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Posting anonymously because the company I work for has a huge Ingres investment.

You are right that it is arguable. However, I have Ingres databases that are 50GB+ running mission critical applications with hundreds of concurrent users. This is obviously not a comment on the quality of the source code, but demonstrates that as an RDBMS, Ingres (certainly in the R3.0 product) is a very stable, very scalable - and Open Source - product.

The general assumption on sites such as Slashdot is that Postgres is the superior product, but I've yet to see figures supporting either argument. If you've not checked out R3 of Ingres, then I'd suggest a trip to the Ingres Open Source page, if only to have a look at the documentation. It's a great product and it's a real shame that it's being ignored by so many.

Ingres. Here

Mysql Here

Postgresql Here

Firebird Here

You should look into Firebird or Ingres for an embedded relational database.

This must be in satire, or ignorance.

Postgresql has a great variety of tools, both OSS and commercial that work great. I've been working on an updated list of all the tools. Here are a few of the most popular admin tools:

PGadminIII
http://www.sqlmanager.net/products/postgresql/mana ger

DBvisualizer
http://www.minq.se/products/dbvis/

EMS Postgresql Manager
http://www.sqlmanager.net/products/postgresql/mana ger

PHPpgadmin
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phppgadmin

Sybase Power Designer
http://www.sybase.com/products/enterprisemodeling/ powerdesigner

ERWIN data modeller
http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=260

CASE Studio 2
http://www.casestudio.com/enu/default.aspx

Postgresql has a vibrant tool community. If you want more info on Postgresql tools see
http://techdocs.postgresql.org/v2/Guides/PostgreSQ L%20GUI%20Tools/document_view

In the mainframe world they have several ways of costing:
Per LPAR (virtual machine) capacity
Per CPU seconds used (rationalised for costing)
Per access - With some programs you pay for the number of times the program is run.

We recently had to negotiate with CA because we upgraded a mainframe (nearly doubled its capacity) and CA argued that we owed them more due to the LPAR having greater capacity.

This is akin to Windows Server Edition costing more because you are running it on a 3.4Ghz machine rather than a 3.0Ghz machine.

After dealing with mainframes for four years I have come to this concolusion when it comes to money: Companies will charge every cent they can, in every way they can up to the point of the customer not using their product.

The ending to the story above is quite nice. One of our managers nicely told CA that since we have not increased our usage of their product they can either submit a better offer than a $300,000 increase (we're halfway through a contract btw) or we will migrate to another product. We are talking about CA AllFusion Endevor here. There are alternatives. CA knows it. We know it. A better deal was done. (No, we are not privy to the details, only that it was more than what we are currently paying, far less than what they demanded, and we are continuing to use CA Endevor. I think someone tipped them off that we could be expanding to use more CA products in the future and that alienating us could cost them a lot of money).

http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=259

However: For what we pay for the mainframe to run is nothing compared to what it costs to do the same transactions on Midrange. Ever looked up the price of using webMethods?

I might also suggest Firebird, the open-source version of Borland's InterBase product. It's licensed under a variant of the Mozilla Public License called the "InterBase Public License", but it doesn't seem too onerous. It's still a young product, but it looks like a good base, and I'm sure with a little spit and polish from Sun it could be a decent system.

There's also PostgreSQL's estranged mother, CA Ingres, the commercial version of Stonebreaker's original University Ingres. This is a well-vetted commercial-grade DBMS, although under another odd-wad license (the "Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License v1.1", see here).

That said, I would prefer to see them choose PostgreSQL.

I might also suggest Firebird, the open-source version of Borland's InterBase product. It's licensed under a variant of the Mozilla Public License called the "InterBase Public License", but it doesn't seem too onerous. It's still a young product, but it looks like a good base, and I'm sure with a little spit and polish from Sun it could be a decent system.

There's also PostgreSQL's estranged mother, CA Ingres, the commercial version of Stonebreaker's original University Ingres. This is a well-vetted commercial-grade DBMS, although under another odd-wad license (the "Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License v1.1", see here).

That said, I would prefer to see them choose PostgreSQL.

Peter Wallace, the originator mentioned in the blog, seems to be a real person involved in investigating spyware and such for the travel industry. It does match the Snopes article on details, though. If its a hoax, its pretty well contrived.

Like eTrust AC per chance. Having implemented this as part of a previous role, I would thoroughly recommend it.

Computer Associates

addict3d (more info than the CA link above)

It doesn't look very exploitable, but it is worrysome.

Problem is there is no consideration so the contract is probably not legally binding.

That's nice and all, but is there actually any legal assurance that they won't change their mind and sue a developer for patent infringement at a later day?

The actual list of patents can be found at CA's website

This seems a pretty strange list to me: someone knows why they have chosen those 14 patents? They have a specific application/library in mind?

