[irrational]

Truly. We've recently moved from Oracle (after using it for 15 years) to Postgresql. It's like a breath of fresh air. The documentation for Postgres is unbelievably superior to Oracle. So far its performance is equal to or better than Oracle. We had to go through and rewrite thousands of queries, but the sql syntax of Postgres was always simpler and more logical than the equivalent in Oracle (I think Oracle has too much baggage from being around too long). All in all I'm so impressed by Postgres. I'm sure there are features in Oracle that Postgres doesn't have that keep people on Oracle, but I would imagine that the vast majority of Oracle installs could be moved to Postgres.

[patates]

Do you plan to write more about the migration, like a blog post? That would be very interesting to read.

[unixhero]

This needs to become a thing. Where people produce writeups on Oracle To Postgres, and how much better it is; under something like #RunsMuchBetterWithPostgres ...

It is strange that there aren't more writeups on Postgresql migrations.

Yandex had a good one. Posted here a long while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12489055

[KingMob]

> It is strange that there aren't more writeups on Postgresql migrations.

It's probably because switching databases is very painful and rare.

[unixhero]

I would think that not having to pay the Oracle/MS/Sybase/Teradata licenses are a good enough incentive...

Speaking of economic incentives.

That could be a thesis topic for my hereto unwritten PhD in Behavioral Economics:

"Choosing to pay" What are the behavioral aspects of top leadership - Why do people still chose proprietary" A quantitative case study."

[Ygg2]

If I had to wager, it's support. Oracle/MS generally provide much better support that open source software.

[jeltz]

Oracle is definitely not known for their good support, and there are plenty of companies which provide really good PostgreSQL support.

[irrational]

This. It was worth it, but it still took us the better part of a year.

[sharninder]

Another one here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyc5ohv0RLY

[irrational]

It would take a lot more than a single blog post. It would probably take dozens of blog posts (or a book). It took us the better part of a year. There are just so many things that have to be taken into consideration and learned.

[thorin]

I'd be very interested in this after years of working with Oracle (and SQLServer), I know a little Postgres and would like to learn more.

[gigatexal]

+1 to this.

[kochthesecond]

I think most Oracle installs are from the days ram was limited and incredibly expensive.

Right now anyone can afford a db server with 128gb ram, enough to solve most problems #YourDataFitsInRam

[wiz21c]

>> I think most Oracle installs are from the days ram was limited

Could you explain ?

Personally I use Oracle (and hopefully one day PG) because it gives me guarantees on data integrity and these guarantees help me to think about my programs more easily.

[dsr_]

Oracle started before microcomputers (PCs) were anything but toys. In 1983, they were multiplatform: mainframes and minicomputers. a 1983 minicomputer might have 2 CPUs, each good for 2 MIPS, 8 MB of RAM and primary storage of as much as a gigabyte or two of disks.

In the early 2000s, a serious database machine -- say, a Sun E10000 - had up to 64 CPUs, running at 400-500MHz each, 64 GB of RAM, and a huge cabinet full of disks.

Now you can call up a SuperMicro VAR and order a 64-core AMD EPYC server with 2TB of RAM and 4 TB of NVMe drives, that talks to other machines over a 100Gb/s ethernet, for a price around the same as a used Tesla S85.

If your database is under 2TB, it all fits in RAM on commodity hardware, where commodity is defined as "anyone with a credit card can order it without even talking to sales".

[wiz21c]

>>> Oracle started before microcomputers (PCs) were anything but toys.

I didn't know that. At that time I was discovering Applesoft basic :-)

[type0]

Oracle is the real elephant in the room, all pun intended.