Re: Oracle 10g Express - any danger for Postgres?

Given both the naming of Oracle 10g Express and the timing of Oracle's
announcement, I think Oracle Express is more of a reaction to pressure
by Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Express, due to be released Nov 7 but
actually shipped to developers this past Thursday.

I've been a DBA for _many_ years on Sybase, Oracle, SQL Server and
PostgreSQL. From my perspective, Oracle requires a significant amount
of DBA expertise in order to use it, so although I do see Oracle Express
as a certain amount of threat to PostgreSQL, I don't think it's too
significant. I think it's probably more designed to keep current Oracle
users from migrating to SQL Server or possibly to PostgreSQL.

MS SQL Server, on the other hand, while benefiting from a good DBA (like
all RDBMS's do), requires virtually no DBA expertise. (I'd never
consider using Oracle in any sort of embedded, bundled, DBA-less
environment, but I'd have no problem using either PostgreSQL or MS SQL
Server in those cases.) So I do see SQL Server Express as more of a
threat to PostgreSQL, at least on the Windows platform.

I actually see both Oracle Express and SQL Server Express as being more
of a threat to MySQL rather than to PostgreSQL. There are still MANY
many MS Access databases out there supporting departmental applications
or smaller web sites; I think many of these sites traditionally move to
MySQL. Now they may be more likely to move to either Oracle Express or
SQL Server Express, especially in a corporate environment.

However, the other place where both these two (Oracle Express and SQL
Server Express) may hurt is not by taking current users away from
PostgreSQL but rather by taking away future users, and therefore a
certain amount of future growth. Again, in a corporate environment, in
many cases it still takes a somewhat sizeable amount of persuasion to
convince "management" to go with any "free" solution, whereas going with
anything "commercial" is more just a matter of justifying the budget
numbers. Thus it's _much_ less risky to recommend using Oracle Express
or SQL Server Express rather than PostgreSQL or MySQL. It's the old
"you never get fired for buying IBM" all over again. (Same goes for
consultants brought in to work on a new project, do a conversion of an
existing project or recommend a new platform: most of the time they'll
go with the safer solution rather than the riskier one -- there's always
one eye on future consulting business.) No, this obviously won't always
be the case, but it's inevitable that at least some portion of the
projects that would have chosen PostgreSQL or MySQL in the past will now
stick with the "safe" solutions (at least career-wise) in the future.

- Bill

> http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/xe/index.h
> tml
> http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5920796.html
>
> 'Oracle intends to release a free version of its database, a
> reaction to the growing competitive pressure from low-end
> open-source databases.'
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Nikolay