Oracle vs PostgreSQL

Overview

Oracle

Stacks2.6K

Followers1.8K

Votes113

PostgreSQL

Stacks103.0K

Followers83.9K

Votes3.6K

GitHub Stars19.0K

Forks5.2K

Oracle vs PostgreSQL: What are the differences?

Oracle and PostgreSQL are popular relational database management systems (RDBMS) known for their robust features and scalability. Here are the key differences between Oracle and PostgreSQL:

Licensing and Cost: One of the primary differences between Oracle and PostgreSQL is the licensing and cost structure. Oracle is a commercial database and comes with a significant licensing cost, especially for enterprise-level deployments. In contrast, PostgreSQL is open-source and free to use, making it a more cost-effective choice for organizations with budget constraints or smaller-scale projects.
Performance and Scalability: Oracle is known for its robust performance optimizations and advanced features like in-memory computing and real application clusters (RAC), which allow for horizontal scalability and high availability. PostgreSQL, on the other hand, offers excellent performance and scalability capabilities but may require additional configuration and optimization for specific use cases.
Data Replication and High Availability: Oracle provides robust built-in replication and high availability features. These features enable real-time data replication and failover capabilities for ensuring high availability and disaster recovery. PostgreSQL also offers replication capabilities through streaming replication and logical replication, but it may require more configuration and setup compared to Oracle's comprehensive solutions.
Ecosystem and Community: Oracle has a well-established ecosystem with a large community of users and extensive third-party tooling and support. It offers a wide range of integrated products, including middleware, analytics, and business intelligence tools. PostgreSQL has a vibrant and growing community, with a rich ecosystem of extensions and frameworks. While PostgreSQL's ecosystem is not as extensive as Oracle's, it is continuously expanding, and there are numerous tools and frameworks available for different use cases.
SQL Compatibility: Oracle has its own SQL dialect, known as Oracle SQL, which includes proprietary features and extensions. PostgreSQL adheres more closely to the SQL standard and offers advanced SQL features like Common Table Expressions (CTEs) and window functions. Developers familiar with Oracle SQL may need to adjust their queries and code when migrating to PostgreSQL.

In summary, Oracle offers advanced features, scalability, and a comprehensive ecosystem but comes with a significant licensing cost. PostgreSQL, being open-source, provides cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and a growing community.

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Advice on Oracle, PostgreSQL

Micha

CEO & Co-Founder at Dechea

May 27, 2022

Decided

Fauna is a serverless database where you store data as JSON. Also, you have build in a HTTP GraphQL interface with a full authentication & authorization layer. That means you can skip your Backend and call it directly from the Frontend. With the power, that you can write data transformation function within Fauna with her own language called FQL, we're getting a blazing fast application.

Also, Fauna takes care about scaling and backups (All data are sharded on three different locations on the globe). That means we can fully focus on writing business logic and don't have to worry anymore about infrastructure.

93k views93k

Comments

Daniel

Data Engineer at Dimensigon

Jul 18, 2020

Decided

We have chosen Tibero over Oracle because we want to offer a PL/SQL-as-a-Service that the users can deploy in any Cloud without concerns from our website at some standard cost. With Oracle Database, developers would have to worry about what they implement and the related costs of each feature but the licensing model from Tibero is just 1 price and we have all features included, so we don't have to worry and developers using our SQLaaS neither. PostgreSQL would be open source. We have chosen Tibero over Oracle because we want to offer a PL/SQL that you can deploy in any Cloud without concerns. PostgreSQL would be the open source option but we need to offer an SQLaaS with encryption and more enterprise features in the background and best value option we have found, it was Tibero Database for PL/SQL-based applications.

495k views495k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Oracle	PostgreSQL
Oracle Database is an RDBMS. An RDBMS that implements object-oriented features such as user-defined types, inheritance, and polymorphism is called an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). Oracle Database has extended the relational model to an object-relational model, making it possible to store complex business models in a relational database.	PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 19.0K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 5.2K
Stacks 2.6K	Stacks 103.0K
Followers 1.8K	Followers 83.9K
Votes 113	Votes 3.6K
Pros & Cons
Pros 44 Reliable 33 Enterprise 15 High Availability 5 Hard to maintain 5 Expensive Cons 14 Expensive	Pros 765 Relational database 511 High availability 439 Enterprise class database 383 Sql 304 Sql + nosql Cons 10 Table/index bloatings

What are some alternatives to Oracle, PostgreSQL?

MongoDB

MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.

MySQL

The MySQL software delivers a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL Server is intended for mission-critical, heavy-load production systems as well as for embedding into mass-deployed software.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft® SQL Server is a database management and analysis system for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.

SQLite

SQLite is an embedded SQL database engine. Unlike most other SQL databases, SQLite does not have a separate server process. SQLite reads and writes directly to ordinary disk files. A complete SQL database with multiple tables, indices, triggers, and views, is contained in a single disk file.

Cassandra

Partitioning means that Cassandra can distribute your data across multiple machines in an application-transparent matter. Cassandra will automatically repartition as machines are added and removed from the cluster. Row store means that like relational databases, Cassandra organizes data by rows and columns. The Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is a close relative of SQL.

Memcached

Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.

MariaDB

Started by core members of the original MySQL team, MariaDB actively works with outside developers to deliver the most featureful, stable, and sanely licensed open SQL server in the industry. MariaDB is designed as a drop-in replacement of MySQL(R) with more features, new storage engines, fewer bugs, and better performance.

RethinkDB

RethinkDB is built to store JSON documents, and scale to multiple machines with very little effort. It has a pleasant query language that supports really useful queries like table joins and group by, and is easy to setup and learn.

ArangoDB

A distributed free and open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values. Build high performance applications using a convenient SQL-like query language or JavaScript extensions.

InfluxDB

InfluxDB is a scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics. It has a built-in HTTP API so you don't have to write any server side code to get up and running. InfluxDB is designed to be scalable, simple to install and manage, and fast to get data in and out.

Related Comparisons

Licensing and Cost: One of the primary differences between Oracle and PostgreSQL is the licensing and cost structure. Oracle is a commercial database and comes with a significant licensing cost, especially for enterprise-level deployments. In contrast, PostgreSQL is open-source and free to use, making it a more cost-effective choice for organizations with budget constraints or smaller-scale projects.
Performance and Scalability: Oracle is known for its robust performance optimizations and advanced features like in-memory computing and real application clusters (RAC), which allow for horizontal scalability and high availability. PostgreSQL, on the other hand, offers excellent performance and scalability capabilities but may require additional configuration and optimization for specific use cases.
Data Replication and High Availability: Oracle provides robust built-in replication and high availability features. These features enable real-time data replication and failover capabilities for ensuring high availability and disaster recovery. PostgreSQL also offers replication capabilities through streaming replication and logical replication, but it may require more configuration and setup compared to Oracle's comprehensive solutions.
Ecosystem and Community: Oracle has a well-established ecosystem with a large community of users and extensive third-party tooling and support. It offers a wide range of integrated products, including middleware, analytics, and business intelligence tools. PostgreSQL has a vibrant and growing community, with a rich ecosystem of extensions and frameworks. While PostgreSQL's ecosystem is not as extensive as Oracle's, it is continuously expanding, and there are numerous tools and frameworks available for different use cases.
SQL Compatibility: Oracle has its own SQL dialect, known as Oracle SQL, which includes proprietary features and extensions. PostgreSQL adheres more closely to the SQL standard and offers advanced SQL features like Common Table Expressions (CTEs) and window functions. Developers familiar with Oracle SQL may need to adjust their queries and code when migrating to PostgreSQL.

Oracle vs PostgreSQL