Errr... the cost value of Oracle database is skewed. It simply costs sooo much it's impractical for most companies to use, especially if they cannot afford more then 1 decent engineer.
We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu).
Also for that matter, I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres or can be made with MySQL and another service such as Redis or ElasticSearch.
It also impractical to maintain without a dedicated DBA.
Which usually means that if a company uses OracleDB they are loaded with money.
Today's prices. 10s of thousands it is still whether you get it at retail price (which is unlikely) or if you amortize it for several years (including yearly support of course).
An actual small user is still likely to pay 10s of thousands of dollars a year.
> I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true 17 years ago, circa Oracle 9i?
Can you provide me with such a feature that Oracle has but Postgres doesn't and is in demand?
Oracle db is a masterpiece and has the best performance of any database I'm aware of , sometimes several times more if properly configured. That was it's big selling point in days of vertical scaling - the hardware was often a lot more expensive then oracle's licensing.
Why are you bringing up a version from 2001? Was that mentioned in parent posts?
> Businesses whose core competency isn't tech and/or who aren't located in a tech hub aren't likely even to consider the "make" option.
Business without tech as a core competency outsource.
> That's simply false, as the Oracle DBA I know routinely contraced out to companies as a temporary, non-dedicated DBA.
I suppose you could run an oracle DB with no or little DBA support. But the companies I know who use it use features that require constant DBA support - replication being the biggest one.
> Why are you bringing up a version from 2001? Was that mentioned in parent posts?
Yes, Oracle 9i was specifically mentioned, which is why I find it bizarre, if not inappropriate, to criticize (let alone laugh, as an upthread commenter did), with not just "20/20 hindsight" but also with today's technology availability.
> Business without tech as a core competency outsource.
That's just a synonym for "buy" in the "buy vs build" decision, whereas "make" is a synonym for "build".
> > I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres
> I'm sure you'r in the majority here on HN, but that's merely selection bias. Also, it's true today, but was it true 17 years ago, circa Oracle 9i?
As somebody working on PostgreSQL full time, I very much agree on that. Neither today nor back in the 9i days has PostgreSQL implemented everything Oracle provides. Nor the reverse, for that matter. And I'm not just talking about features nobody uses.
> > It also impractical to maintain without a dedicated DBA.
> That's simply false, as the Oracle DBA I know routinely contraced out to companies as a temporary, non-dedicated DBA.
I do think it's easier to operate several databases, including PG, without a dedicated DBA in comparison to Oracle. Obviously it's entirely possible for both.
We are talking about 10000s of dollars per CORE (not even per cpu).
Also for that matter, I've never met a company that uses oracle features that aren't available in Postgres or can be made with MySQL and another service such as Redis or ElasticSearch.
It also impractical to maintain without a dedicated DBA.
Which usually means that if a company uses OracleDB they are loaded with money.