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Access has the most overhead according to this.

Here's a link to a discussion where the poster states that Access is not good for large installations...

You might check with IBM (DB2), Oracle, MySQL, or Postgres for help as well...I'm sure they'ld be more than happy to help.

Cross platform compatability. Students with Windoze, Linux, or Macs can run most SQL servers...not so with Access...

And then there's the corporate settings...most companies are using DB2, Oracle, MySql, or something that is ANSI-SQL compatible...not M$ SQL...

You also have more utilities and help available for SQL than Access...

There's GUI tools, schema browsers, etc all available for SQL...

If your school runs its website on a *NIX server, you could up-play the compatibility angle...you know, senior projects and such...

One major advantage of SQL is that all of the companies/organizations that I mentioned are free or have a free educational version...I doubt M$ does...

Let them give you MS-Access, and use it like it should be used. MS-ACCESS is a pretty frond end, and sufficient for small databases. It's also a nice teaching tool because it'll let you see the syntax of a query by example. Once those lessons are imparted, and you need to do real work, the fun begins. You can then show how easy it is to install and run a real database server such as MySQL on the backend.

You can then contrast and compare the benchmarks between a system of 20 clients sharing a database on a fileserver, and a properly configured MySql server with 20 Access clients. It should teach the proper lesson once and for all.

--Mike--

You have to wonder why SCO bothers putting such crap on their website.

There are a few sites, like say the Enlightenment web site that I visit regularly for updates, waiting for the news of the fabled E-17 release. And yeah I visit the MySQL site for the same sort of reason - waiting for News on version 5 with stored procedures.

But for Christ's sake, who in their right mind visits the SCO site for some light reading and news? Who? Not me. Not you. Maybe some Microsoft employees?

But seriously, why do they bother? Perhaps poor Darl is just taking the opportunity to get some stuff off his chest after all the flaming, death threats, and other such niceties that come with the job at SCO.

I use WebGUI from PlainBlack Software. It uses Perl/MySQL/Apache.

It is OpenSource, and very easy to use. It has WYSIWYG for those that don't know how to cut/paste. I suggest anyone looking at a CMS to take a look. It isn't perfect, but none really are.

Don't get your hopes up too much. I'd imagine their first implementation will suck. That's partially based on my distrust of the MySQL developers' abilities and partially based on a few comments I saw in the documentation you linked to:

Starting with version 4.1, MySQL supports all subquery forms and operations which the SQL standard requires, as well as a few features which are MySQL-specific (from here)

I'm suspicious of their MySQL-specific features. In the past, many MySQL-specific features have been dumb. I couldn't find specific mention of these ones, but I bet they're more of the same.

MySQL's unofficial recommendation is: avoid correlation because it makes your queries look more complex, and run more slowly. ( from this page)

Ugh! I use correlated subqueries all the time on Oracle and PostgreSQL with no performance problems. I'd guess from their comment that they're firing the subquery on every row of the outer query (which would run very slowly indeed). I think real databases replace these with equivalent but dramatically more efficient forms. (Like an "exists" subquery becoming another join condition and a distinct. Or a "not exists" subquery becoming a left join checking for nulls. Or however they implement it - it doesn't really matter; I type in something that is easy for me to understand/verify is correct, and they worry about making it perform well.

The PostgreSQL people were thinking about this sort of thing in 1997. And hell, they just now got IN/NOT IN to have good performance.[*] And they're good at this sort of thing. I don't have a lot of faith in the MySQL people.

ERROR 1235 (ER_NOT_SUPPORTED_YET)
SQLSTATE = 42000
Message = "This version of MySQL doesn't yet support 'LIMIT & IN/ALL/ANY/SOME subquery'"
(from here)

So it's obviously not a complete implementation.

[*] - They probably could have gotten it to work a while ago but didn't because there was a workaround. (IN/NOT IN doesn't do anything EXISTS/NOT EXISTS can't, although IN/NOT IN is more terse.) Still, it shows you that there are likely to be a lot of gotchas in a new implementation.

Don't get your hopes up too much. I'd imagine their first implementation will suck. That's partially based on my distrust of the MySQL developers' abilities and partially based on a few comments I saw in the documentation you linked to:

Starting with version 4.1, MySQL supports all subquery forms and operations which the SQL standard requires, as well as a few features which are MySQL-specific (from here)

I'm suspicious of their MySQL-specific features. In the past, many MySQL-specific features have been dumb. I couldn't find specific mention of these ones, but I bet they're more of the same.

