Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment • Hacker News Board

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#61

Post by downvoteme1 » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

I seriously doubt that the author has 20 years of Oracle DBA experience yet not know why Oracle takes up more disk space that Postgres. There are so many features in Oracle for which there is no equivalent in Postgres.

-Sharding

-Java Pool

-Oracle Apex

-DB containers and pluggable databases

Many more that I am too lazy to list .

All of these come pre packaged with Oracle. If you are in an Organization that has 1000s of Oracle db’s per org, you quickly understand that license cost are a minute number but dba and developers are much more expensive .

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#62

Post by ethbro » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #27

phoe-krk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one of the Star Wars movies, there was a hooded and cloaked figure who, in response to that very same question, said, "I will make it legal." There's no proof that figure wasn't Larry Ellison. /s

I can't argue with that. I suppose regardless of how ridiculous it is, Oracle has very deep pockets and is infamously litigious, and the US legal system doesn't help - given that, I doubt legality really matters...

You can't sue someone for violating ToS... right?

At worst, you can refuse to do business with them and revoke any current contracts.

You'd have to sue under actual law, which would presumably be libel, which is (in)famously hard to prove in the US [1]. If he had a good faith belief that what he reported was true, that case goes nowhere. Indeed, in lieu of a signed and dated note declaring his knowledge that his benchmarks are (a) false and (b) shared in an attempt to harm Oracle, that case goes nowhere.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#63

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

jdm2212 wrote: post #46

paulryanrogers wrote: post #42

For those still on Oracle, why? Is it regulations or executives demanding certified solutions? And if so then with so many bugs at what point does certification become a negative signal?

Query hints are one reason. I'm not a fan of Oracle as a company, but for certain usage patterns you need query hints and Postgres doesn't support them.

PostgreSQL provides a variety of options for tuning both the query planner's strategy and the per-table statistical analyses that are used as input to the query planner itself. These tuning methods are actually far more robust than the query hints that are commonly used in other databases, including Oracle.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#64

Post by 411111111111111 » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

jojobas wrote: post #54

phoe-krk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that something is unenforceable is a poor way of stopping rich lawyer-based companies, such as Oracle, from attempting to enforce it nonetheless.

Not all countries allow the "sue to bankruptcy" litigation model. I'd truly love to see this unfold in Germany, for example. They typically award costs to the winner too.

While you're likely correct that this wouldn't work in Germany as in a situation like this Oracle would've to pay their layers, the defendants lawyer as well as the courts costs if they repeal too often... There are other avenues for them to ruin his live, which I can imagine them taking.

I.e not extending his employers licence or making them pay even more.

Oracle loves to make examples and ain't pulling their punches

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#65

Post by zer » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #42

For those still on Oracle, why? Is it regulations or executives demanding certified solutions? And if so then with so many bugs at what point does certification become a negative signal?

My clients — oncological institutions — license Oracle and so they prefer my solutions to use it as well. Really simple, and sad.

As for why they use it... as far as I know it‘s the old tale: historical reasons. Classical lock-in.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#66

Post by ethbro » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #57

GordonS wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may not: > I mean... does anyone here think this is in any way reasonable? Is this even legal?

It's not about making it reasonable, it's an open threat to punish anyone who does decide to benchmark Oracle. Nobody's going to win the case, but whoever violates the term will surely wind up bankrupt defending themselves.

Publish benchmarks as an LLC, then just go ahead and declare bankruptcy.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#67

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #66

nimbius wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about making it reasonable, it's an open threat to punish anyone who does decide to benchmark Oracle. Nobody's going to win the case, but whoever violates the term will surely wind up bankrupt defending themselves.

Publish benchmarks as an LLC, then just go ahead and declare bankruptcy.

This is a very dangerous advice to follow in general.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#68

Post by jojobas » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

411111111111111 wrote: post #64

jojobas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all countries allow the "sue to bankruptcy" litigation model. I'd truly love to see this unfold in Germany, for example. They typically award costs to the winner too.

While you're likely correct that this wouldn't work in Germany as in a situation like this Oracle would've to pay their layers, the defendants lawyer as well as the courts costs if they repeal too often... There are other avenues for them to ruin his live, which I can imagine them taking. I.e not extending his employers licence or making them pay even more. Oracle loves to make examples and ain't pulling their punche…

Surely discrimination on a public license offer would not be considered funny in Germany either?

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#69

Post by atombender » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #52

Justsignedup wrote: post #7

As a developer: - No license fees is huge. My company saves tens of thousands on license fees when we can't really afford it. - The ability to set up environments super quickly is amazing. - Rollback of DDLs is huge for testing migrations - The backup features aren't broken by default. I've spent hours researching how to back up an oracle db and transfer it to another. And at that point versions matter. With postures…

> Rollback of DDLs Oracle can't roll back these (create table/drop index etc)? That really surprises me. Pretty certain MSSQL can, because I've used it. Amazed, actually, that oracle can't.

Very few databases support transactional DDL, meaning that you can do something like:

  BEGIN;
  DROP TABLE foo;
  CREATE TABLE bar (t int);
  ROLLBACK;

...and it will just work as you expect. Oracle doesn't, nor does MSSQL.

As far as I know, other than Postgres, only Sybase ASE, Informix, DB2 UDB, and Firebird support transaction DDL.

Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

#70

Post by koonsolo » Sat, May 30, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #57

GordonS wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may not: > I mean... does anyone here think this is in any way reasonable? Is this even legal?

It's not about making it reasonable, it's an open threat to punish anyone who does decide to benchmark Oracle. Nobody's going to win the case, but whoever violates the term will surely wind up bankrupt defending themselves.

That is very wrong with the US system. It should be "loser pays"