Astra DB vs. Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing

We use Astra DB to improve our management systems. Storing data has become hassle-free and quite simple. When launching a Cassandra-based cloud application, Astra DB is exactly what you need. In addition to the standard training programs and videos, the extended support and training require significant additional effort to activate and cover which I feel is a bit more tedious task.

Incentivized

If your company's value is not increased by maintaining databases, you should use the ATP.

• It's very resilient and scalable, no downtime and no issues scaling up to meet our needs.
• Low latency reads and writes
• Cost effective - The on demand model worked out cheaper than running our own clusters
• Great support for any of our questions or issues

Incentivized

• Quick and simple to deploy (less than 5 steps to create a new instance)
• No administrative tasks (backup, re-sizing) required

Incentivized

• Need better fine-grained Security options.
• The support team sometimes requires the escalate button pressed on tickets, to get timely responses. I will say, once the ticket is escalated, action is taken.
• They require better documentation on the migration of data. The three primary methods for migrating large data volumes are bulk, Cassandra Data Migrator, and ZDM (Zero Downtime Migration Utility). Over time I have become very familiar will all three of these methods; however, through working with the Services team and the support team, it seemed like we were breaking new ground. I feel if the utilities were better documented and included some examples and/or use cases from large data migrations; this process would have been easier. One lesson learned is you likely need to migrate your application servers to the same cloud provider you host Astra on; otherwise, the latency is too large for latency-sensitive applications.

Incentivized

• Connectivity between ATP and Oracle Kuberentes Engine cluster seems to drop randomly
• The ATP could come in an even smaller shape as the smallest shape is already quite big . But if must be more than always free, as that version does have connectivity limitations about 20 connections

It's a great product but suffers with counters. This isn't a deal breaker but lets down what is otherwise a good all round solution

Incentivized

You get almost all the features of Oracle Database, including the ability to deploy APEX applications, without having to worry about system, storage or database configuration and maintenance, backups, etc. Also, you can start for free and move up adding resources as you need.

Incentivized

Their response time is fast, in case you do not contact them during business hours, they give a very good follow-up to your case. They also facilitate video calls if necessary for debugging.

Incentivized

We know Astra is built on Cassandra / Kubernetes / Stargate and can work on any cloud. The competitors we reviewed are cloud specific and create a lock in. We also have the option to run Cassandra / Stargate ourselves if we wanted to. The competitors don’t give that option

Incentivized

Both Azure SQL Database and Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing offer a powerful and robust database platform. The advantage of Autonomous Transaction Processing is the ability to host APEX applications for free and without any special/complicated deployment or configuration process. Having a rapid development environment embedded for free was the main advantage for choosing Oracle as my cloud database provider.

Incentivized

As per my experience, I never faced issues of scalability with Astra DB. We don't have at the moment a use case with millions of requests or users, so I can't give full score because of my limited use case.

Incentivized

• The high availability capabilities of Astra DB can assist in reducing downtime, which is crucial for revenue-generating applications.
• The developer-friendly features of Astra DB, as well as support for known query languages, can help expedite development, save development time, and minimize labor costs. This can result in a shorter time to market and a higher ROI.

Incentivized

• Approx 100 times faster spin up than manual setup of an Oracle DB
• 3h annual maintenance for big version releases (18c to 19c) compared to est. 500h annual maintenance with manual database updates