PaaS, DBaaS and the Oracle Database Cloud Service
- by yaldahhakim
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As with many widely hyped areas, there is much more
variation within the broad spectrum of products referred to as “Cloud” that is
immediately apparent. This variation is
evident in one of the key misunderstandings about the Oracle Database Cloud
Service.
People could be forgiven for thinking that the Database
Cloud Service was a Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), but this is actually not
true. The Database Cloud Service is a
Platform-as-a-Service, which presents a different user and developer interface
and has a different set of qualities.
A good way to think about the difference between these two
varieties of Cloud offerings is that you, the customer, have to deal with
things at the level of the offering, but not for anything below it. In practice, this means that you do not have
to deal with hardware or system software, including installation and
maintenance, for DBaaS. You also do not
have much control over configuration of these options.
For PaaS, you don’t have to deal with hardware, system
software, or database software – and also do not have control over these levels
in the stack. So you cannot modify configuration parameters for the database
with the Database Cloud Service – your interface is through SQL and PL/SQL,
with Application Express, included in the Database Cloud Service, or through
JDBC for Java apps running in the Java Cloud Service, or through RESTful Web
Services.
You will notice what is not mentioned there – SQL*Net. You cannot access your Oracle Database Cloud
Service by changing an entry in the TNSNames file and using SQL*Net. So the effort involved in migrating an
existing Oracle Database in your data center to the Database Cloud Service may
be prohibitive.
The good news is that Application Express and the RESTful
Web Services wizard in the Database Cloud Service allow you to develop new
applications very quickly, and, of course, the provisioning of the entire
Database Cloud Service takes only minutes.
