Yes, strings appear like an afterthought, and sadly the Octave version has slight incompatibilities which may be a PITA for any non trivial script which aims to be compatible.
For my thesis I did something similar: bash scripts to extract raw data from a Subversion repository, to be preprocessed with PHP scripts (now I would prefer Python but had more experience with PHP) for text extraction and csv output, and finally Octave did the math magic, generating tables and saving graphics in png format, ready for import into my Lyx document.
In my experience, it is from technical management in medium/big companies you'll listen some good things about Oracle as a database product (regardless of its actual merits), like stability, scalability, compliance checks, and other "enterprisy" features (like database encryption). Also, it is offered as a default database option for many enterprise applications from their vendors.
While many people points to Postgresql as "the alternative", in many places outside USA its commercial support is not available, or too limited.
Other commercial alternatives (like MSSQL) have the (more or less) the same bad reputation regarding licensing costs.
Of course almost all startups expect a long live, but strategically it may be better (for the founders) to close when the fundamental assumptions are no longer valid, in order to do a future clean restart in a brand new endeavor (usually after a detox period).