Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) vs. PostgreSQL

Amazon Relational Database Service is a perfect fit for everyone who is seeking for an high-performance cloud-based database service. No matter if Postgres, Oracle, or any other type of relational database. Amazon RDS is our first choice for any kind of database requirement in the cloud. Especially I like the scalability.

PostgreSQL, unlike other databases, is user-friendly and uses an open-source database. Ideal for relational databases, they can be accessed when speed and efficiency are required. It enables high-availability and disaster recovery replication from instance to instance. PostgreSQL can store data in a JSON format, including hashes, keys, and values. Multi-platform compatibility is also a big selling point. We could, however, use all the DBMS’s cores. While it works well in fast environments, it can be problematic in slower ones or cause multiple master replication.

• Automated Database Management: We use it for streamlining routine tasks like software patching and database backups.
• Scalability on Demand: we use it to handle traffic spikes, scaling both vertically and horizontally.
• Database Engine Compatibility: It works amazingly with multiple database engines used by different departments within our organization including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.
• Monitoring: It covers our extensive monitoring and logging, and also has great compatibility with Amazon CloudWatch

Incentivized

• The stability it offers, its speed of response and its resource management is excellent even in complex database environments and with low-resource machines.
• The large amount of resources it has in addition to the many own and third-party tools that are compatible that make productivity greatly increase.
• The adaptability in various environments, whether distributed or not, [is a] complete set of configuration options which allows to greatly customize the work configuration according to the needs that are required.
• The excellent handling of referential and transactional integrity, its internal security scheme, the ease with which we can create backups are some of the strengths that can be mentioned.

Incentivized

• It is a little difficult to configure and connect to an RDS instance. The integration with ECS can be made more seamless.
• Exploring features within RDS is not very easy and intuitive. Either a human friendly documentation should be added or the User Interface be made intuitive so that people can explore and find features on their own.
• There should be tools to analyze cost and minimize it according to the usage.

Incentivized

• The query syntax for JSON fields is unwieldy when you start getting into complex queries with many joins.
• I wish there was a distinction (a flag) you could set for automated scripts vs working in the psql CLI, which would provide an 'Are you sure you want to do X?' type prompt if your query is likely to affect more than a certain number of rows. Especially on updates/deletes. Setting the flag in the headless(scripted) flow would disable the prompt.
• Better documentation around JSON and Array aggregation, with more examples of how the data is transformed.

Incentivized

We do renew our use of Amazon Relational Database Service. We don't have any problems faced with RDS in place. RDS has taken away lot of overhead of hosting database, managing the database and keeping a team just to manage database. Even the backup, security and recovery another overhead that has been taken away by RDS. So, we will keep on using RDS.

Incentivized

As a needed software for day to day development activities

Incentivized

I've been using AWS Relational Database Services in several projects in different environments and from the AWS products, maybe this one together to EC2 are my favourite. They deliver what they promise. Reliable, fast, easy and with a fair price (in comparison to commercial products which have obscure license agreements).

Incentivized

Postgresql is the best tool out there for relational data so I have to give it a high rating when it comes to analytics, data availability and consistency, so on and so forth. SQL is also a relatively consistent language so when it comes to building new tables and loading data in from the OLTP database, there are enough tools where we can perform ETL on a scalable basis.

Incentivized

PostgreSQL's availability is top notch. Apart from connection time-out for an idle user, the database is super reliable.

Incentivized

The data queries are relatively quick for a small to medium sized table. With complex joins, and a wide and deep table however, the performance of the query has room for improvement.

Incentivized

I have only had good experiences in working with AWS support. I will admit that my experience comes from the benefit of having a premium tier of support but even working with free-tier accounts I have not had problems getting help with AWS products when needed. And most often, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining how to operate a service so a quick spin through the docs has been useful in solving problems.

Incentivized

There are several companies that you can contract for technical support, like EnterpriseDB or Percona, both first level in expertise and commitment to the software.

But we do not have contracts with them, we have done all the way from googling to forums, and never have a problem that we cannot resolve or pass around. And for dozens of projects and more than 15 years now.

Incentivized

the online training & digital content available on the web from AWS was having sufficient information to deploy and run the service

Incentivized

The online training is request based. Had there been recorded videos available online for potential users to benefit from, I could have rated it higher. The online documentation however is very helpful. The online documentation PDF is downloadable and allows users to pace their own learning. With examples and code snippets, the documentation is great starting point.

Incentivized

The online documentation of the PostgreSQL product is elaborate and takes users step by step.

Incentivized

In a few words, we are just to confortable working with oracle and sql server. Using RDS add another layer of distributed database in order to backup everything we have in case of a disaster and also complies with authorities locally and internacionally. All database we use, are local in custom servers that we maintain, but we agree to expand this.

Incentivized

Postgres stacks up just [fine] along the other big players in the RDBMS world. It's very popular for a reason. It's very close to MySQL in terms of cost and features - I'd pick either solution and be just as happy. Compared to Oracle it is a MUCH cheaper solution that is just as usable.

Incentivized

The DB is reliable, scalable, easy to use and resolves most DB needs

Incentivized

• RDS is costly and thus small business should avoid it as it might not be worthful (in ROI perspective)
• Downtime is very low and there are automated backups thus we dont have to worry much about technical stuff and can focus more on marketing and sales
• Due to various automated features such as automated backup etc we dont need a huge technical team thus reducing the cost of maintaining a huge technical team ,

Incentivized

• The user-role system has saved us tons of time and thus money. As I mentioned in the "Use Case" section, Postgres is not only used by engineering but also finance to measure how much to charge customers and customer support to debug customer issues. Sure, it's not easy for non-technical employees to psql in and view raw tables, but it has saved engineering hundreds of man-hours that would have had to be spent on building equivalent tools to serve finance or customer support.
• It provides incredibly trustworthy storage for wherever customer data dumped in. In our 6 years of Postgres existence, we have not lost a byte of customer data due to Postgres messing up a transaction or during the multiple times the hard-drives failed (thanks to ACID compliance!).
• This is less significant, but Postgres is also quite easy to manage (unless you are going above and beyond to squeeze out every last bit of performance). There's not much to configure, and the out of the box settings are quite sane. That has saved us engineers lots of time that would have gone into Postgres administration.

Incentivized