[cdavid]

yes, but oracle is expensive, especially since it requires people who really know about oracle if you want to be up to speed relatively quickly. So as always, it is a tradeoff: it seems that in some cases, not having the usual RDBMS guarantees is ok because there are less admin costs, etc...

So sure, some people don't understand those tradeoff and make stupid choices. But people who choose technology without properly assessing the risks/advantages are bound to fail anyway.

[gaius]

If your major expense is people who know what they're doing, then Oracle is not even the most expensive platform... During any web boom I bet LAMP guys were billing higher hourly rates than people doing Oracle!