Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: Key Differences and Best Use Cases

Oracle and PostgreSQL are both popular database management systems, but how each one functions is vastly different. In today’s digital age, your organization needs to choose a system that aligns with your data ecosystem. Oracle is one of the largest relational database management systems (RDBMSes) in the information technology (IT) sector, while PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) focusing on SQL compliance, open source standards, and extensibility.

Oracle’s robust infrastructure offers an expansive tool set to support large-scale enterprises. Conversely, PostgreSQL is open source software that allows efficient querying. By comparing these two systems, EnterpriseDB (EDB) will enable you to make an informed decision about which is best for your organizational needs and structure.

What is Oracle?

Oracle’s Database is one of the oldest and most popular RDBMSes, first designed for data warehousing and grid computing. It is compatible with UNIX, macOS, Linux, and Windows and has multi-language support for Ruby, Rust, Java, .NET, and php. Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) is one of its unique features that allows a single database to run on multiple servers, which reduces data loss and downtime.

Oracle’s scalability means it can be used by enterprises of all sizes, especially larger organizations. However, it is most often used in large-scale applications in which data integrity, security, and performance are essential—the financial and healthcare industries, for example. Oracle is also commonly used in business intelligence applications and corporate data warehouses because of its ability to quickly process immense amounts of data.

What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL utilizes Structured Query Language (SQL) to store and manage data. It provides an efficient way for organizations to manage their data for websites and apps because it supports online and offline transactions. This open source ORDBMS supports many procedural languages (programming languages that use a sequence of instructions), including:

• PL/Python

• PL/pgSQL

• PL/Tcl

• SQL

• PL/Perl

Additionally, PostgreSQL has a client-server architecture and can be deployed on most major operating systems, such as macOS, Linux, Solaris, UNIX, Windows, AIX, UNIX, and FreeBSD.

PostgreSQL is versatile and extensible, allowing its use for more than conventional database functions. It can handle geographic data for geographic information system (GIS) applications and location-based services, making it easy to integrate with the PostGIS extension. PostgreSQL also enables enterprises to create federated databases by connecting to other data stores, such as NoSQL databases, due to its JSON support and foreign data wrappers.

PostgreSQL is a popular choice among developers due to database customization to meet specific needs. PostgreSQL’s complex querying ability makes it ideal for data analysis projects and web applications.

Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: What are the differences?

Oracle and PostgreSQL are both robust systems that allow you to manage your organizational data, and each offers unique capabilities and strengths. The primary difference between the two is that Oracle is a proprietary database management system that is licensed commercially, while PostgreSQL is an open source database management system with global volunteer developers.

Both utilize similar concepts, such as tablespaces, indices, and schemas. However, they diverge in other areas, including replication and support. Analyzing these differences enables you to make an informed decision regarding each one’s suitability to meet your organizational use cases.

Licensing and cost

Oracle is a commercial product that utilizes complex licensing fees. Its licensing model is based on several factors, including user count, CPU cores, edition, and options. While organizations may pay a premium for its use, the trade-off is access to advanced analytics, security, support, and high-availability tools.

As an open source platform, PostgreSQL is free to use. It has an active community that provides support at no charge. There are also optional support services available at a fraction of the cost of proprietary systems. Without licensing fees, the overall cost of ownership is significantly less than that of Oracle.

The licensing and cost of your database management system impact your overall return on investment (ROI) and budget. Oracle’s total cost of ownership is higher than PostgreSQL’s, making it suitable for enterprise companies with advanced requirements and large budgets. For small to medium-sized businesses or limited-budget projects, PostgreSQL is a cost-effective alternative. However, you also need to factor in other expenses, including maintenance, potential third-party extensions and tools, and support.

Performance, scalability, and reliability

Oracle is known for its high-level performance. It has an efficient query optimizer, parallel processing capabilities, and advanced indexing techniques to easily handle large workloads. You can further enhance its performance and speed query resolution and spatial data processing with its Database In-Memory option, which reduces response time for reporting and analytical tasks.

Oracle also offers advanced, enterprise-level scalability with RAC, allowing it to distribute data across multiple nodes. Its high availability makes it an ideal option for data-intensive applications and mission-critical systems.

