Fwd: Questions about Postgres and Oracle

• Forwarded message ---------- From: Matthew Zito <matt_at_crackpotideas.com> Date: Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:45 AM Subject: Re: Questions about Postgres and Oracle To: sbecker6925_at_gmail.com

Depending on whether they're using plain-vanilla PostgreSQL or EnterpriseDB's postgres could make a big difference. EnterpriseDB offers a compatibility layer for Oracle that is designed to make it easy to port legacy applications over to postgres. The idea is that for all the tier 2 and tier 3 apps that have been around forever, yet are using very expensive Oracle licenses and support contracts, those can be moved to PostgreSQL and save money.

Similarly, I see a lot of my customers looking at products like PostgreSQL and the like because it's getting increasingly hard to justify paying Oracle's prices for things that aren't absolutely mission critical. Yes, the trading systems and banking data is all still on Oracle, but the app that handles marketing response data for the last direct mail campaign, that can go on MySQL or PostgreSQL.

Now, as far as the differences, this page is a limited primer:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_for_Oracle_DBAs

there's some other stuff if you look around the web, but at a superficial level, postgres is a lot like Oracle, only free. What you will miss is all the advanced features - advanced compression, dataguard (though slony is pretty nice), flashback, RAC, and so on.

But if all you need to do is basic CRUD and reporting, postgresql is a perfectly acceptable replacement for Oracle, and I have a number of very happy customers running it.

Hope this is helpful,
Matt

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:33 AM, Sandra Becker <sbecker6925_at_gmail.com>wrote:

> I learned yesterday that our new billing application is being written to
> use a Postgres database instead of the Oracle database it currently uses.
> Somehow or other (development hasn't figured it out yet), they will pull
> data from the Oracle database and load it into Postgres. I know nothing
> about Postgres, but I'm wondering how simple it will be to manage. Also do
> reads block writes?
> I also learned that development plans to move away from Oracle by breaking
> up and rewriting the current convoluted, complex application and building a
> lot of small Postgres databases to handle the various pieces and somehow
> joining them all together to replicate what we currently do with the Oracle
> database because "Oracle DBs are an outdated, monolithic way to handle data
> and not at all scalable". I've never heard this before yesterday and
> wonder how other companies are positioning themselves regarding the future
> of their databases. Can anyone shed a little light on the subject or point
> me to a good resource?
>
> --
> Sandy
> Transzap, Inc.
>
>
> --
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>
>

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