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There are very good reasons to replicate (or at least synchronize) between disparate DB systems. For example, you have a LAMP website but want to feed it data from your backend ERP system. Another fantastic example is mobility, where you have a mobile database like SQL Anywhere on your PDA and/or laptop synchronizing to your enterprise DBs.

It also begs the question as to what they define "wireless" to mean, as SQL Anywhere was not mentioned at all.

It also begs the question as to what they define "wireless" to mean, as SQL Anywhere was not mentioned at all.

Are we talking parent-child hierarchy tables? If so, Oracle's had statements to take care of that for a long time, since 1998 or so. Perhaps not ANSI standard, but they get the job done.

No, I'm talking about Common Table Expressions (okay, so I was slightly wrong about implementation of CTEs -- apparently other products have implemented the standard, but DB2 and SQL Server 2005 are the only "Big Boy" engines with them). CTEs aren't so much about implementing a hierarchy as they are about doing recursive actions quickly and efficiently. Walking a parent-child hierarchy is just an example of a recursive problem that's easily solved with a CTE, but CTEs don't dictate how you should store your relationship information.

For what it's worth, it's possible to write recursive algorithms in just about any SQL implementation (convert your recursion to iteration, and it's not so bad), but the win with using CTEs is that it's still a set operation. Doing the loop yourself means you're losing SQL's set-based power. I did a little comparison on a naive parent-child implementation, doing two things: return the path to parent from a given node, and return the subtree of a given node. I implemented each algorithm in SQL 2000's T-SQL without CTEs and in SQL 2005 with CTEs. The CTE implementation was approximately 10 times faster than the by-hand iteration solution.

Here's an example of one well designed, well written database's limits.

jd wrote The problem-spaces solved by these databases are all very very different. I would love to see a database that had pluggable components such that different components were optimized for different types of workload and that different functions could be loaded/unloaded as needed

Vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sybase have taken a somewhat different approach to adapting their servers to the workload and the jobs at hand.

First, let's distinguish between software and the database it manages. The former is a database management system (DBMS) that isn't a single, monolithic program. If you install and run DB2, Oracle, Sybase, or Microsoft SQL Server, you'll see there is a division of labor. There isn't a single process, service or thread doing all of the work. There's are typically different daemons / services running for managing connections, for OLAP processing, for replication, etc. If you don't need a service, such as OLAP or replication, you don't start it.

You mentioned wanting to "see a database that had pluggable components". The industry has been there and done that -- for almost ten years. Using object-relational SQL products, we can install plug-ins in databases. It's the same concept as a browser plug-in.

Starting in the '90s, IBM, Informix, Oracle and Sybase released SQL servers that provide this capability. Besides containing tables and views, the database can contain stored procedures, triggers and Java classes. The DBMS invokes the embedded Java classes when executing SQL queries or stored procedures.

A Google search on "Java in the database" and "logic in the database" turned up these links:

"Java DB Synergy" http://www.firstsql.com/javadbsynergy.shtml/
"Logic in the Database" http://www.sqlsummit.com/articles/LogicInTheDataba se.HTM
"Using Java in the Database" http://www.ianywhere.com/developer/product_manuals /sqlanywhere/0902/en/html/dbpgen9/00000063.htm/

No such market exists.

There are a large number of Watcom employees still at iAnywhere. We have a low turnover rate, generally, though a large part of the compiler team eventually decamped to RIM (they have their own homegrown Java intepreter and tools) and other places after Watcom C++ was EOL'ed. Most, but not all, of the engineering work at the Waterloo site these days focuses on SQL Anywhere, the descendant of Watcom SQL. (Other iAnywhere and Sybase products are also worked on there.)

Note that Watcom C/C++ and Watcom Fortran still live on as open source projects released by the Open Watcom organization.

Absolutely, it's still being used. I still get requests from the occasional OS/2 user to open source or update our old VX-REXX product (from the days when we were Watcom -- now known as iAnywhere). Funny how OS/2 never quite goes away, even though I think IBM has tried hard to bury it.

Have you looked at Pylon Anywhere ?

