Oracle prices themselves out
12/6/2008Please also see the update I've posted . I ported my most demanding application to Postgres just to see how it'd handle.
I have to rant. Nobody reads this so who cares.
I work for a department that has been running 8i since 8i was shiny and new. Users don't care about the database and they shouldn't have to, but today I had to ask them for over $40,000 for a single database because it has applications accessible externally. I think of that as 1/2 a person that could be here working, and I think of ol' Larry .
He doesn't need another yacht but I do need another programmer.
We have four main applications and only one of which runs Oracle. Years ago I'd managed to convince them to use Postgres for the new deployments because they were new and there was no data porting to do. Somehow I'd convinced them to okay that. Nowadays Oracle is the standard and it has been decreed that all things will run Oracle.
Of course, years ago the only argument against Postgres was a general, unspecified concern about reliability.
$ ps -Tef | egrep '[p]ostmaster|[S]TIME'
UID PID SPID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
postgres 20195 20195 1 0 2006 ? 07:41:24 /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster
$ uptime
17:23:17 up 764 days, 4:20, 3 users, load average: 0.65, 0.50, 0.49
Back then they were concerned about the reliability of Linux, too. Yeah. The last time this box was shut down was to move it.
If I worked anywhere else, Oracle would be a non-starter. Every database is going to have some data that people are going to want to give access to partner businesses, customers, etc. Oracle's business model makes no sense, yet somehow people pay it out of some nebulous concern or lack of knowledge.
If I was starting a new project or new company, Oracle would be a non-starter. Who in the world has money to spend thousands per CPU for anything that touches the Internet, for a company that doesn't make money yet? Nobody. That's why you see MySql and Postgres uptake. Because they're solid, they've got the features people actually use, and because Oracle is too damned expensive.