Forum OpenACS Q&A: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL

Posted by David Siktberg on 11/27/00 08:25 PM

I am about to build a modest-sized commercial site that delivers
training to doctors, and want to use Linux (Red Hat 6.2) + AOLServer
+ (open)ACS + Tcl + [RDBMS]. (Took arsDigita bootcamp and got
converted.) I'm an old hand at programming, but have limited
experience with Unix/Linux. So should I save $1x,000 and use
PostgreSQL, or bite the bullet and get Oracle - which I learned
pretty well in bootcamp? What are the key differences between them?
Will it be more than $1x,000 for Oracle? If it takes me two extra
months to build the site with PostgreSQL, or the database is not
really production- worthy, I'll be very sad. Our users will not
forgive much downtime / crashtime. Should I consider anything other
than these two? Thanks for your help!

2: Response to Oracle vs. PostgreSQL (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 11/27/00 08:37 PM

IMHO I think you'll have a hard time getting Oracle for $1x,000. It'll be much more. Not only because of the software cost, but you have to add the hardware and management cost. Oracle requires much more hardware power and brain power to manage. Both are very expensive.

There are applications that require Oracle, but many don't. PostgreSQL is in use in many production sites and works great. PostgreSQL is much easier to install and administer than Oracle.

Read the article about PostgreSQL at phpbuilder.com and see for yourself if it's production worthy or not. openacs.org received 33,000 db-backed hits in one day when it appeared on Slashdot earlier this year, and PG/OpenACS/Linux/AOLserver handled it just fine.

3: Response to Oracle vs. PostgreSQL (response to 1)

Posted by Mark S on 11/27/00 08:44 PM

If you can get Oracle for under $20,000 on a decent server, I would be very surprised. Earlier this year when I was looking into Oracle it was going to cost about $60,000 to legally run it on a 600 Mhz server. I suppose you might be able to get it for $10,000 on a 100 Mhz machine, but you are probably going to need a faster server.

4: Response to Oracle vs. PostgreSQL (response to 1)

Posted by Mike Clark on 11/28/00 01:49 AM

I've been running a production site(http://www.triadbusiness.com) with OpenACS+PostgreSQL for over four months with no DB problems. The site normally handles a few thousand hits per day. Both AOLserver and PostgreSQL have been running for a number of weeks without restart.

5: Point-in-time recovery (response to 1)

Posted by Radam Batnag on 11/28/00 07:18 AM

We use both Oracle and PostgreSQL in my company.
When asked by non-technical bosses about the differences between PostgreSQL and Oracle, I reply that one of the main advantages of Oracle is its point-in-time recovery.

This means: With Oracle, if you make a full backup on 8:00 am, and on 3:00 pm the database crashed and the data files were ruined but the log files and the backup files are intact, you could restore the database up to the last transaction that was commited before the database crashed. This could be up to 2:59:59 pm. With PostgreSQL, you can restore only up to 8:00 am.

Now I'm wondering: Is it true that PostgreSQL has no point-in-time recovery? Because if it has, we'll seriously consider going 100% Postgres.

6: Response to Oracle vs. PostgreSQL (response to 1)

Posted by Jonathan Ellis on 11/28/00 04:46 PM

Postgres advantages:

Ease of installation and administration
Cost
Portability

Oracle advantages (for web development):

Outer joins
Ability to add columns with constraints to existing tables

I've found both Oracle and Postgres communities to be very helpful solving problems, so to me that's a tie, along with stability.

Postgres is implementing outer joins for the next release; if you're not planning to go live for a few months, you might save yourself some trouble by developing with the most recent unstable postgres for that reason. They're "real close" to beta now, with production release presumably to follow soon.