PostgreSQL is popular due to its reliability and stability. Its cluster-based storage solutions allow horizontal scaling and immense expansion at no extra cost. Additionally, it maintains data integrity during scalability operations with write-ahead logging (WAL) files. However, these files are limited to 16 megabytes.

While PostgreSQL offers high performance, it might experience bottlenecks when performing complex queries on large datasets, although each version offers performance improvements. Organizations can also optimize their performance by fine-tuning the configuration and leveraging extensions. PostgreSQL also enhances its querying through advanced indexing, hash, generalized search trees, and B-tree.

When choosing a database management system, performance is critical because it impacts your overall operational efficiency. Both PostgreSQL and Oracle are excellent options for demands of any size. However, PostgreSQL excels with open source support, while Oracle has strengths in distributed systems with RAC and advanced analytics capabilities.

Security and compliance

Today’s world is data-driven, making database security paramount. Both Oracle and PostgreSQL have strong security features, making them ideal solutions for safeguarding data and protecting sensitive information from manipulation, breaches, and unauthorized access.

Oracle offers a comprehensive set of advanced security features. It utilizes transparent data encryption to secure stored data; and network encryption, data redaction, and authentication to secure data transmissions. In addition, it offers advanced access controls through label security, managed privileges, and roles on its Virtual Private Database (VPD). 

For highly regulated industries, such as finance and healthcare, Oracle is the preferred database management system. It ensures compliance with industry-specific requirements, such as SOX, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.

PostgreSQL has a large community of developers, ensuring that its security vulnerabilities are addressed through regular patches and updates. It has robust built-in security features, including:

• SSL encryption

• Transport Layer Security (TLS)

• Row-level security (RLS)

• Data masking

• Role-based access control (RBAC)

PostgreSQL complies with various regulations and standards, including SQL and atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) principles. It also offers support for GDPR and other data regulations.

Extensibility and customization

While both Oracle and PostgreSQL offer support for JSON, XML, and other procedural languages, PostgreSQL is easier to integrate and has a larger application potential.

Oracle is known for its range of pre-integrated features, proprietary PL and SQL extensions, tools, libraries, and technologies that integrate seamlessly within its database. It provides its robust Application Development Framework (ADF) and support for programming languages. However, it relies on vendor lock-in, resulting in the need to purchase a licensed module in order to customize.

Conversely, PostgreSQL utilizes open source extensions, plugins, and tools to create custom functions. It integrates well with frameworks, libraries, and popular tools and supports a large group of application programming interfaces (APIs), data formats, and geospatial data. Users can create custom functions, operators, and data types to extend PostgreSQL’s functionalities and capabilities.

Oracle’s structure provides robust, pre-integrated features, while PostgreSQL’s modular design allows significant customizability through extensions and user-defined functions.

SQL compliance

Oracle offers partial SQL compliance with many proprietary extensions, using the PL/SQL language. It utilizes CONNECT BY, an Oracle-specific syntax for recursive queries, and allows for window functions and materialized views. 

PostgreSQL strongly complies and is more aligned with SQL standards. It operates using PL/pgSQL language and utilizes standard CTEs with WITH RECURSIVE syntax for recursive queries. Like Oracle, it also allows for window functions and materialized views and has built-in support for full-text search.

Compatibility and replication

Cross-platform compatibility is important to consider, especially for enterprises that operate across multiple systems and environments. Likewise, data replication is crucial to ensure that your efficiency isn’t disrupted by downtime or failures.

Oracle is compatible with several operating systems, which makes it suitable for diverse infrastructures. It delivers high availability through Data Guard, GoldenGate, and primary/standby database replication, which ensures high performance during task allocation, clustering, and backup.

PostgreSQL provides many built-in replication options, such as logical replication, replication slots, and streaming replication. These options increase its failover capabilities and enable data replication across multiple instances. It’s also highly portable and can be run on Linux, Windows, macOS, and Unix-based systems. Because of its open source nature, PostgreSQL is easily adaptable and offers flexible deployment. Using Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), changes can be made without impacting other transactions. A database snapshot is provided to ensure that ACID principles are maintained without needing to read locks. 