MySQL's unofficial recommendation is: avoid correlation because it makes your queries look more complex, and run more slowly. ( from this page)

Ugh! I use correlated subqueries all the time on Oracle and PostgreSQL with no performance problems. I'd guess from their comment that they're firing the subquery on every row of the outer query (which would run very slowly indeed). I think real databases replace these with equivalent but dramatically more efficient forms. (Like an "exists" subquery becoming another join condition and a distinct. Or a "not exists" subquery becoming a left join checking for nulls. Or however they implement it - it doesn't really matter; I type in something that is easy for me to understand/verify is correct, and they worry about making it perform well.

The PostgreSQL people were thinking about this sort of thing in 1997. And hell, they just now got IN/NOT IN to have good performance.[*] And they're good at this sort of thing. I don't have a lot of faith in the MySQL people.

ERROR 1235 (ER_NOT_SUPPORTED_YET)
SQLSTATE = 42000
Message = "This version of MySQL doesn't yet support 'LIMIT & IN/ALL/ANY/SOME subquery'"
(from here)

So it's obviously not a complete implementation.

[*] - They probably could have gotten it to work a while ago but didn't because there was a workaround. (IN/NOT IN doesn't do anything EXISTS/NOT EXISTS can't, although IN/NOT IN is more terse.) Still, it shows you that there are likely to be a lot of gotchas in a new implementation.

Don't get your hopes up too much. I'd imagine their first implementation will suck. That's partially based on my distrust of the MySQL developers' abilities and partially based on a few comments I saw in the documentation you linked to:

Starting with version 4.1, MySQL supports all subquery forms and operations which the SQL standard requires, as well as a few features which are MySQL-specific (from here)

I'm suspicious of their MySQL-specific features. In the past, many MySQL-specific features have been dumb. I couldn't find specific mention of these ones, but I bet they're more of the same.

MySQL's unofficial recommendation is: avoid correlation because it makes your queries look more complex, and run more slowly. ( from this page)

Ugh! I use correlated subqueries all the time on Oracle and PostgreSQL with no performance problems. I'd guess from their comment that they're firing the subquery on every row of the outer query (which would run very slowly indeed). I think real databases replace these with equivalent but dramatically more efficient forms. (Like an "exists" subquery becoming another join condition and a distinct. Or a "not exists" subquery becoming a left join checking for nulls. Or however they implement it - it doesn't really matter; I type in something that is easy for me to understand/verify is correct, and they worry about making it perform well.

The PostgreSQL people were thinking about this sort of thing in 1997. And hell, they just now got IN/NOT IN to have good performance.[*] And they're good at this sort of thing. I don't have a lot of faith in the MySQL people.

ERROR 1235 (ER_NOT_SUPPORTED_YET)
SQLSTATE = 42000
Message = "This version of MySQL doesn't yet support 'LIMIT & IN/ALL/ANY/SOME subquery'"
(from here)

So it's obviously not a complete implementation.

[*] - They probably could have gotten it to work a while ago but didn't because there was a workaround. (IN/NOT IN doesn't do anything EXISTS/NOT EXISTS can't, although IN/NOT IN is more terse.) Still, it shows you that there are likely to be a lot of gotchas in a new implementation.

Trading stability for speed is stupid.

Period. End of story. The job of a RDBMS is not "be fast".

Maybe then, they need to stop claiming they're building a relational database management system because they're obviously not and anyone who thinks they are is addled in the head.

...are trivial to avoid in the code.

If the application layer has to handle data integrity, the system behind it isn't relational and it's arguably not even doing the job of a DMBS. More like a convenient indexing tool.

MySQL makes a fine database management system where it doesn't matter if your data gets mangled and all you want to do is fast, simple SELECTs, but what irritates the "zealots" like me is that MySQL folks will actually sit and argue that MySQL is even remotely close to a RDBMS. pgsql and their ilk aren't truly relational either.. but they're a heck of a lot closer.

Section 1.2 of the MySQL manual clearly states, "The official way to pronounce MySQL is ``My Ess Que Ell'' (not ``my sequel'')..", and then goes on to say, "..but we don't mind if you pronounce it as ``my sequel'' or in some other localised way."

phpMyAdmin tried to connect to the MySQL server, and the server rejected the connection. You should check the host, username and password in config.inc.php and make sure that they correspond to the information given by the administrator of the MySQL server.

