Why Banks or Financial Companies prefer Oracle than other RDBMS for their "Core" systems?

mysql sql-server oracle postgresql bank
edwin.nathaniel picture edwin.nathaniel · Apr 23, 2010 · Viewed 13.4k times · Source

I'd like to know why most Banks or Financial companies prefer Oracle than other RDBMS for their core systems (the absolutely minimum features that a Bank must support). I found a few answers that didn't satisfy me. For example: Oracle has more features. But features for what? Can't you implement that in application level if you were not using Oracle?

Could someone please describe a bit more technical but still on high-level overview of what the bank needs and how Oracle would solve it and the others can't or don't have the features yet?

Minor question: would you use ORM if you have to develop a banking solution?

I came from the web-app (web 2.0) crowd who normally hear news about MySQL, PostgreSQL or even key-value/column-oriented storage solution. I have almost zero knowledge on how Banks or Financial companies operates from technical perspective.

Thank you, Ed

Answer

Tom Cabanski picture Tom Cabanski · Apr 23, 2010

Oracle has a reputation for better reliability and security. Historically, it has outperformed and out-scaled any other SQL engine. This is changing, but the perception is still there. In many markets, Oracle is still perceived as the gold standard. Financial services seems to be one of them.

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