First glance at EnterpriseDB 8.1
I downloaded and installed EnterpriseDB 8.1 yesterday and here are some of my thoughts on the product.
I'm seeing some really innovative features that are pretty much all based on making the PostgreSQL database look and feel like an Oracle database (hence making conversions less painful). They support PL/SQL objects (Triggers/Stored Procedures/Packages/Functions), partitioning, hierarchical queries, sub-queries, sequences and security permissions in pretty much the same fashion as Oracle. One of the main reasons people have been hesitant to make the move to these open source platforms from Oracle due to the significant conversion effort required. It looks like these folks have picked up on this and really broken down that barrier.
A couple of the things that they might need to address are:
- Locking data during reads: Oracle isn't supposed to not lock data during reads. Other RDBMS products such as PostgreSQL lock data when reads are being performed. This could hurt us in situations when we have a high number of users using the system.
- EnterpriseDB isn't really open-source: It's a product built on top of the PostgreSQL open source project. The open source community seems to be beating them up in a few of blog entries I found, but overall most of the hype I read today is positive feedback on the product.
- Support: If you need support like that we're getting from Oracle, your going to pay ($5k per CPU). This ends up to a number which is pretty similar to what your paying Oracle for, so the cost savings just went out the window.
The pricing matrix can be found at: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/licensing_pricing.do
I'll spend a little bit more time with it for now but at some point I may want to do some sort of formal proof of concept project to see how well it runs. Perhaps I'll try it out for a reporting database server, so I can get my feet wet with the product. From a first glance it's the first product like this that has really sparked my interest.
Until next time...Rich
I'm seeing some really innovative features that are pretty much all based on making the PostgreSQL database look and feel like an Oracle database (hence making conversions less painful). They support PL/SQL objects (Triggers/Stored Procedures/Packages/Functions), partitioning, hierarchical queries, sub-queries, sequences and security permissions in pretty much the same fashion as Oracle. One of the main reasons people have been hesitant to make the move to these open source platforms from Oracle due to the significant conversion effort required. It looks like these folks have picked up on this and really broken down that barrier.
A couple of the things that they might need to address are:
- Locking data during reads: Oracle isn't supposed to not lock data during reads. Other RDBMS products such as PostgreSQL lock data when reads are being performed. This could hurt us in situations when we have a high number of users using the system.
- EnterpriseDB isn't really open-source: It's a product built on top of the PostgreSQL open source project. The open source community seems to be beating them up in a few of blog entries I found, but overall most of the hype I read today is positive feedback on the product.
- Support: If you need support like that we're getting from Oracle, your going to pay ($5k per CPU). This ends up to a number which is pretty similar to what your paying Oracle for, so the cost savings just went out the window.
The pricing matrix can be found at: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/licensing_pricing.do
I'll spend a little bit more time with it for now but at some point I may want to do some sort of formal proof of concept project to see how well it runs. Perhaps I'll try it out for a reporting database server, so I can get my feet wet with the product. From a first glance it's the first product like this that has really sparked my interest.
Until next time...Rich
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