[Novalug] NOVALUG meets Saturday: MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL

[Kevin Dwyer]

On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 12:04:51AM -0400, Peter Larsen wrote:
> Kevin Chin wrote:
> >Well, this may be obvious... but I've heard annecdotally that MySQL and 
> >Postgres are "missing" some more advanced database features that 
> >proprietary DB's like Oracle have.  Maybe it's FUD, maybe it's fact.  Is 
> >this true?  Isn't a database, just a database?  What are some of the 
> >major differences?  Better yet, what's an example/use case of when you 
> >might prefer one DB over another?
> 
> Great subject. Personally I'm interested in what features are now 
> available on the open source systems.

In the past, there have been serious differences in support of various
SQL features (sub-queries, hierarchical queries, etc) but I think the
free alternatives have been implementing those features.

> Btw. I'm going to get a handful or more CD's made with Oracle's FREE (as 
> in beer) XE version. I'm going to have to read up on it, cause I've not 
> really used it; but if anyone is interested I'll have it at the meeting. 
> Unfortunately, Oracle only distributes the files in RPM format (and DEP) 
> so you'll need a redhat/fedora like distribution to install it.

XE is kind of like the Small Business Edition of Windows.  Sure, it
works, but only until you try to do something interesting.  It's
artificially limited to 4G of data (some people could get by on this)
and 1G of memory (puny for oracle).  For someone who is doing a simple
evaluation of Oracle, it will probably be fine but otherwise you're
better off downloading the full version.  The other key difference is
that you are allowed to distribute XE.

-kpd