Error

MySQL said:

MySQL can't handle flash back transactions

MySQL BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK transaction syntax requires use of InnoDB, BerkleyDB (think .dbm files that have been round for years), or GeminiDB (If you want to pay money).

doesn't support load balancing, hot site, and paralell or clustered transactions

MySQL Replication can be configured for all of that. When it comes time to load balance MySQL, putting a hardware solutions such as a Cisco CSS 11000 series load balancer in front works without problems. Should you prefer a more Linux way, IPVS works. Or Should you like a generic method without a way to remove dead hosts, then you can you DNS round robbin.

That brings me to the question of why use Compiere at all on anything but oracle

You haven't priced Oracle lately have you?

is there a demand for an ERP system that doesn't use a commercially supported system

Think Fortune 5000 companies that are sick of paying $500,000 in "maintence" fees for JD Edwards running on an IBM AS/400 that they cannot find anyone to maintain for them. Think small businesses that using QuickBooks Enterprise doesn't scale to due to artifical limitations of the software such as 10 concurrent users, and greater than 30,000 products, vendors, and customers.

NO vendor in there right mind would want to support a product they didn't develop or that didn't have its own superb support channels to begin with

You pay me enough money, I will support it. I don't care if I have no access to the source code, I can find a way to make the application work. It may not be pretty, and it could get VERY expensive, but in the end it will work.

You have to remember that big business is alot different than hosting a small website or cddb database on your average linux pc

Your right, in that situation you have one boss, in big business you have 5000.

MySQL can't handle flash back transactions

MySQL BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK transaction syntax requires use of InnoDB, BerkleyDB (think .dbm files that have been round for years), or GeminiDB (If you want to pay money).

doesn't support load balancing, hot site, and paralell or clustered transactions

MySQL Replication can be configured for all of that. When it comes time to load balance MySQL, putting a hardware solutions such as a Cisco CSS 11000 series load balancer in front works without problems. Should you prefer a more Linux way, IPVS works. Or Should you like a generic method without a way to remove dead hosts, then you can you DNS round robbin.

That brings me to the question of why use Compiere at all on anything but oracle

You haven't priced Oracle lately have you?

is there a demand for an ERP system that doesn't use a commercially supported system

Think Fortune 5000 companies that are sick of paying $500,000 in "maintence" fees for JD Edwards running on an IBM AS/400 that they cannot find anyone to maintain for them. Think small businesses that using QuickBooks Enterprise doesn't scale to due to artifical limitations of the software such as 10 concurrent users, and greater than 30,000 products, vendors, and customers.

NO vendor in there right mind would want to support a product they didn't develop or that didn't have its own superb support channels to begin with

You pay me enough money, I will support it. I don't care if I have no access to the source code, I can find a way to make the application work. It may not be pretty, and it could get VERY expensive, but in the end it will work.

You have to remember that big business is alot different than hosting a small website or cddb database on your average linux pc

Your right, in that situation you have one boss, in big business you have 5000.

is that it leaves us without a really easy to install distro for new users.

I think Mandrake fills that hole to some extent, but they're largely a repackaged RH, and I can't help wondering whether they'll be able to maintain rpm, cygwin, and all the other widely used RH products on their own. Will RH still be employing Cox?

It *is* possible to make money off free software - look at Hans Reiser, or MySQL. For that matter, Slashdot and LiveJournal use totally open source software, even if the software isn't where they make their money.

Why hasn't RH been able to do the same?

MySQL AB even wrote a thank you letter to the FSF.

Man, I feel stupid.

I read over the /. blurb, and skimmed the related article, all the while nodding to myself and thinking "Hell yeah...I use ENUM as the data type in MySQL all the time, and I've been doing it for years. I am so ahead of the curve. I rock."

D'oh. Wrong ENUM.

-Waldo Jaquith

The Freedom referred to in Free Software is freedom for the software under the GPL. Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.

Not strictly true, the copyright holder may dual-license their software under the GPL and a traditional closed-source license. Examples are TrollTech who dual-license QT for Linux and MySQL AB who dual-license their database products. Of course, it's the copyright holder who gets to decide whether to dual-license their software or not.

Note that if the identifier is a restricted word or contains special characters you must always quote it with a ` (backtick) when you use it:

mysql> SELECT * FROM `select` WHERE `select`.id > 100;

Funny you should ask: I just set up Request Tracker this afternoon. While it probably fits more into the bug-tracking genre than anything else, I use it as a TODO list, a wish list and a bug tracking system. It is very easy to use, and setting it up isn't TOO painful. It is quite powerful (I use a MySQL backend) and completely cross-platform (its main interface is web-based). It has great e-mail integration, and your customers will be able to check the status of their report as it makes its way through the system. In addition, it's free, with support available for a fee.