Both Oracle and PostgreSQL support ORM frameworks and are compatible with JDBC, ODBC, OLEDB, and .Net libraries. However, PostgreSQL supports a larger group of APIs than Oracle, allowing it to be integrated with various applications, add-ons, and non-SQL environments.

Functionality

Oracle and PostgreSQL offer numerous advanced database management features for key functionality. However, their methods vary.

Oracle provides a diverse range of features and capabilities, including spatial data support and advanced analytics. It also offers extensive packages and built-in functions to optimize and fine-tune performance. Using in-memory columns, Oracle stores data for fast warehousing and offers multi-tenant architecture to simplify database consolidation. Additionally, it utilizes flashback technology for data recovery and supports advanced indexing, partitioning, and sharding.

Likewise, PostgreSQL uses open source tools to index and partition. You can fine-tune its performance and customize functions using a range of third-party tools. Additionally, its support for JSON data types, full-text search, and spatial data types makes it suitable for use across various industries. 

High availability and disaster recovery

As mentioned above, both database management systems offer high availability and disaster recovery, and both can handle copious amounts of data.

Oracle provides comprehensive backup and recovery mechanisms, including automated backups, flashback technology, Data Guard, and recovery managers (RMAN). These methods ensure rapid data recovery and protection in case of disruptions:

• Data Guard: Facilitates synchronous and asynchronous data replication for disaster recovery

• RAC: Enables load balancing and fault tolerance by distributing data across multiple nodes

• RMAN: Creates automated solutions for incremental backups, point-in-time recovery, and data validation

PostgreSQL’s built-in streaming and logical replication mechanisms offer diverse options for backup and data recovery, including logical and physical backups and point-in-time recovery. You can also continuously archive your data, ensuring that it’s protected and available. These features provide PostgreSQL with failover capabilities and data redundancy.

Ecosystem and community support

How well your database management system integrates with third-party extensions—and how easy it is to customize—both have a significant impact on your organization.

Oracle emphasizes enterprise-level partnerships and offers strong vendor support. This focus enables extensive integrations with enterprise software. It offers various support tiers tailored to different organizational needs. Enterprises can benefit from 24/7 Oracle support, a comprehensive knowledge base, and software updates.

PostgreSQL has a large and active open source community that contributes to its continual development and improvement. This community provides extensive forums, mailing lists, and documentation that make it easy to find solutions to common issues. There are also third-party support options available to help enterprise adopters receive prompt professional assistance so that critical systems can operate smoothly. It also integrates easily with third-party tools.

Choosing between Oracle and PostgreSQL

When deciding between Oracle and PostgreSQL, your organization needs to consider several factors, such as support preferences, compliance obligations, budget, desired features, and scalability requirements. Evaluating each of these will enable you to determine the best fit for your specific use.

Oracle’s advanced features, enterprise-grade security, dedicated vendor support, and scalability make it great for regulated industries that require compliance. PostgreSQL offers rich functionality and extensibility in a cost-effective package, ideal for businesses with limited budgets.

Another factor to consider when deciding between these two database management systems is how easy it is to migrate your data. Oracle provides built-in support, such as Oracle Data Pump and SQL Developer. These migration tools result in a smooth transition. PostgreSQL offers utilities such as pg_dump and pgloader to facilitate data migration from other databases.

Oracle and PostgreSQL are comparable in their performance, capabilities, and compatibility. While Oracle offers strong security, availability, and replication, PostgreSQL is more affordable and scalable, and it has better API compatibility. If your organization values high availability and data replication and it processes high volumes of data, Oracle is a smart choice. However, if you want an easy-to-use system with a low cost of ownership, no licensing costs, and customizable features, PostgreSQL may better suit your needs.

Transform Your Business with EDB

In today’s data-driven world, managing your organization’s data is paramount. You need a data management system that supports your business needs. EDB can help you harness the power of PostgreSQL with our unmatched expertise and 24/7 global support. To learn more about the differences between Oracle and PostgreSQL and discover whether PostgreSQL is an ideal option for your business, contact us today.