StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Databases
  4. Databases
  5. H2 Database vs Oracle

H2 Database vs Oracle

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Oracle
Oracle
Stacks2.6K
Followers1.8K
Votes113
H2 Database
H2 Database
Stacks1.3K
Followers121
Votes0

H2 Database vs Oracle: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this markdown, we will discuss the key differences between H2 Database and Oracle. H2 Database and Oracle are both popular relational database management systems (RDBMS) used for storing and managing structured data. While they serve the same purpose, there are several differences that set them apart.

  1. Data Types Support: H2 Database supports a wide range of data types, including VARCHAR, INTEGER, BOOLEAN, BLOB, and many more. On the other hand, Oracle offers a more extensive set of data types like CLOB, RAW, TIMESTAMP, INTERVAL YEAR TO MONTH, INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND, and more.

  2. SQL Compatibility: H2 Database offers a high level of compatibility with the SQL standard, including support for common SQL syntax and functions. Oracle, being an enterprise-level database, is known for its extensive support for SQL, including advanced features like hierarchical queries, analytic functions, and more.

  3. Scalability and Performance: Oracle offers robust scalability and can handle large databases and high transaction loads efficiently. It provides advanced features like partitioning, clustering, and parallelism for optimal performance. On the other hand, H2 Database is more lightweight and designed for embedded or small-scale applications where scalability and performance are not the primary concern.

  4. Administration and Maintenance: Oracle provides advanced tools and utilities for database administration, monitoring, and performance tuning. It offers features like Automatic Storage Management (ASM), Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle Data Guard for high availability and disaster recovery. H2 Database, being a lightweight database, doesn't offer such extensive administration and maintenance features.

  5. Availability and Cost: Oracle is a commercial database and requires a license for using it in production environments. It comes with comprehensive support, frequent patches, and updates. On the other hand, H2 Database is an open-source database and is freely available for use without any licensing cost. However, support and updates may be limited compared to Oracle.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Oracle has a large and active user community, extensive documentation, and a wide range of third-party tools and frameworks built around it. It is widely adopted and has a strong ecosystem. H2 Database, being a less popular database, may have a smaller community and limited ecosystem support.

In summary, H2 Database and Oracle differ in terms of data types support, SQL compatibility, scalability and performance, administration and maintenance features, availability and cost, as well as community and ecosystem support. Understanding these differences can help in making an informed decision while choosing a database for a specific use case.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Oracle, H2 Database

Daniel
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
Abigail
Abigail

Dec 6, 2019

Decided

In the field of bioinformatics, we regularly work with hierarchical and unstructured document data. Unstructured text data from PDFs, image data from radiographs, phylogenetic trees and cladograms, network graphs, streaming ECG data... none of it fits into a traditional SQL database particularly well. As such, we prefer to use document oriented databases.

MongoDB is probably the oldest component in our stack besides Javascript, having been in it for over 5 years. At the time, we were looking for a technology that could simply cache our data visualization state (stored in JSON) in a database as-is without any destructive normalization. MongoDB was the perfect tool; and has been exceeding expectations ever since.

Trivia fact: some of the earliest electronic medical records (EMRs) used a document oriented database called MUMPS as early as the 1960s, prior to the invention of SQL. MUMPS is still in use today in systems like Epic and VistA, and stores upwards of 40% of all medical records at hospitals. So, we saw MongoDB as something as a 21st century version of the MUMPS database.

540k views540k
Comments
Abigail
Abigail

Dec 10, 2019

Decided

We wanted a JSON datastore that could save the state of our bioinformatics visualizations without destructive normalization. As a leading NoSQL data storage technology, MongoDB has been a perfect fit for our needs. Plus it's open source, and has an enterprise SLA scale-out path, with support of hosted solutions like Atlas. Mongo has been an absolute champ. So much so that SQL and Oracle have begun shipping JSON column types as a new feature for their databases. And when Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) announced support for JSON, we basically had our FHIR datalake technology.

558k views558k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Oracle
Oracle
H2 Database
H2 Database

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.

It is a relational database management system written in Java. It can be embedded in Java applications or run in client-server mode.

Statistics
Stacks
2.6K
Stacks
1.3K
Followers
1.8K
Followers
121
Votes
113
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 44
    Reliable
  • 33
    Enterprise
  • 15
    High Availability
  • 5
    Hard to maintain
  • 5
    Expensive
Cons
  • 14
    Expensive
No community feedback yet

What are some alternatives to Oracle, H2 Database?

MongoDB

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

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.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

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.

Microsoft SQL Server

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase