In the course of a normal day, I have the good fortune to talk to lots of people about the Oracle RDBMS and database systems that are not Oracle. Admittedly, the conversations are frequently part of an interview; we are an Oracle development shop, and I've been asking deep-dive technical questions about Oracle for more than 20 years. Recently, many of the persons I've interviewed have more experience on alternatives. Newer platforms (NoSQL) or free platforms (MySQL) seem to be the preferred tools of many developers today. So I ask pointed questions about other systems, and I get great answers; lots of developers swear by other databases and have justifications which, on the surface, seem reasonable and well-informed. I'd like to use this blog to help debunk some of the fallacies and misperceptions I've heard, to demystify the capabilities of a truly powerful RDBMS and to deepen my own understanding of the tool.
Recently, I've been talking to the manager of a team of Oracle developers. They ran afoul of Oracle's licensing (it can be onerous) which resulted in some steep fines, an angry CEO and directive to rewrite their custom applications to use Microsoft's SQL Server instead of the Oracle RDBMS. This team's plight has caused me to think a lot about the value of Oracle and how I would defend a position to keep using it if my company challenged its use. I'll share my thoughts here.
Finally, I need a blog to put up my ideas and offer solutions to problems I've solved. A place where people can challenge my own beliefs, so that I can ensure that I'm never one of those tech workers that gets stuck in a rut.