wish antitrust legislation in the US was brought back or enforced. Forbidding direct comparisons is an anticompetitive practice if I've ever seen one.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#26

Post by doublesCs »

ibejoeb wrote: post #23
rpedela wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG community has put a lot effort into performance the last few years, including JIT compilation in PG12. Is that criticism still true today?

One of the big changes in 12 allows the optimizer to work properly with CTEs, which was a major barrier to using the more expressive language features. There a good writeup here: https://paquier.xyz/postgresql-2/postgres-12-with-materializ...

Thanks for that link.

> Historically we've always materialized the full output of a CTE query

Do you know if this means that CTEs are written to disk? I didn't think this was the case. (In the case of materialized views that qualifier means the view is written to disk).

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#28

Post by simonebrunozzi »

forinti wrote: post #15
jcadam wrote: post #2

I've been on a project where we were forced to migrate the opposite direction: From PostgreSQL to Oracle, because the client was already paying for Oracle licenses and really, really , wanted us to use Oracle to justify the expense. It was actually a pretty big setback. We were using PostGIS to support spatial queries (a key requirement), and Oracle Spatial was just not at the same level (both in performance and feat…

You could connect Oracle to Postgresql using HA and from Postgresql to Oracle using FDW. If your client was paying Oracle already, he should take steps to move away from it, not setup himself up for paying licences forever. I cringe at having to call Oracle Support. It takes forever and they make you send a ton of files before someone even looks at it.

> he should take steps to move away from it

Unless - as it often happens - someone in high places need to keep justifying a business decision taken 1-2-3 years before.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#29

Post by devit »

How come nobody has implemented an Oracle compatibility mode for PostgreSQL?

Or in general, why don't databases support each others SQL dialect? It can't be that much work, at least if one is content with only supporting the majority of applications, and seems pretty essential for popularizing a specific database.

Looking at the article, supporting Oracle syntax seems trivial in all cases except for adding full MERGE support.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance

#30

Post by ibejoeb »

wil421 wrote: post #16
markab21 wrote: post #14

Why anyone would use Oracle for anything other than supporting legacy systems is beyond me.

Oracle and SAP have products that touch niche areas of businesses. Oil company with complex shipping and receiving looking for accounting software? Global metal foundry who needs to track raw materials to finished goods and forecast everything? SAP and Oracle can sell your VP overly complex products for almost anything. For the DB, corporate executives types feel much more comfortable choosing Oracle or IBM. It usual…

This is certainly all true, and with Oracle, absolutely everything is negotiable. Nobody pays list. It still isn't cheap. If you are going the Oracle route, you might even consider hiring a consultant to do the buying, because relationships and knowing the Oracle way can make a huge difference.

Also, Oracle Database itself is more than just an RDBMS and has an enormous amount of features that have no analogs in Postgres or any other non-commercial system. Take a look Oracle's data warehousing components, like advanced analytical SQL, pattern matching, and the especially cool modeling: https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DWHSG/sqlmodel.htm#DWHS...

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