EDB Postgres Advanced Server vs. Google Cloud SQL

It's great if you are using or wish to use PostgreSQL and need the added performance optimization, security features and developer and DBA tools. If you need compatibility with Oracle it's a must-have. There are many developer features that greatly assist dev teams in integrating and implementing complex middleware. It's great for optimizing complex database queries as well as for scaling. I would recommend Postgres Plus Advanced Server for any software development team that is hitting the limit of what PostgreSQL is capable of and wants to improve performance, security, and gain extra developer tools.

Incentivized

Although Google Cloud SQL has room for improvement by addressing a minor lack of features, its features and services keep it high among other SQL database products. It is very fast compared to others. Since it is cloud-based, maintenance is also easier. Integration capabilities are also more than expected.

Incentivized

• PPAS Oracle compatibility, especially the PL/SQL syntax, has made migrating database-tier code very simple. Most Oracle packages do not need to be changed at all and those that do are generally for simple reasons like a reserved word in PPAS that is allowed in Oracle.
• PPAS xDB, the multi-master replication tool, is simple and - most important - does not break with network or other interruptions. We have been able to configure and forget, which our customers could never do with other multi-master tools.
• Most people had no idea that PPAS and PostgreSQL have full CRUD support for JSON. They think you need a specialized product and/or that JSON is read-only. Every organization that I have worked with is evaluating adding JSON to their relational model.

Incentivized

• Very easy to use and migrate existing database systems to Google Cloud SQL system
• Easy to query with real-time query assessment as well as processing metrics to help optimize the queries
• No need to learn any other querying language (like in Hadoop ecosystem), as SQL works pretty fine
• Easy-to-use GCP portal to type in queries and see the results on the screen (no need to go on command line )
• Easy to set up

Incentivized

• Documentation is excellent but spread out across many resources and can take a while to wade through—would benefit from having more intro level, getting started guides for various languages.
• Ruby support is excellent but more Ruby examples and beginner-level documentation would be nice.
• It is sometimes hard to find a community of users on StackOverflow so a larger community, and a dedicated forum with active members to answer questions and work through issues would be nice.

Incentivized

• Increasing support for more database engines may enable a wider range of application needs to be met.
• Implementing and updating cutting-edge security features on a constant basis.
• Streamlining and enhancing the tools for transferring data to Google Cloud SQL from on-premises databases or other cloud providers.

Everything is great about using Google Cloud SQL, but I only dock marks for requiring the Cloud Auth Proxy to connect locally without using allowed networks. I get that it's necessary since it's behind a VPC but it's just a bit clunky to use. That being said, I wouldn't really call that a big deciding factor for Google Cloud SQL's usability.

Incentivized

GCP support in general requires a support agreement. For small organizations like us, this is not affordable or reasonable. It would help if Google had a support mechanism for smaller organizations. It was a steep learning curve for us because this was our first entry into the cloud database world. Better documentation also would have helped.

Incentivized

PPAS proved better for our customer's data-centric apps than Oracle in all but a few edge cases (encryption at rest and multi-TB database-tier backups) because it is simpler to install/maintain, runs nearly all Oracle-syntax SQL as well as ANSI SQL. PPAS has much more JSON capabilities (full CRUD vs. read-only in Oracle), simpler geospatial, simpler / more stable replication and datatypes that match developer expectations, such as BOOLEAN and ENUMs.

Incentivized

In our experience, we were down for almost a day, because Database Engineers at Rackspace weren't able to understand or provide a solution, and when they did, they had to recreate the database from the scratch. On a server, this is time consuming. When we faced a similar scenario on Google Cloud SQL it was as easy as to recover from the last image through the console. We were back up in less than 30 minutes. Such a solution, saves you money by reducing churn and keeping the business operating.

Incentivized

• Postgres Plus Advanced Server is quite complex and may take longer to implement certain things than simply using PostgreSQL depending on developer familiarity with the platform.
• Getting up to speed can be daunting so again, there is an upfront cost in time spent learning the platform, besides the potential for extra time spent on a feature-by-feature basis.
• The cost of Postgres Plus Advanced Server should be weighed against simply using PostgreSQL to decide which is the best solution for your business needs.

Incentivized

• When first migrated to a cloud environment, the Cloud SQL instance had a higher cost than our former MySQL VM instance, but many other infrastructure costs had also been reduced and the total balance of our migration to the cloud was a reduction of 45% of our infrastructure costs.
• DB performance has increased and maintenance tasks reduced in a high percentage.
• Disaster recovery plans are easier to follow now than before our cloud migration.

Incentivized