Slashdot Mirror

The bought Ingres a few years back, a very powerful RDBMS. I've used it for the last 10 years quite good and it's also Opensource now too. http://www.ingres.com/products/ingres-database.php

I didn't say it was moral, good for you, or the route to improved community(s) relationships. It is what Oracle does: make money.

No, you're not listening, er reading. You don't make money by paying billions of dollars buying a company then dumping that company's products. Nor do you as a software business make money by treating developers of your platform like shit. Oracle is foolhardy doing so. Sure right now they're the 800 pound gorilla but there are other enterprise scale databases on the market. Microsoft will even help customers transition from Oracle to SQL Server. IBM has it's own offering, DB2 as does HP. Of course there are also open source based DBMSs such as ones based on PostgreSQL, Computer Associates spin-off Ingres, and Firebird.

Falcon

The main issue is really that most *large* SQL servers are row based and not column. http://www.ingres.com/vectorwise/ - *opensource*

Others include

• Firebird
• Ingres

And there are many more, relational and non-relational, out there.

Let me demonstrate what I dislike about Oracle. They bought a product called "Berkeley DB", something you probably have installed on your linux box for various purposes (SVN uses it, depending on how you set it up). Now, check out the download page. Try to download any of those from the command line. Just try it. You can't.

Now, that may be meaningless to most people but I have a lot of linux servers without X windows on them and I need to download the source to bdb once in a while. Now I have to do this process of transferring the file around, all because Oracle needs me to click their stupid agreement before I download. This is where Mysql is going, mark my words.

Mysql has been dying for a long time, and thankfully my current business has outgrown it (we need more horizontal scalability) so we'll be moving off soon. Plus we do a ton of framework development and object orientated databases with table inheritance and such would make our ORM (object relation mapping) a lot simpler and automatic. I hate to see 3 dba's sitting around a cafeteria table solving class inheritance mapped to relational tables for the upteenth time. It's weird how when you get to that step of development it's always hard. And yeah yeah, there's Ruby blah blah, I need a real solution.

I have been watching MariaDB for the possibility that Monty can regain some street cred with a solid fork. It looks ok but they just haven't done much. He's been spending a lot of time ranting about why Mysql's management is so horrible instead of actually making something better. Although his rants did open my eyes to some things....

Anyway, as the parent said, there's postgresql, there's also Ingres, which people always forget about. Ingres != Postgres ;)

I have read all advices, existing at 23.09.08, and i'd like to listen, how i should look at example of my projects, which i can't implement by own forces. E.g. SQL5 http://computer20.euro.ru/site/computer20/en/author/driven-scene_eng.htm http://sql50.euro.ru/site/sql50/en/author/resume_eng.htm http://sql50.euro.ru/sql5.16.4.pdf I made submissions in IBM, Microsoft, etc - they protect own already made investments. I informed community on xml-dev@xml.org http://www.google.com/custom?q=Dmitry+Turin&sa=Google+Search&cof=L%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.xml.org%2Fxml%2Fimages%2Flogoheader.gif%3BAH%3Acenter%3BGL%3A0%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Flists.xml.org%3BAWFID%3A1f6027004f263143%3B&domains=lists.xml.org&sitesearch=lists.xml.org I appeal in foreing (MIT, Chicago) and russian universities. Students can't even forces to implenent tickets like mentioned below. So all, what i archived, is publication in Ingres. http://blogs.ingres.com/technology/2008/07/31/new-step-in-office-technologies-driven-scene/ http://blogs.ingres.com/technology/2008/07/31/bringing-dbms-in-line-with-modern-communication-requirements-sql2009/ And what you can seggest me ??? --- Ticket "switching and showing dialect". Add following possibility into parser: after command SET SQL DIALECT 5; the following expressions SELECT a/@a1 ... ... WHERE b/@b1=5 ... ... FROM schemeÂtab ... UPDATE c SET @c1=5 ... DELETE * FROM ... CREATE PROCEDURE p ( @var1 type1, ... are interpreted similar to old dialect SELECT a.a1 ... ... WHERE b.b1=5 ... ... FROM scheme.tab ... UPDATE c SET c1=5 ... UPDATE c SET d/@d1=5 ... DELETE FROM ... CREATE PROCEDURE p ( var1 type1, ... and after command SET SQL DIALECT 4; it's occurs switching to old dialect. Implement command SHOW SQL DIALECT; returning values '4' and '5' depending on in what state parser is. Corresponding slides: #125. Help: commands 'SET SQL DIALECT' and 'SHOW SQL DIALECT' are implemented in DBMS 'InterBase', where they install and return values '1', '2', '3. --- Ticket "inexact names in request". Implement SQL-command SELECT ... WHERE field1~~field2; where '~~' designates counting of Levenshtein distance, and records are extracted in sorted kind in order of growth of this value (records with the least distance are issued first). Corresponding slides: #44-46. Help: calculation itself of Levenshtein distance is implemented in 'Postgres' by function 'levenshtein', so request mentioned above is similar to SELECT ... ORDER BY levenshtein(field1,field2);