"one size no longer fits all"

This is absolutely correct when referring to databases for different application. However, why do people always assume that they have to choose the Oracle's, MS and IBM's out there? There are already databases that have been tailored for certain application environments. Take for example http://www.ianywhere.com/ who has databases like SQL Anywhere and UltraLite which are tailored for smaller workgroups and mobile devices.
I don't think the solution to the problem is to build a more complex non-relational system but rather to choose the right tool for the job. Why reinvent the wheel when you don't have to?

People mean different things when they say "embedded". Do you mean "embedded" as in actually part of the application, or do you mean "embedded" as in the database is a server process on the same device (no networking involved)? It wasn't clear from the post.

There are in fact two database technologies in SQL Anywhere Studio. First there is Adaptive Server Anywhere, the full-featured relational database that runs on all the platforms mentioned. Second is UltraLite, a small-footprint database for Palm OS and Windows CE platforms. One or both of these will fit the two "embedded" definitions, it depends on what you want. (UltraLite is the technology for the "true" embedded scenario.) Data from either can be synced to another database using MobiLink or SQL Remote, depending on what kind of replication model you're looking for.

People mean different things when they say "embedded". Do you mean "embedded" as in actually part of the application, or do you mean "embedded" as in the database is a server process on the same device (no networking involved)? It wasn't clear from the post.

There are in fact two database technologies in SQL Anywhere Studio. First there is Adaptive Server Anywhere, the full-featured relational database that runs on all the platforms mentioned. Second is UltraLite, a small-footprint database for Palm OS and Windows CE platforms. One or both of these will fit the two "embedded" definitions, it depends on what you want. (UltraLite is the technology for the "true" embedded scenario.) Data from either can be synced to another database using MobiLink or SQL Remote, depending on what kind of replication model you're looking for.

People mean different things when they say "embedded". Do you mean "embedded" as in actually part of the application, or do you mean "embedded" as in the database is a server process on the same device (no networking involved)? It wasn't clear from the post.

There are in fact two database technologies in SQL Anywhere Studio. First there is Adaptive Server Anywhere, the full-featured relational database that runs on all the platforms mentioned. Second is UltraLite, a small-footprint database for Palm OS and Windows CE platforms. One or both of these will fit the two "embedded" definitions, it depends on what you want. (UltraLite is the technology for the "true" embedded scenario.) Data from either can be synced to another database using MobiLink or SQL Remote, depending on what kind of replication model you're looking for.

People mean different things when they say "embedded". Do you mean "embedded" as in actually part of the application, or do you mean "embedded" as in the database is a server process on the same device (no networking involved)? It wasn't clear from the post.

There are in fact two database technologies in SQL Anywhere Studio. First there is Adaptive Server Anywhere, the full-featured relational database that runs on all the platforms mentioned. Second is UltraLite, a small-footprint database for Palm OS and Windows CE platforms. One or both of these will fit the two "embedded" definitions, it depends on what you want. (UltraLite is the technology for the "true" embedded scenario.) Data from either can be synced to another database using MobiLink or SQL Remote, depending on what kind of replication model you're looking for.

Hey, I like Java as much as anyone, but if you're looking for a fast, multi-platform, zero-administration database be sure to check out SQL Anywhere Studio. The Developer Edition is completely free and runs on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Netware and most flavors of Windows, including CE/PocketPC. See the description of what's in SQL Anywhere Studio for details. (Note that some of you may remember SQL Anywhere as Watcom SQL.)

Hey, I like Java as much as anyone, but if you're looking for a fast, multi-platform, zero-administration database be sure to check out SQL Anywhere Studio. The Developer Edition is completely free and runs on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Netware and most flavors of Windows, including CE/PocketPC. See the description of what's in SQL Anywhere Studio for details. (Note that some of you may remember SQL Anywhere as Watcom SQL.)

Yeah, this kind of "viral marketing" is nothing new. Time Magazine published an article in 2000 about the viral marketing efforts for Christina Aguilera that helped her "make it". Plenty of software companies already have "Team XXXX" or "MVP" programs that reward non-employees who answer questions and help others fix problems, and most of them do it for no payment. Those latter programs usually start as a grassroots, informal kind of thing, though, and these guys are trying to formalize the process to make it more predictable and more controllable.

Also check out SQL For Smarties (love that name!).