Looking through here, it seems like these aren't CA's lame ducks either...
The actual list of patents can be found at CA's website

MySQL MaxDB (formerly known as SAPDB) is comparable with Postgresql in terms of features. It suffers a similar lack of recognition with hosting companies and php developers. Ingres is another "enterprise" ready db that is available open source.

Who supports XA Transactions?
MySQL - Not yet (planned in 5.0.12?)
SAPDB/MAXDB - Yes (limitations?)
Postgresql - No - in the works (8.1/8.2?)
Firebird - Yes
Berkeley DB - Yes
Ingres - Yes (limitations?)

Pricing vs Proprietary
Oracle: $58K CDN per CPU + 10% maint
DB2: $55K CDN per CPU + 10% for maint
MS SQL Server: $3K CDN per year per server (enterprise edition)
MySQL MAX DB: $1,800 CDN per CPU + 10% maint
Postgresql: Free + Support
Ingres: Free + support

think of the the amount of scammers that would go out of business

when there is so much money in it, its never gonna stop until we kill the disease, not treat the symptoms

you can scan your windows systems with the following 2 online windows scanners from time to time:

http://www3.ca.com/virusinfo/virusscan.aspx
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

right here from our "friends" at Omniture

so a visiting a page that you can adjust your privacy settings will actually compromise your privacy,
now you can see why the privacy GUI is on Macromedia's site and not built into the player, but thats not suprising

seems Flash is slowly becoming spyware, shame

Thanks for the reply. I think there is a degree of confusion here between X.500 distribution and LDAP referrals. A referral system forces the work back onto the client and therefore does not support proper server side distribution. I believe there are performance issues in this approach that do not lend LDAP only servers well to certain performance sensitive applications.

I can see this descending into a rather long debate so here is a good link that I think fairly explains the differences between X.500 and LDAP.

http://tinyurl.com/7829u

I've only used OpenLDAP, AD and Open Directory (now Computer Associate's eTrust Directory) so I'm willing to be corrected on the exact features of Netscape's directory.

To my knowledge there are only 3 X.500 directories on the market, none of which are free or open source. :-(

• Isode Directory (http://www.isode.com/)
• Siemens DirXServer (http://www.siemens.ie/fixedoperators/CarrierNetwo rks/Meta/meta_range.htm)
• eTrust Directory (http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=160)

http://pegacat.com/jxplorer/

I think it gives Red Hat a huge boost.

One of the problems of current databases when is that a typical relational database doesn't have enough dimensions. Designing a table to store data is trivial - but what happens when you need to know the intersection of X and Y at time Z?

This is a fairly common question in data warehousing: What is the data today, what did it look like yesterday, last week, and last year?

I have seen it worked around in silly ways (snapshot and rename a table every day/week/month) and more clever ways (use separate transaction tables to record changes), but never in a particularly elegant way.

Wiser colleagues whispered to me the dirty answer "object relational" and scurried away to their dens of Rob Zombie and J2EE. I never got my head around object relational databases before leaving that world, and so am left to ponder papers from IDC with statements like this one:

"putting object extensions on RDBMSs is tantamount to adding stereo radios and global navigation systems to horse-drawn carriages"

Ouch, is that a swipe at Oracle? Seems that as far back as 1997 pundits have said that the future is in ODBMS, and not RDBMS or ORDBMS. Hmm...

From the MySQL cluster webpage:
"MySQL Cluster achieves its performance advantage by being a main memory clustered database solution, which keeps all data in memory"

We looked into highly scaleable DB solutions a few months back when building an app that needed thousands of transactions per second with a high write to read ratio. One of the other requirements was that we needed stored procedures.

After looking into nearly every available DB we found that only 2 met our requirements. Oracle and Ingres. After getting prices from Oracle the only option was Ingres. So far it has worked amazingly. Very fast and easy to scale. I'm actually quite surprised more people don't use Ingres.

Firstly, it doesn't clog up your Windows installation and slow down or crash your computer;
how do you know ? iam sure those other vendors will say the same too, or do you think Google has some sort of magical coders that other million dollar software/accelerators companies in the same market cant afford ?

in fact it speeds up your browsing.
right , they all say that

If you want to replace Oracle, another post recommended Postgres, I am recommending Ingres. Ingres and Postgres come from similar lineage except Ingres was comercial, built up to be extremely robust and for many years was Oracle's biggest competition and even today still has more databases deployed then all open source databases together (or so claimed one review I read while researching database alternatives myself). Once CA bought Ingres, development slowed down greatly after 1994, however a decade later they released it as open source, and over the past year new life has been breathed into it. It is still the closest open source databse you'll get compared to Oracle. In fact, in many regards it is better. The one down fall is documentation, but you can always buy support from CA. In all honesty though, if Oracle does what you want, why not keep it? Sure its expensive, but its worth it and very capable. If you arent using it to its full potential then switch, otherwise keep it. Your money is better in Larry Ellis's pockets then in Bill Gate's.
Regards,
Steve

Is this something to think about?

