I worked at a place that had a huge Oracle RAC license. We ran non-mission-critical data collection apps on it, but the app which dispensed drugs in real-time, all over the world, not only ran Postgres, but 90% of the business logic was in DB functions.

I sometimes think that the lack of books for Postgres is because someone is paying to keep them off the market.

Every few days on pgsql.general mailing lists, there is someone asking for a good Postgresql book (the "High Performance MySQL" kind)

Less books = one more tick mark for Oracle.

More books = you writing one.

If you won't do it, why should anyone else?

Because there are people who consider themselves technical writers. Either they do it or someone from the core postgresql team who has the credibility.

I would love to hear why you made this decision.

I didn't. It wasn't subversive, like the parent comment. It just worked out that way because of technology acquisitions. Customers wanted to hear their data was "on Oracle."

My take is that the overhead of maintaining and using Oracle means that you have to cut resources somewhere else. I'm pretty sure a competent DBA and developers can ensure atomicity and integrity using Postgres (instead of Oracle), and have a lot of time left over to create more features in the application.

Don't get me wrong - Postgres is awesome and I would happily use it for any project. I'm not sure Postgres is easier to manage than Oracle and places any less maintenance overhead, but YMMV.

Its just that RAC is a special technology with no equivalent on other DBs. It is usually placed where you need load balancing on the DB level. It normally has very high availability that is a good fit for mission critical DBs. I hate seeing good technology wasted, but you are right that if Postgres is already there and works well, there is no point in moving anywhere.

Relying on a conspiracy of the entire technical staff to keep your job seems like a bad idea to me.

Sometimes, that conspiracy is what keeps the business running. Whithout it, there would be no jobs.

Not that this is the case everywhere and everytime, but if technical decisions were left solely in the hands of people that lack technical skills, the situation would be even worse that it is now, with all the "enterprise software" floating around and causing trouble directly proportional to their cost.

The market is what lets programmers keep their jobs. There aren't enough of them, so they have to settle for what's out there.

Might as well make the best of it.