The only thing I could think of adding would be:

OUTPUT TO 'http://slashdot.org/submit.pl' FORMAT HTML_FORM

If you like SQL Server, you should check out SQL Anywhere Studio. The developer edition is free, so give it a try. Not only can you run ASA (the database part of SQL Anywhere Studio) on Windows and CE, you can also run it on Linux/Unix -- something you won't get from SQL Server.

If you like SQL Server, you should check out SQL Anywhere Studio. The developer edition is free, so give it a try. Not only can you run ASA (the database part of SQL Anywhere Studio) on Windows and CE, you can also run it on Linux/Unix -- something you won't get from SQL Server.

People often equate J2EE with web applications and so do the J2EE-vs-LAMP comparison without the right information. J2EE is more than just web applications. You can build non-web clients that use the J2EE component model (they can even be built in other languages and use CORBA mappings). J2EE provides connections to legacy systems. J2EE supports asynchronous messaging. You can do pretty much everything transactionally with J2EE as well, so that if something fails along the way you can rollback your changes.

Actually, comparing J2EE to LAMP is wrong in another way. A J2EE server can run on Linux. An Apache web server is often used as a front end to a J2EE server (especially when you integrate the app server within an already-existing web server infrastructure). You could use MySQL (though I think you'd better off using ASA, but I'm biased) as long as you make sure to use transactional tables. There goes the "LAM" part of "LAMP".

So really, you're comparing the Java-based J2EE framework against similar Perl/PHP/Python frameworks. At least, that's what you should be comparing. Maybe for pure web apps the latter are better. I don't know, but you have to compare oranges to oranges.

Since there's been some mention of ASA (Adaptive Server Anywhere, aka SQL Anywhere), just thought I'd mention (sorta late) that ASA users are encouraged to fill out a survey put up by the iAnywhere database engineering team to improve the product: http://www.ianywhere.com/promos/sql_survey/index.h tml Thanks... Eric

We have customers running ASA with 4,000+ simultaneous users, 50 GB+ databases.

I strongly suggest you consider taking a look at newer versions of ASA. There is a Developer Edition of 9.x available (the engine can run a 5.x database file without modifications!)

BTW: SA 5.x also can support much bigger loads that you let on...however the applications and/or schema "design" may be where the limitations you experience are coming from. I can write bad code that will cripple any RDBMS...it ain't that tough:->

From what I saw, it's not worth it migrating from MySQL or Postgres

It even has the Database Migration Wizard (or better yet, you can call sa_migrate() directly).

... ever consider Sybase's SQL Anywhere Studio? The suite costs $400 USD, and comes with a database engine (and other programs to help you create forms, etc.). Some alternate links here and here.

The Adaptive Server Anywhere RDBMS is rock-solid and fast, and runs under Linux. It integrates nicely with any ODBC-based (or JDBC-based) front-end application, and offers true SQL99 compliance. It also has Java support built into it, so you could actually run a web server from within the DB engine. I've been using it quite happily for a few years.

Just a thought.

Sybase also offers free (as in beer) releases of older versions of Adaptive Server Enterprise. ASE 11.9.2 is $0 for development use only, and ASE 11.0.3.3 is $0 for development or production. Since 11.9.2 is now end-of-lifed, you can't purchase a license even if you wanted to. This makes it's usability on production systems somewhat ambiguous.

There are also developer versions available as free downloads (registration required) for ASE 12.5.1 and ASA 9.0 on all supported platforms.

Sybase bought Watcom years ago because they wanted Watcom SQL

There were industry rumours of Sybase dropping SQL Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL, now Adaptive Server Anywhere) early on after the 1995 acquisition, but nothing beyond apparently.

The ASA engineering group (Waterloo Ontario) and ASE group (Dublin California) have worked together on joint projects, but the two products remain independently architected and developed. The main joint task forces seem to work(ed) on adding T-SQLisms to ASA and on the IQ product.

Adaptive Server Enterprise

Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL)

IQ

Ah....MySQL and Access, you must be talking about ASA. I suspect it unlikely that ASA become open source in the foreseeable future as it is one of the key products of iAnywhere.

ASA is a much more feature rich and powerful replacement for both above mentioned database-like repositories ;-).