Didn't you hear about Ingres?

This site details the OSS projects they support and partake in...

Speak not the name of ArcServe lest it appear and destroy us all!

ArcServe 2000. Worst piece of flying backup shitware crap out there. Jury's still out on the new versions. God help you if there is a problem with AS 2000. Learn a dialect of Hindi cause you'll be talking to Indians script readers for a fair while. I wouldn't mind talking to anyone about it if they would only USE THEIR FUCKING BRAIN AND STOP READING FROM THE SCRIPT OR ELEVATE THE DAMN CALL!! /rant rant rant, arnk arnk arnk!

No really. ArcServe is bad. Veritas is worse. Upgrade your backup software as soon as you can. Don't be a statistic like me. Do what you can. Run! My GOD! Save your selves!

ERROR - Backup [EN2300] has failed.

Admin: Why?! Why dammit!? Why did you fail?!

Backup Drive: I dunno.
ArcServe 2000 Log: I dunno. D'you know Win2K?
Win2K: Nope. Win2K log?
Win2K Log: Tape wasn't in the backup scratch set. Know anything about this ArcServe?
ArcServe: No! Screw you. Screw you all! If the user doesn't follow the procedure I'm not going to do anything! And AS 2000 Log if you say anything I'm going to bitch slap you into next week!
ArcServe 2000 Log: Okay man. Don't be hatin'! I'm quiet.
Admin: How do I find the procedure?
ArcServe 2000: I don't know that! And if I did the programmers didn't include it in the manual except for really cheese beginner crap. Bite my ass! Oh and by the way, GO FUCK YOURSELF! Sheesh! Call tech support like every other goober. You can contact them through http://www.ca.com/support, but it'll cost you except for slow-boat-to-China online support. Have fun! and again, FUCK YOU!

That is what it is like to deal with ArcServe 2000.

Mods feel free to mod me into oblivion. This is an instructional rant and should be treated as such.

Ingres might do?

• # You need an admin level user name and password or physical access (boot from a CD or firewire, ignore permissions on the internal drive) to install this

• "SoundDiver Virus is a editor/librarian solution for Windows 95, XP, MacOS 9 and MacOS X and can be downloaded free of charge from the Access Music web site."

Virtual Bouncer is an extremely evil adware application. It bills itself as a spyware removal program but it in fact brings popup advertising to your computer. It is also somewhat nasty to remove. Hopefully apps such as Spybot and Adaware are doing a better job with it now, but it did require some manual removal to fully strip it from your system.

How many BIOS or Microcode expliots are out there?

BIOS exploit: Any boot sector virus, or the CIH virus that overwrites all data on your boot volume, including the BIOS Parameter Block in the first sector, and tries to erase your motherboard's flash BIOS. If that doesn't count, do you remember the F0 0F microcode bug on the Pentium?

This may be a little off-topic, but does anyone know how a company can use embedded GIF tracking in HTML mail to potential customers, yet have a privacy policy saying among other things:

It is our intent to inform you before we collect personally identifiable information, and tell you what we intend to do with it. You will have the option of not providing the information, in which case you may still be able to access other portions of this website, although you may not be able to access certain programs or services. In certain portions of this website, we also may enable you to "opt out" of certain uses of your information, or elect not to receive future communications or services.

This may be a little off-topic, but does anyone know how a company can use embedded GIF tracking in HTML mail to potential customers, yet have a privacy policy saying among other things:

It is our intent to inform you before we collect personally identifiable information, and tell you what we intend to do with it. You will have the option of not providing the information, in which case you may still be able to access other portions of this website, although you may not be able to access certain programs or services. In certain portions of this website, we also may enable you to "opt out" of certain uses of your information, or elect not to receive future communications or services.

Speaking of which, anyone using that? The user's email list looks a little quiet...

well Computer Associates lists Gator as rapidly spreading. http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/pest/ do you suppose thet knew of this appointment beforehand?

It's either the network connection itself (especially on dial-up/ISDN/xDSL) or the server. So, fine.. if I use a browser which takes half a second longer to render a page, so what. I've just waited 30 seconds to get half a page from an overloaded server which lives on another continent. Curious that such other limitations should go without mention at the home of the Slashdot Effect.

Plex is model-based. This means that you describe or import your data-model into the tool. Great patterns let you define business logic, user interface etc. on top of your datamodel in no time.

