Re: Not to start a flame war but what does Oracle have that Postgresql does not?

LWATCDR, 23.03.2011 14:58:
> So I am wondering what features does Postgres lack to equal Oracle or
> DB2? This is more for my own satisfaction since I can not imagine any
> uses here that wouldn't run on a modern hexcore server with a few
> gigabytes of ram and a raid of SATA drives.

Things that Oracle has that PostgreSQL does not:

- materialized views
- Flashback queries and flashback archive
- A lot more index types and table organization types - which are relevant in a DWH environment
- RAC
- Much better partitioning (it's a lot easier and more flexible - including partitioning for indexes)
- real stored procedures (and the possibility to have transaction control in the stored procedure)
- Index only scans
- Better XML support
- I haven't used it, but the new "Edition" feature in 11gR2 seems
to be very cool when dealing with schema migration
- A tool for an online redefinition of tables without the need to lock the table
when doing the ALTER TABLE...
- Much more monitoring tools built-in
- no need to configure (auto) vacuum

Things that Postgres has that Oracle does not:

- transactional DDL (including TRUNCATE)
- can use more than one index for one table in one query
- multiple sessions sharing the same full table scan
- better support for arrays
- hstore module
- Possibility to define comments on every object in the database.
- a smaller footprint and easier to install
- generate_series()
- a slightly better support for windowing functions
- The sequence implementation in Postgres is better
(due to the fact that a column can "own" a sequence, in Oracle there is
no way to define a dependency between a column and a sequence)

I don't really know DB2, but as far as I can tell DB2's dictionary based compression and
its XML support are both a lot better than in Oracle or Postgres.

Regards
Thomas