
Coming Soon - Oracle Database 11g on Amazon Relational Database Service - jeffbarr
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/01/coming-soon-oracle-database-11g-on-amazon-rds-1.html
======
Corrado
Arrggg... we get Oracle but no PostgreSQL?!?!

~~~
jpitz
Yeah, but PostgreSQL is _so_ easy to get running there. Seriously. And no
amount of magic cloud sprinkles is going to fix Amazon's terrible IO latency
problems, for any database product.

------
jacques_chester
I've been working with Oracle for the last few months. In some ways it is a
fantastic product. In other ways it is mind-bogglingly backwards.

I mean, no boolean type? _Really?_

~~~
mcantor
Agreed. The thorough support for hierarchical queries is quite tasty, though.

~~~
tom_b
This.

I've done (1) nested sets, (2) recursive CTEs, and (3)the magic Oracle fairy
dust of CONNECT BY and STARTS WITH.

(1) and (2) seem to make my coworkers (and bosses) eyes' glaze over. I think
they like (3) because they don't have to worry as much about "code that guy in
the corner wrote."

~~~
mcantor
CONNECT BY/STARTS WITH can be brain-bending, too, if you are doing anything
except the most straightforward use case. I found the "pseudocode" on this
page under the "Interpreting connect by statements" header to be very
enlightening:

<http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/sql/connect_by.html>

------
boyter
My understanding is that whatever database AWS supports it will let you scale
up as much as required. Assuming this is the case unless you are and oracle
guru or moving legacy applications i cant see this being useful for anyone
other then large organisations who usually prefer to run their own hardware.
Why pay for an oracle license if you dont have to. Especially when there are
quite a few good oracle alturnatives these days.

I must be missing something here.

~~~
Yrlec
I think the main reason Amazon chose Oracle over databases like PostgreSQL is
that it also makes it easier for a lot of people to convince their boss to
move to AWS.

~~~
bad_user
I think the main reason Amazon chose Oracle was a deal between them.

~~~
jpitz
I think parent and GP both have an element of truth, but that the ultimate
situation is more nuanced than either suggests. Customer demand is likely the
biggest factor, but I'd be surprised if Oracle managed an exclusivity deal on
RDS. Of the major RDBMS players, Oracle, for all their weirdness, all their
proprietary functionality, all the damn-the-relational-model-here's-your-
physical-row-identifiers, is a pretty logical choice as the first commercial
offering.

------
callumjones
And it will cost $2000 an hour!

------
tszming
New term: double vendor lock-in (AWS and Oracle)?

