EnterpriseDB history

Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson

EnterpriseDB is a database built on PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open source database. EnterpriseDB also provides source code syntax compatibility with Oracle. That means that, within limits, your PL/SQL and SQL code, your views, db links, data types and more, all run unchanged when moving from Oracle to EnterpriseDB, to Oracle from EnterpriseDB, or even back and forth between them at will.

To understand the advantages such a platform provides requires a certain amount of understanding about the genealogy of the product as well as some understanding of its road map for the future. EnterpriseDB has a stellar genealogy. This chapter will give you that understanding. If you want to jump right in and get your feet wet, skip this chapter and go right to chapter 2 where you will learn how to install EnterpriseDB and learn what components comprise EnterpriseDB. You can always come back and read this chapter at your leisure.

It begins with A Mini-History of PostgreSQL, which will give you some idea of where PostgreSQL comes from and what it offers as a base platform to build upon.

The next major section is A Mini-History of Oracle and PL/SQL. The section addresses the questions: where did PL/SQL come from and why is it the best database development language ever developed?

The next section pulls the first two sections together, EnterpriseDB: Enterprise Compatibility. In that section, I explain how EnterpriseDB has taken the best of two worlds and combined them into an enterprise class database that provides, in addition to the reliability and scalability of PostgreSQL, compatibility with the best selling, market leading Oracle database.

As a database developer in general, and a PL/SQL developer in particular, I am excited by anything that will make the power of PL/SQL available to more developers and DBAs. If the only language you know is PL/SQL, then with the introduction of EnterpriseDB, you have just doubled the number of databases for which you can code.

However, EnterpriseDB does not stop at PL/SQL. They add data dictionary compatibility, SQL compatibility - even decode and sysdate are supported, and data type compatibility. As a developer who uses packages almost exclusively for my code, I could not call it compatible without package support. EnterpriseDB provides that compatibility also.

That compatibility does not mean that you lose PostgreSQL compatibility. EnterpriseDB takes nothing away from PostgreSQL. What this means is that if you are already a PostgreSQL developer, or a company developing software for PostgreSQL, you can make the move to EnterpriseDB and grow your Oracle compatibility over time. Developers can expand their skills, and vendors can expand their offerings, without sacrificing their existing knowledge base.

This is an excerpt from the book "EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference" by Rampant TechPress.

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