I really like this front-end to MySQL and use it all the time. It is freely available on the mysql site, and I actually prefer it over MS-Access's front end.

There's a Slashdot article that talks about SAP-DB. And, there's a decent article by someone who installed it.

= 9J =

You mention some good points, but there are many companies making a profit off of open source software other than Linux. MySQL, IBM, Trolltech, Intel, and Dell are just a few (yes, I realize some of these companies make money in other ways as well, but they all report their open source-related activities to be profitable).

3.23.58 was just released.

But there is no point tempting fate, and it's a good excuse to update anyway. :)

Bugs fixed: * Fixed buffer overflow in SET PASSWORD which could potentially be exploited by MySQL users with root privileges to execute random code or to gain shell access (thanks to Jedi/Sector One for spotting and reporting this one).

All fixed. Get your 4.0.15 here.

Unfortunately, it seems that release 3.23.58 is "to be released soon". So people with older installations will have to be extra careful until an update is released.

Q.

But there is no point tempting fate, and it's a good excuse to update anyway. :)

Bugs fixed: * Fixed buffer overflow in SET PASSWORD which could potentially be exploited by MySQL users with root privileges to execute random code or to gain shell access (thanks to Jedi/Sector One for spotting and reporting this one).

All fixed. Get your 4.0.15 here.

Unfortunately, it seems that release 3.23.58 is "to be released soon". So people with older installations will have to be extra careful until an update is released.

Q.

You need a license only if you choose to distribute the software. If this is an in-house application, simply obtain copies of MySQL Standard/Max (GPL) directly from MySQL mirrors for each server. Since you do not perform the distribution, you are in good shape (see MySQL License Policy - Licensing -2).

However, the folks at MySQL AB are very decent folks who offer great support and warranty for their product and who have to feed their families, and licenses are cheap. IMHO, buy at least one license for a master and one for a slave. That way you get support for the program in each role.

SAPDB (was made open source by SAP a year or 2 ago) definitely bears some research, but I haven't used it myself so I can't comment (anyone else?).

I can give you some quick info, though (partly to respond to a sibling post claiming that MySQL and SAP both cost money if your software isn't GPL).

From sapdb.org (various pages):
-- From Q4 2003, SAP DB will be rebranded as "MaxDB" and offered as a MySQL AB product.
-- SAP DB can be used free of charge in non-SAP environments.

And using MySQL *is* free as long as you don't distribute it and/or sell an application that requires it. From the MySQL licensing page:
-- If you use MySQL in conjunction with a webserver and develop the needed tools/applications by yourself, or you use applications licensed under the GPL or compatible OSI licenses, then you do not have to pay for a MySQL license. This is true even if you run the system on top of a commercial web server.
-- Internet Service Providers (ISPs) often host MySQL servers for their customers. With the GPL license this does not require a license.

Note: obviously, do your own research for your particular situation... PLUS it may well be worth it to pay the license fees (only a few hundred bucks per server) to get support.

MS-SQL
MySQL

Bullshit! On the download page, there's binaries for all of the following OSes:

• Linux (x86, S/390, IA64, Alpha, SPARC, and AMD64)
• Windows (x86)
• Solaris (SPARC 64-bit, SPARC 32bit, and x86)
• FreeBSD (x86, and SPARC 64-bit)
• MacOSX (PPC)
• HP-UX (RISC, PS-RISC 1 and 2, PA-RISC 2 64-bit, and IA64 64bit)
• AIX (RS6000)
• QNX (x86)
• Netware (x86)
• SCO (x86)
• OpenBSD (x86)
• Irix (MIPS)
• Dec OSF (Alpha)

You should run your slaves with the --log-bin option and without --log-slave-updates. This way the slave will be ready to become a master as soon as you issue STOP SLAVE; RESET MASTER, and CHANGE MASTER TO on the other slaves.

Supposedly should be out by now.

Posted by Cliff on Thursday September 11, @04:45PM
from the prime-time-league-contenders-yet? dept.
grugruto asks: "A lot of open source solutions are available to scale web sites with clusters but what about databases? I can't afford an Oracle RAC license but can I have something more reliable and fault tolerant than my single Postgres box? I have seen this recent article that looks promising for open source solutions. Do anyone have experiences with clusters of MySQL , Postgres-R, C-JDBC or other solutions? How does it compare to commercial products?"

