[Gllug] Oracle on Linux

[Nix]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004, Richard Jones moaned:
> Seriously though, why would someone want to use Oracle instead of
> PostgreSQL?

Several reasons.

- lock-in (already using Oracle's myriad horrible tools and their
  nasty replacement for Ada). Note that PL/PgSQL doesn't have an
  analogue of PL/SQL packages, and their suggested replacement
  (schemas!) is best described as comical, having totally different
  semantics and affecting many things other than namespace searches.

- scalability. At work, some of our clients have multi-terabyte
  databases with loads exceeding 50,000 row fetches per second for
  multiple hours. Can PostgreSQL handle that?

- distribution/replication. PostgreSQL can't do it at all. Oracle's
  implementation is horrible, but at least it works.

Mind you, there are places where PostgreSQL shines: the OO stuff,
the extremely nifty rules/query-rewriting system, the pluggable
language interfaces, the nifty query optimizers, GiST indexes...

... but Oracle has the edge if you want a system with a pedestrian
feature set that can handle silly loads.

(Anywhere other than that, though, I use PostgreSQL too.)

>              Perhaps there's some mad people who _want_ a really
> horrible user interface (sqlplus anyone?)

<http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/yasql> goes some way to fixing
that.

> limits on how longs strings can be (VARCHAR(4000) ...).

Actually the maximum length is 32767 *bytes*; hence it depends on the
width of your characters, and on the contents of the string if you're
using UTF-8. Naturally Oracle provides no sane way to find out
how long your strings are.

(Some of the frontend tools, since they all have their own copies
of PL/SQL *ick*, have even more insane limits, like 255 chars.)

And then there's the `exceed {ill-defined size} of packages and
the package and/or database instance misbehaves or dies'.

I'd not call the Oracle RDBMS pleasant to work in, or well-engineered.

>                                                          Not me
> though.  Give me a decent, lightweight, fast PostgreSQL install every
> time.

Seconded. I've installed Oracle and PostgreSQL both, and I know which
I preferred on that basis.

>> the machine up. Then you can log on and disable it. It worked:) I've not 
>> had anything like this with Oracle on Linux or any *nix. It's a bit too 
>> easy to destroy NT. Or not perhaps, depending on your POV wrt whether NT 
>> is better destroyed or not:)
> 
> If it's any consolation, Informix on both NT and Linux is much much
> worse even than Oracle.

That's... hard to imagine, but I can feel some fun war stories waiting
to be told...

-- 
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 plain-text, uncompressed form rather than in spinning, throbbing
 OpenGL-rendered 3D text over a thumping dance music soundtrack is a
 feature, not a bug.' --- Branden Robinson

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