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Connor McDonald

Thanks for the question, John.

Asked: September 22, 2020 - 3:44 pm UTC

Last updated: October 09, 2020 - 2:36 am UTC

Version: 12.2.0.3

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You Asked

Greetings,

What do you believe is the main reason for the rise in open source RDBMS' (Postgres, MariaDB and MySQL)? This is making some of us who have committed ourselves to Oracle for 20+ years a bit nervous since we now have to learn all of the quirks and administration of the open source RDBMS'.

Thanks,

John

and Connor said...

I think there is a place for everyone, because there are different needs.

For example, the latest Postgres release includes de-duplication for index keys. Its something we've had for nearly 20 years. This is not me trying to crap on Postgres, but a reflection of the fact that there have been customers of scale where index de-duplication is a big deal...it simply would not be appropriate for them to have used Postgres at *any* time in the past. Even now, maybe they don't want to be a "pioneer" (aka beta tester :-)) of a new feature.

Conversely, there are probably some organizations out there for which their I.T dept already has a lot of interaction with the open source community, and thus are equipped to deals themselves with bugs, workarounds etc in the product they're using when there is no support organization sitting behind the product.

And there's probably people in the middle who have perhaps built small things on open source but now want to "enterprise" those database, and thus pay someone (enterpriseDB, amazon etc) to support those open source offerings they have. At which point, its really no different to using a commercial database anyway.

And part of it is cultural. I've lost track of the number of times I've told people you can have a free Oracle database both on-premises and the cloud, and they simply refuse to believe me :-)

Competition is good...it makes us all better.

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A reader, October 07, 2020 - 1:02 pm UTC

Conversely, there are probably some organizations out there for which their I.T dept already has a lot of interaction with the open source community, and thus are equipped to deals themselves with bugs, workarounds etc in the product they're using when there is no support organization sitting behind the product.

Ha, ha. Good luck in getting oracle bugs fixed in a timely manner. We also use workarounds and hacks even there is a paid support available. The response for my last bug report was something like "Such bugs are usually fixed in the upcoming oracle versions".
Connor McDonald
October 08, 2020 - 2:27 am UTC

But if you encounter such issue, you have recourse.

- You can escalate a call
- You can asked for a support manager to intervene
- You can raise it with your account management
- You can speak to the product management

Read my answer again - I never claimed that the moment you have a support organisation behind your product means the world is all smiles. But having one can be a lot better than going it alone.

A reader, October 08, 2020 - 10:38 pm UTC

Hi Chris,

Thanks for answering this touchy question. I do want to point out that it is making harder for people to want to pay Oracle RDBMS' high price when MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres, etc. offer the the RDBMS needs that most applications need. I hope that one day Oracle will reduce it's price as one can say that the main RDBMS engine has been reproduced by other companies and offering it a cheaper price or free.

"And part of it is cultural. I've lost track of the number of times I've told people you can have a free Oracle database both on-premises and the cloud, and they simply refuse to believe me :-)"

I know that I got exited about the free version called "Oracle express" , I think, but then just realized I couldn't use it since Oracle wasn't providing security patches for its security holes. I will look into the free on-premise software to see if it is secure.

Thank you once again.
Connor McDonald
October 09, 2020 - 2:36 am UTC

I think, but then just realized I couldn't use it since Oracle wasn't providing security patches for its security holes


I've had people say this but at the same time the vast majority of customers do not apply the security patches we regularly release anyway! (Not claiming this of you specifically)


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