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 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