For those who don't know, ASA runs on a multitude of platforms (Palm, CE, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, OS X, and that MS-Windows thingy). It has very mature synchronization and replication technologies. [Note: I may be somewhat biased on the subject ;-)].

Adaptive Server Enterprise

Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL)

IQ

Ah....MySQL and Access, you must be talking about ASA. I suspect it unlikely that ASA become open source in the foreseeable future as it is one of the key products of iAnywhere.

ASA is a much more feature rich and powerful replacement for both above mentioned database-like repositories ;-).

For those who don't know, ASA runs on a multitude of platforms (Palm, CE, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, OS X, and that MS-Windows thingy). It has very mature synchronization and replication technologies. [Note: I may be somewhat biased on the subject ;-)].

Adaptive Server Enterprise

Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL)

IQ

Ah....MySQL and Access, you must be talking about ASA. I suspect it unlikely that ASA become open source in the foreseeable future as it is one of the key products of iAnywhere.

ASA is a much more feature rich and powerful replacement for both above mentioned database-like repositories ;-).

For those who don't know, ASA runs on a multitude of platforms (Palm, CE, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, OS X, and that MS-Windows thingy). It has very mature synchronization and replication technologies. [Note: I may be somewhat biased on the subject ;-)].

Adaptive Server Enterprise

Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL)

IQ

Ah....MySQL and Access, you must be talking about ASA. I suspect it unlikely that ASA become open source in the foreseeable future as it is one of the key products of iAnywhere.

ASA is a much more feature rich and powerful replacement for both above mentioned database-like repositories ;-).

For those who don't know, ASA runs on a multitude of platforms (Palm, CE, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, OS X, and that MS-Windows thingy). It has very mature synchronization and replication technologies. [Note: I may be somewhat biased on the subject ;-)].

Adaptive Server Enterprise

Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL)

IQ

Ah....MySQL and Access, you must be talking about ASA. I suspect it unlikely that ASA become open source in the foreseeable future as it is one of the key products of iAnywhere.

ASA is a much more feature rich and powerful replacement for both above mentioned database-like repositories ;-).

For those who don't know, ASA runs on a multitude of platforms (Palm, CE, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, OS X, and that MS-Windows thingy). It has very mature synchronization and replication technologies. [Note: I may be somewhat biased on the subject ;-)].

Although that may work for some applications, for the vast majority of applications, this is unrealistic. Consider most solutions which include some sort of cellular (GSM, CDMA, etc) type modem. Every time a user needed to get data such as a product list. It would have to connect through the network, download that data and display it. What if there were 1000 products? Would you want to continuously download those rows every time you loaded the page or would you prefer to store them locally? Consider also the price associated with downloading all of those rows everytime you loaded the page. OK, I know you mentioned 802.11b which means it would be faster than cellular and cheaper to re-download data, but do you want a sales rep who can only download data when they are in a "hot spot"? My guess is there probably is not a "hot spot" at the customer site. Finally what happens if there is no connectivity available and you need to see your data. Would you not want a local database for that? Although I do not like SQL Server CE, I will give a plug to SQL Anywhere

Take a look at Sybase iAnywhere Solutions SQL Anywhere Studio

Offers the best data synchronization technology available.

Take a look at Sybase iAnywhere Solutions SQL Anywhere Studio

Offers the best data synchronization technology available.

Take a look at Sybase SQL Server Anywhere. It is a very fast embedded SQL DBMS. Very nice.

The high-end distributions from both Red Hat and SuSE offer "asynchronous input/output" and my database vendor says it makes the database faster. Can someone please explain to me how asynchronous I/O works? Is it available except in these enterprise-price distributions? If not, why doesn't the GPL require its availability?

Just wondering what they(watcom) are up to now.

Watcom got bought out by PowerSoft, who in turn got bought out by Sybase. Sybase then spun off what used to be Watcom as iAnywhere Solutions. There's a bit of corporate history available here.

As for what iAnywhere is currently developing, there's a list of products available here. iAnywhere focuses on databases these days; they no longer develop compilers.

Just wondering what they(watcom) are up to now.

Watcom got bought out by PowerSoft, who in turn got bought out by Sybase. Sybase then spun off what used to be Watcom as iAnywhere Solutions. There's a bit of corporate history available here.