I have read all advices, existing at 23.09.08, and i'd like to listen, how i should look at example of my projects, which i can't implement by own forces. E.g. SQL5 http://computer20.euro.ru/site/computer20/en/author/driven-scene_eng.htm http://sql50.euro.ru/site/sql50/en/author/resume_eng.htm http://sql50.euro.ru/sql5.16.4.pdf I made submissions in IBM, Microsoft, etc - they protect own already made investments. I informed community on xml-dev@xml.org http://www.google.com/custom?q=Dmitry+Turin&sa=Google+Search&cof=L%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.xml.org%2Fxml%2Fimages%2Flogoheader.gif%3BAH%3Acenter%3BGL%3A0%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Flists.xml.org%3BAWFID%3A1f6027004f263143%3B&domains=lists.xml.org&sitesearch=lists.xml.org I appeal in foreing (MIT, Chicago) and russian universities. Students can't even forces to implenent tickets like mentioned below. So all, what i archived, is publication in Ingres. http://blogs.ingres.com/technology/2008/07/31/new-step-in-office-technologies-driven-scene/ http://blogs.ingres.com/technology/2008/07/31/bringing-dbms-in-line-with-modern-communication-requirements-sql2009/ And what you can seggest me ??? --- Ticket "switching and showing dialect". Add following possibility into parser: after command SET SQL DIALECT 5; the following expressions SELECT a/@a1 ... ... WHERE b/@b1=5 ... ... FROM schemeÂtab ... UPDATE c SET @c1=5 ... DELETE * FROM ... CREATE PROCEDURE p ( @var1 type1, ... are interpreted similar to old dialect SELECT a.a1 ... ... WHERE b.b1=5 ... ... FROM scheme.tab ... UPDATE c SET c1=5 ... UPDATE c SET d/@d1=5 ... DELETE FROM ... CREATE PROCEDURE p ( var1 type1, ... and after command SET SQL DIALECT 4; it's occurs switching to old dialect. Implement command SHOW SQL DIALECT; returning values '4' and '5' depending on in what state parser is. Corresponding slides: #125. Help: commands 'SET SQL DIALECT' and 'SHOW SQL DIALECT' are implemented in DBMS 'InterBase', where they install and return values '1', '2', '3. --- Ticket "inexact names in request". Implement SQL-command SELECT ... WHERE field1~~field2; where '~~' designates counting of Levenshtein distance, and records are extracted in sorted kind in order of growth of this value (records with the least distance are issued first). Corresponding slides: #44-46. Help: calculation itself of Levenshtein distance is implemented in 'Postgres' by function 'levenshtein', so request mentioned above is similar to SELECT ... ORDER BY levenshtein(field1,field2);

Hey look, you can read Miss McGrattan's own blog entry about the interview and perhaps provide some intelligent, constructive comments. Remember not to obfuscate!

No-one ever seems to notice that Ingres (not to be confused with Postgres) is now Open Source (GPL) software. As someone who has been using it for several years, I'm somewhat surprised. It's a mature and powerful RDBMS that can scale to very large systems. As an example, we supply systems capable of supporting upwards of 800 users running multiple complex queries on databases that are 80GB+. Of course, this is running on a 4 CPU Sun Fire V890 with 16GB RAM, but the point is that Ingres scales and is used in production for real mission critical applications.

Oh yeah, the obligatory link: www.ingres.com

CA used to stand for "Computer Associates". They have never really invented any software, they just buy old software packages that no one else wants to deal with and tries to milk them for a while, usually failing. The only good things they've ever been involved with have been their BASIC programming products (no, I'm not kidding, tons of people love them) and Ingres, although outside of legacy systems there is little reason for Ingres to exist today. I'd rather go with postgresql just because CA's not involved with it :P

"I'm mostly curious as to why Oracle's first real support network is for someone else's product. Where's the Oracle Database Network and Applications Network and PeopleSoft Network and Siebel Network? Where are the support infrastructure networks for Oracle's own products to automatically distribute fixes, patches and alerts? It's amazing that they can provide all that for a mere $399 for a competitor's products, but not for their own $200,000 product."

http://blogs.ingres.com/davedargo/content/2006-10- 25.html

I'm mostly curious as to why Oracle's first real support network is for someone else's product. Where's the Oracle Database Network and Applications Network and PeopleSoft Network and Siebel Network? Where are the support infrastructure networks for Oracle's own products to automatically distribute fixes, patches and alerts?

It's amazing that they can provide all that for a mere $399 for a competitor's products, but not for their own $200,000 product.

I didn't know that Ingres was GPL now. So I went to have a look, but all the Ingres documentation seems to be in PDF only! No thanks...

Anyone who has done enterprise level web-enabled applications can easily tell you the faults with all of the major players in the database field. Oracle is simply 'ok', but for most tasks, it's -to be brutally honest- over kill. Do you really need the replication features of SQL when all you are doing is cacheing emails and collecting messages from your users? At this juncture, most people are relieved because they believe that they settle for a second-teir solution such as MYsql and save the licensing fees to boot.

This might be ideal if all that you were doing was a ruby program that indexed your record collection, say for a student project in your CS class; but in the real world if you have to interface with serious e-commerce applications you will find that not only does MySqL lack even moderately advanced SQL features, but that you will be facing rising support costs for this "free" platform.

So, this brings us to PostGRESL. Now, I don't have a lot of experience with it, myself, given that I've mostly stuck to following the major database players instead of the fringe ones, but since this article addresses it, I've asked some of my friends their opinions. While it's featureful and scalable enough to meet the demands of your average medium sized shop, they've noticed that it tends to not be a viable solution for larger projects. In particular the latest industry benchmarks show PostGREsqL performing poorly compared to more mainstream vendor such as ingres.

Again, like MysQl, POSTgres demonstrates that in order to get enterprise level performance out of hobbyist level software, you're going to have to pay enterprise level fees for support as well as licenseing.

So, in conclusion, after seeing the way in which the other industry standard database solutions fail, there's only one choice a sane IT manager can make: When you need a datacenter solution which both high performant and scalable, is eoconomically viable and contains more support for the current standards the only real contender is SQL Server.

http://ingres.com/