Tell your clients to install their own copy of MySQL (or contract out to them to do it yourself!), then install and compile PHP against that copy of MySQL (which you obtained perfectly legally from the MySQL site), and then install your product that uses PHP, and you're fine.

The whole idea is that you can't redistribute MySQL code under a license that prevents others from redistributing that code. But you can distribute your code, and MySQL can distribute their code, and some person can take your code and MySQL's code and have them work together, and that's just fine.

http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing.html

From what I've heard, MySQL is pretty strict about people trying to distribute software not under the GPL without a paying for a commercial license.

I think this sentance says it best:
(We also believe that if you have strong reasons not to go GPL, you also have the monetary means to purchase commercial licences.)

You may be right about being able to write a GPL driver and leave the rest of the application non-GPL, but while the MySQL page never states that this is unacceptable, they do say:
If you use MySQL Software within your organisation and you don't want to risk it falling under the GPL license, you are welcome to purchase a commercial license.

1) Permits redistribution of the program licensed, in this case MySQL, so long as redistribution contains that same license.
2) Permits modification of the program licensed, also MySQL, so long as the source code of the new derived product is both available, and licensed to others under the GPL.

I don't recall anywhere in my readings of the GPL that it said "If you use a product based upon our work, that product must also be licensed as ours is, or you must pay us licensing fees". Consider what such a scheme would be. Any program that has auxillary hooks for other programs to interface with it that is licensed under the GPL must then be GPL'd. This includes any program written with GCC (under GPL, I believe), any program written on linux, any and all drivers, etc.

Looking up the MySQL thing, it seems to me that they are being misleading. They are releasing their program under a GPL-like license. Rather, it should read something like this:

So long as you are distributing MySQL with your non open source project, you will need to purchase a license. If you are not distributing MySQL with your product or it is open source, it is licensed to you under the GPL.

Frankly, I find that kind of suspect, as their site states:

The software from MySQL AB listed below is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is provided "as is" and is without any warranty.

Something I found interesting from www.gnu.org's FAQ on the GPL:

I'd like to incorporate GPL-covered software in my proprietary system. Can I do this?

You cannot incorporate GPL-covered software in a proprietary system. The goal of the GPL is to grant everyone the freedom to copy, redistribute, understand, and modify a program. If you could incorporate GPL-covered software into a non-free system, it would have the effect of making the GPL-covered software non-free too.

A system incorporating a GPL-covered program is an extended version of that program. The GPL says that any extended version of the program must be released under the GPL if it is released at all. This is for two reasons: to make sure that users who get the software get the freedom they should have, and to encourage people to give back improvements that they make.

However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the free and non-free programs communicate at arms length, that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program.

The difference between this and "incorporating" the GPL-covered software is partly a matter of substance and partly form. The substantive part is this: if the two programs are combined so that they become effectively two parts of one program, then you can't treat them as two separate programs. So the GPL has to cover the whole thing.

If the two programs remain well separated, like the compiler and the kernel, or like an editor and a shell, then you can treat them as two separate programs--but you have to do it properly. The issue is simply one of form: how you describe what you are doing. Why do we care about this? Because we want to make sure the users clearly understand the free status of the GPL-covered software in the collection.

If people were to distribute GPL-covered software calling it "part of" a system that users know is partly proprietary, users might be uncertain of their rights regarding the GPL-covered software. But if they know that what they have received is a free program plus another program, side by side, their rights will be clear.

Translation: If MySQL is claiming that the program is released under the GPL, and the most that your aux program ever does is use library hook

Starting with the next release SAPDB will be rebranded as MaxDB by MySQL AB.
This will probably mean that PostgreSQL will have a very hard time competing with MySQL ! (also see the info on the SAPDB webpage)
At the same time the licencing will change to pure GPL (no more LGPL libraries !!!)

Starting with the next release SAPDB will be rebranded as MaxDB by MySQL AB.
This will probably mean that PostgreSQL will have a very hard time competing with MySQL ! (also see the info on the SAPDB webpage)
At the same time the licencing will change to pure GPL (no more LGPL libraries !!!)

it doesn't support transactions

corrupts at every chance

is not scalable

a resource hog

it doesn't support transactions

corrupts at every chance

is not scalable

a resource hog

it doesn't support transactions

corrupts at every chance

is not scalable

a resource hog

"if you ship an application that requires interaction with a MySQL database then that application must be GPL"

If your application is not licensed under GPL or compatible OSI license approved by MySQL AB and you intend to distribute MySQL software (be that internally or externally), you must first obtain a commercial license to the MySQL software in question.