As for what iAnywhere is currently developing, there's a list of products available here. iAnywhere focuses on databases these days; they no longer develop compilers.

Just wondering what they(watcom) are up to now.

Watcom got bought out by PowerSoft, who in turn got bought out by Sybase. Sybase then spun off what used to be Watcom as iAnywhere Solutions. There's a bit of corporate history available here.

As for what iAnywhere is currently developing, there's a list of products available here. iAnywhere focuses on databases these days; they no longer develop compilers.

Oddly enough, Sybase bought Powersoft a few years later so that they could use Powerbuilder to compete against Oracle's front-end tools. This meant Sybase ended up with Watcom's assets, even though they were not particularly interested in them.

And to continue the story...

1. Sybase bought Powersoft in 1995.
2. The "Watcom" group, still based in Waterloo Ontario, became the Mobile And Embedded (MEC) division of Sybase.
3. In 2000, Sybase spun the MEC division off as its own company: iAnywhere Solutions Inc.

iAnywhere makes the very powerful, popular (and developer friendly!) SQL Anywhere Studio as well as other products.

See more:

• Sybase Milestones
• iAnywhere Solutions History and Milestones

Oddly enough, Sybase bought Powersoft a few years later so that they could use Powerbuilder to compete against Oracle's front-end tools. This meant Sybase ended up with Watcom's assets, even though they were not particularly interested in them.

And to continue the story...

1. Sybase bought Powersoft in 1995.
2. The "Watcom" group, still based in Waterloo Ontario, became the Mobile And Embedded (MEC) division of Sybase.
3. In 2000, Sybase spun the MEC division off as its own company: iAnywhere Solutions Inc.

iAnywhere makes the very powerful, popular (and developer friendly!) SQL Anywhere Studio as well as other products.

See more:

• Sybase Milestones
• iAnywhere Solutions History and Milestones

Oddly enough, Sybase bought Powersoft a few years later so that they could use Powerbuilder to compete against Oracle's front-end tools. This meant Sybase ended up with Watcom's assets, even though they were not particularly interested in them.

And to continue the story...

1. Sybase bought Powersoft in 1995.
2. The "Watcom" group, still based in Waterloo Ontario, became the Mobile And Embedded (MEC) division of Sybase.
3. In 2000, Sybase spun the MEC division off as its own company: iAnywhere Solutions Inc.

iAnywhere makes the very powerful, popular (and developer friendly!) SQL Anywhere Studio as well as other products.

See more:

• Sybase Milestones
• iAnywhere Solutions History and Milestones

Oddly enough, Sybase bought Powersoft a few years later so that they could use Powerbuilder to compete against Oracle's front-end tools. This meant Sybase ended up with Watcom's assets, even though they were not particularly interested in them.

And to continue the story...

1. Sybase bought Powersoft in 1995.
2. The "Watcom" group, still based in Waterloo Ontario, became the Mobile And Embedded (MEC) division of Sybase.
3. In 2000, Sybase spun the MEC division off as its own company: iAnywhere Solutions Inc.

iAnywhere makes the very powerful, popular (and developer friendly!) SQL Anywhere Studio as well as other products.

See more:

• Sybase Milestones
• iAnywhere Solutions History and Milestones

Oddly enough, Sybase bought Powersoft a few years later so that they could use Powerbuilder to compete against Oracle's front-end tools. This meant Sybase ended up with Watcom's assets, even though they were not particularly interested in them.

And to continue the story...

1. Sybase bought Powersoft in 1995.
2. The "Watcom" group, still based in Waterloo Ontario, became the Mobile And Embedded (MEC) division of Sybase.
3. In 2000, Sybase spun the MEC division off as its own company: iAnywhere Solutions Inc.

iAnywhere makes the very powerful, popular (and developer friendly!) SQL Anywhere Studio as well as other products.

See more:

• Sybase Milestones
• iAnywhere Solutions History and Milestones

If you're looking for a nice RDBMS for Netware, iAnywhere Solutions has SQL Anywhere, which is available for a number of platforms including Netware. I'm not exactly sure how it stacks up against PostgreSQL, but I've had a lot of success using it in the past (on Linux and Windows, admittedly).

Not that I work for iAnywhere Solutions or anything. *cough*

-j