Oracle vs. MySQL

While I'm on vacation, my good boss sent me an email asking me which training I needed to work on our company wiki when I get back (never check work emails when on vacation). I'm kinda rusty in programming so I'm looking forward to it. He suggested that I go and study php and Oracle. Question...

I know Oracle is proprietary but I'm not sure how better it is than MySQL. I've never worked with Oracle before so it's interesting but I'd rather get MySQL because it's free (and I'm more familiar with it than the other) lol. I know there are programmers here lol. I'd appreciate your input! Which one would be better? What will I miss if I use mysql?

I'll only use it with the wikimedia script. And no... My boss is more a network engineer than a web developer lol. Thanks in advance!

No idea what you're talking about. lol.. Sorry, Abing..

Oracle vs MySQL??!

MySQL is owned and distributed by Oracle.

If you want to use a free relational dbms akin to MySQL check out MariaDb - free under GNU GPL and uses the same commands (essentially the same as/consider it as a wrapper to MySQL. You use the same commands for all database queries)

Haha, it's okay lady blue. I'm waiting for Astrid and/other programmers who may have worked with Oracle before.

Erm not exactly. Oracle is a db management system owned by Oracle corp and it is proprietary. MySQL is another db management system, which has both open source and commercial licenses available. I'm leaning towards using MySQL but people say Oracle is the best one out there. Not sure if it's worth it and efficient for the project I'm working on.

I'm no expert in this area, but it looks like you can use mySQL without any problems

Oracle SQL Developer

I also found a comparison, if that helps:

Oracle and MySQL Compared

Ok, my bad. I didn't know you were referring to Oracle's RDBMS -mostly for J2EE applications. MySQL is still owned and distributed by Oracle though!

However for website development especially with PHP - I assume you are going to be using a LAMP stack... MariaDB/MySQL should do. MariaDb is open-source developed by the MySQL community (forked after Oracle took over)


Essentially when you question efficiency you would be looking at two constraints - performance and storage. How fast does it take for a query to get executed and how much data storage it would require.

Good idea to ask/clarify with the boss what sort of application he is planning on deploying and why the architecture entails usage of Oracle for a wiki page.

In all development what is "best" is highly subjective and you will never get a clear answer on that question. Oracle is not mostly for Java it is a relational database that can be used with pretty much any system -- PHP, .NET, Java, Node.js, etc, but of course they want to push you to Java because they own it.

I had very limited experience with Oracle, but it was quite a bit different than working with SQL Server or MySQL. I wouldn't shy away from something just because of familiarity; instead, it is about what is the best fit for your company. There is an Express edition of Oracle maybe install it and mess around with it and see what you think.

If you are working in an Enterprise environment, do some research into scalability for both systems. There really isn't a one fit all solution when it comes to development unfortunately, so without details it is not possible to pick what is best.

You could be like my company and write your on database using CQRS, haha.

Thank you all! I'm going with mysql database mgmt system and I'm excited!

Oracle for proffesional, MySql for amateur