Why would anyone want to run Microsoft SQL server on Linux, when there is already a far better relational database server available that runs just fine on Linux?

It's mostly complient to 92, and working towards 99. Check here for it's current "Bugs" status.

The only noted "bug" in it's SQL-92 complience is that whitespace gets stripped out at the end of VARCHAR types. Though a bug, there are other databases that do this as well. MySQL is working on becoming SQL-99 complient and have already started to look at (hypothetically) the changes that are to be made for SQL-2003 compliance.

"The fact we don't have a vendor backing this project make people uneasy. With a childish name, it is even harder"

If they "don't have a vendor," then who is MySQL AB?

According to the bigwigs at this year's mysql conference, mysql 5.0 in development will have support for stored procs

You can use backquotes {`` - the ones that normally are used for executing a command} or no quotes at all around a field name, and either single {''} or double {""} speech marks around data. I believe the use of double speech marks is a proprietary extension to ANSI SQL, but MySQL implements them, and MySQL is the de facto standard for database servers. Wherte MySQL differs from ANSI SQL, competitors tend to ape MySQL. More at http://www.mysql.com if you really must. There's a full and frank comparison with other DB engines on there somewhere too.

You can take GPL software and sell it without permission from the author, sure -- look at Red Hat, for example -- but I think what was meant was the possibility of negotiating a different license for a particular company.

Consider the distribution model used by MySQL: You can download and modify MySQL for free under the GPL, but that requires you to release the source code to your changes. If you don't want to release the source code to your changes, you can contact MySQL AB, the company behind the software, and buy the right to use MySQL under a different license, one that allows you to keep your changes to yourself.

Absolutely correct -- the owner of the code can license his/her code under any terms and conditions that they feel is appropriate.

If a project is genuinely collaborative, then pure GPL is generally the only practical option (unless copyrights are always assigned to one entity), but if you're the main developer of a project, remember that you always have the option to modify your licensing terms and conditions on subsequent releases of your product.

eg. You release ProjectX 1.0 under GPL. As of ProjectX 2.5, you think that there's a real chance of companies licensing your product. You stop offering GPL licensing from version 2.6. Anyone can take 2.5 and legally fork it as a GPL project (but they cannot change its GPL licensing). On the other hand, you continue to have the option of remaining under a proprietary license or re-licensing code under the GPL at a later stage.

I can name two projects off the top of my head (JBOSS MySQL) that both turn a profit and both are open source software.

Can you support those claims with some evidence?

I went and looked at the My SQL press releases. While they claim to be "successful," they never claim to be profitable. In fact they're still looking for rounds of outside investment, an unusual act for a profitable company. Since they're privately held we don't have access to their finances, but they haven't claimed to be profitable.

JBoss, the services company, is also privately held, and does not claim to be proftable.

(My hat's off to Red Hat, though, for finally coming up with a profit that can't be dismissed as tweaking the ledgers!)

If you think the only money in software is selling the binary, you are again, lost. Try getting some free support on MS windows or MS office, etc. Try getting some free training for windows or office, etc.

Services due to their non-scalability -- whcih is a way of saying you have to pay for headcount per dollar earned -- is inherently less profitable that software sales -- which due to the economies of copying don't require headcount per dollar. Services don't provide the necessary financial oomph for the development of original software.

Tim

Uh.. what was wrong with MySQL and msql? I mean, it wasn't the most incredibly intensely mind-opening technical book i've ever read, but it wasn't useless, either. Far as i could tell the first couple chapters introduced you to SQL pretty well (which isn't exactly difficult, but they didn't really flub it), which you would never read more than once, and the rest was just various bits of random somewhat-disorganized reference material, sample sql, and sample database code in a few languages. It wasn't really any more useful than it would have been to have a printed and bound book that just contained the mysql manual, the dbi perldoc, and the manpage for the c database library.. and now that i'm used to mysql i just use the online manual.. and i will probably never dig my copy of the book out of the bottom of my closet never again.. but i don't really think i'm -sorry- i bought it.

And of course, it's been a long time since i first read the book, but i don't remember it being unpleasant. Why all the disdain?

It's been done.