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EnterpriseDB history
Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting
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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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