The EDB Postgres Advanced Server is an advanced deployment of the PostgreSQL relational database with greater features and Oracle compatibility, from EnterpriseDB headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts.
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.
If you have a cluster of nodes with MariaDB MaxScale and you want all the nodes of the cluster to have a similar load and not to be be penalized for queries or writes to the database, you can mount the MaxScale product in front of the MariaDB cluster. MaxScale will balance the requests based on what is being sent to each node to have an equitable load and will cache the queries that it sends to each one. This optimizes the response time to database queries and spreads the load out among all nodes in a similar way.
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.
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.
MariaDB MaxScale is a powerful tool and easy to use. It has helped us a lot to improve the performance of our database queries. It implements a security layer that acts as a firewall for the databases, masks the data, or limits the results of the queries. It also integrates easily with Kafka.
We have launched several inquiries to MariaDB MaxScale support, and they have always responded very quickly. They also want to hold frequent meetings with the client to get their opinion understand how they can help. I see a very human support that is concerned about the customer.
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.
ProxySLQ allows many simultaneous connections and allows the cache of queries in memory but it does not have high availability or scalability natively, only through external tools. HAProxy is not able to perform load balancing in an optimal way.
Instead, MariaDB MaxScale allows high availability, scalability, and data replication to external systems such as Kafka. In addition, MaxScale has a monitor that allows you to see the status of the set of databases.
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.
