Oracle ? on Mac OS 10.x

I have some general questions about Oracle. At this moment I don't know much about it - (ok, I don't know ANYTHING about it -haven't googled yet). Nevertheless I was wondering if I could get an unbiased opinion about Oracle on the mac. Hopefully from someone who has tried out different databases.

Is Oracle a mac friendly database?

If so, how does it compare to other databases like for example mysql ? ( advantages / disadvantages )

Can you use PHP with Oracle?


How about the $$ factor ? (mysql is free)


Stability, security issues, etc?

Why in the world would you want to use Oracle? is it personal, is it small shop? is it a large shop? How many records do you plan to have? What features do you need? Most all applications can use MySQL, very very little can't.

Oracle is a huge database. The overhead to make it run something small isn't worth it. If it is OS X friendly, there is a linux port of Oracle Lite that you should probably be able to run.

Here is my nickel.

Oracle is expensive software, I believe somewhere near $1000.

Exactly the points I was going to make depending on the specs he was needing It's bloatware imo, it is indeed powerful, but for 95% of the businesses out there there is no need for Oracle, MySQL will do what they need.

Thanks

Well, I am definitively pro-Open Source i.e. MySQL but I wanted to understand the big picture. For example Why would someone need to use Oracle instead of MySQL? what kind of complexity or what kind of needs would force someone to take that route?

I had a feeling that Oracle was somewhat in the vein of Micro$oft since I keep hearing on the news that it's devouring other companies.

What I should be looking for is for a "Database Comparison Chart"

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Search Update: comparison chart I found :

http://www.mysql.com/information/benchmarks-old.html

Man, you are asking questions whole libraries of books are devoted to

When you work with millions and millions of records in a database, that is when you would consider Oracle. Even then you might not. It is just a "bigger" database, designed to span clusters and house so much data, you couldn't even begin to conceive of.