Example: I want to define a table "Person" with a few fields and "Person ID" as primary key. Here's what I have to code to get my data model:

Person know by Person ID
Person has Name
Person has Address
Person ID is a identifier
Name is a shortdescription
Address is a longdescription

Ok, now I want to create a physical table in my database as well as read and update views plus functions to read, create, delete and update my table. Here's what I code:

Person is a RelationalTable

That is it! One line

Now I want to add a UI that uses my table, views and functions. I code:

Person is a EditDialog

Now I have a windows or java user interface that allows me to browse all records, add new records, change or delete records. Because it is based on my datamodel, the UI has all the right fields, knows that Person ID is mandatory etc. etc.

Also I can specify my database functions to reside on a server and UI on a desktop. The tool creates all communication code etc.

Now all I have to do is to let the tool generate the code and run my app. The tool creates tables and views in the database, generates C++ or Java code for serverfuntions and UI and compiles everything.

Of course you can modify all you want, change layout, business logic, add new patterns etc. etc.

You can do web, wireless and web services also.

Check it out here

March.

It was a pretty lame one, granted, and requires a particular environmental variable to be set on the server. However, it (justifiably) gave the "QMa1l is teh 1337!!1!" fanboys a rude awakening.

An adequate replacement for MySQL on Windows has been available for some time now: Ingres.

If you think that's bad, check out BitDefender and eTrust Antivirus for Palm OS. There are some Palm OS models that can go online wirelessly, but the chance of a "virus" hitting them is very slim. Yay for corporate paranoia.

Other than the obvious mySQL and PostgreSQL, I have tried two others... CA's Ingres and IBM's Cloudscape (which is an embedded DB).

Ingres was originally intended to compete with the likes of Oracle and MS SQL Server, but never had the power or client base. OpenSourcing Ingres looks like CA's attempt to beef up both in one shot. It's not a GPL license, just a chance to peek at the source and maybe help out. The interface that ships is very much like Oracle's.

Cloudscape is nice, but not even as powerful as PostgreSQL.

I think there is a huge market still untapped for open source DB's... especially RDBMS, but alas, large companies are (of course) slow to adopt.

All Symantec needs to complete this picutre is a good monitoring software...

Norton Antivirus vs eTrust
Backup Exec vs ARCServ (Brightstor)
___________ vs Unicenter

Can anyone fill in the blank?

I stopped trusting Lycos the day I started finding this bloody thing on my customers computers. That they tried and failed at something so shady in the first place doesn't seem like much of a surprise to me. This was just some poorly done publicity stunt, probably dreamed up in by some PHB deep in the dungeons of their marketing department.

i'm so confused. isn't this the same lycos that has their sidesearch spyware (http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/pest/pest.aspx ?id=453078521)? and if so, isn't this a bit disingenuous to be a anti-spam patriot while perpetuating their own brand of spyware? i mean, really, now.

You're right, the set of spyware tools tested is not among the best or even popular ones.

He should have tested these:

* Ad-Aware from Lavasoft
* Pest Patrol from Computer Associates
* Spy Sweeper from Webroot Software
* McAfee AntiSpyware from Network Associates
* Spyware Blaster from Javacool software

Check this out for a *real* review: http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-test-guide.htm

I fight this daily, but wasn't/isn't Lycos the same company that distributes Lycos Sidesearch, a BHO/toolbar recognized by most spyware fighting organizations as spyware?

http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/pest/pest.aspx? id=453078521
http://www.intermute.com/spysubtract/researchcente r/Sidesearch.html
http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/14405

Would I be out of place calling hypocrisy here?

Ingres has a discussion of that at http://www3.ca.com/Files/IndustryAnalystReports/bb _ingres.pdf.

Surprisingly balanced (though a little slanted). Reads like a realistic strategy document: "How can we compete with MySQL? Oracle? SQL Server?"

Comparison to other databases such as MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server

Ther are only Linux x86 and Windows builds so far, and only RPM-packaged binaries are provided. You are also required to create an account on their project site to download (!).

And the license may be "open source", but it is not "free software".

CA seems to want it both ways -- they want to release the product as open source and to build a user base of hackers, but they also want to control the source and the process.

On the other hand, they have already set up mailing lists, a Subversion repository, a bug tracker and a wiki. Let's hope they can nurture their developer community with the same grace as, say, the Eclipse Foundation.

We're also talking about a huge product here, with pretty old code, a strangely obfuscated code tree layout, and a lack of documentation. It will take years before new developers know the sources to the extent that they can comfortably hack it. Just look at the huge amount of time it took for the PostgreSQL people to grok the whole codebase.

Incidentally, the version that has been released so far is incomplete. From the readme:

Due to some unresolved problems, the following features are not currently supported in the Ingres r3 Open Source, but will be supported in a future release:

* Linux Cluster support

* Cluster Failover (Windows Only)

* Bridge server

* Ingres Web Deployment Option (Windows Only)

* Parallel Query (Windows Only)

* Online Modify (Windows Only)

* Language Certification on Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Google and you will find: http://opensource.ca.com/projects/ingres/forum/30/ 671168450779