Amazon Goes After Oracle (Again) With New Aurora Database

Sez Zero writes with news about the latest from Amazon Web Services. "Once again Amazon Web Services is taking on Oracle, the kingpin of relational databases, with Aurora, a relational database that is as capable as 'proprietary database engines at 1/10 the cost,' according to AWS SVP Andy Jassy. Amazon is right that customers, even big Oracle customers who hesitate to dump tried-and-true database technology are sick of Oracle’s cost structure and refusal to budge from older licensing models. Still there are very few applications that are more “sticky” than databases, which after typically contains the keys to the kingdom. Financial institutions see their use of Oracle databases as almost a pre-requisite for compliance, although that perception may be changing."

Comments

Re:What's the Difference?

[DougOtto]

If you're doing straight select, insert, update, delete operations there really isn't much functional difference between any of them. They all do locking a bit different and their are some syntax differences but it's all manageable.

It's when you start looking at procedure code, triggers and such that MySQL(or Maria) is lagging behind in that thing get a bit wobbly. We've been looking at dumping Oracle for exactly the reasons mentioned in the article. Apparently Larry needs some new toys or something because they also seem to be going a bit 'audit happy' as of late. We're completely in compliance but it's taken dozens of man hours on our side to prove it. The worst part is there's really nothing you can do about it.

Re:What is under the hood?

[wiredlogic]

MySQL/MariaDB can't be positioned as a competitor to Oracle. It takes too many liberties with one's data. PostgreSQL on the other hand...