Re:We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2...
by jackhack on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @11:20AM
(#15593860)
> Oracle's licensing prohibits any benchmarking
That tells me all I need to know.
Re:We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2...
by wenc on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @12:25PM
(#15594420)
Forgive my sloppy phrasing, I should be clear: Oracle's license terms prohibit public disclosure of any benchmarks without their consent.
So technically you can benchmark in-house, but you can't publish those results without written permission.
Re:We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2...
by DarronWyke on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @04:51PM
(#15596427)
That's a lot worse. It's not just prohibition, it's a way to filter out anything negative through license enforcement.
Re:We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2...
by wenc on Wednesday November 01, 2017 @01:56PM
(#15603772)
Yes. SQL Server and others used to have the same terms but was later removed.
The original intent was to prevent non-neutral third-party benchmarking by biased agents that sought to discredit their products through contrived setups (which admittedly can be a problem for any product), but to enforce it through licensing seems a bit heavy handed. Oracle does allow benchmarks that are favorable to them (see TPC-C benchmarks).
This is something I've heard over the years but I'm not sure if it is still holds true. (I work with Oracle databases daily).
Oracle DBMSes are very robust, to be sure, and you can expect them to run forever. But in my mind other databases seems to have caught up and there really isn't a compelling reason to choose Oracle over other commercial databases anymore (also, Oracle pricing is a big deterrent).
In terms of performance, Oracle's licensing prohibits any benchmarking, but anecdotally I haven't found it to be particularly performant for most of my queries. Oracle used to be known for the innovative under-the-hood algorithmic improvements to the database, but lately I haven't seen anything too exciting, whereas SQL Server is getting better every year with new innovations (columnstore indices, in-memory features, Polybase, in-database Python/R computations, etc.).
> use cases I'd recommend it for over open source alternatives has shrunk to nearly nothing.
I agree, though I would say for heavy transactional use cases, I would still choose a commercial database over an open-source one. However, among the commercial databases out there, Oracle would be my last choice. It has too much legacy crud that have to worked around. The only reason Oracle is still around is because (1) In the enterprise, no one gets fired for buying Oracle. (2) fungible expertise in their services organization ensures business continuity, albeit at a lowest common denominator level.