One of the most frustrating things about being a small company in 1999 was not having a decent database at an affordable price. Oracle and DB2 were too expensive so we were left with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Postgres was reliable in those days but rather slow. MySQL was extremely fast but left out some basic relational database ‘features’ such as, well, relationships. We decided that we could build safeguards into the software to enforce relationships but we couldn’t do anything to improve the performance of Postgres so we embarked upon a journey of many years with MySQL. And we weren’t alone. If you wanted cheap, you went with MySQL.
Fast forward to 2006 and MySQL supports relationships, Postgres is fast and Oracle XE is free! We just started getting back together, so to speak, with Oracle and the first week was a love-hate tug of war! Oracle is truly an enterprise quality database with an amazing range of features. The down side is that you have to think like an enterprise, not a nimble and constantly changing web development company.
We’ll be chronicling our adventures here so that others can benefit too. Coming soon: Zend Core for Oracle, database tuning, converting WordPress from MySQL to Oracle (orablog - what powers this site!) and creating a backup plan with RMAN.
Cheers!
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