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But SAP already had their own database which they later open-sourced and then MySQL started to use. Why abondon that DB?

Watch for an announcement by SAP that they've bought or are partnering with another fringe DB player. My money's on Interbase.

SAP released there DB under an open source licesnse and MySQL picked up the good bits? SAP DB

Not when installed on Linux..

http://www50.sap.com/linux/

LOL!!!

Oh yeah, they *hate opensource* that's why their DB engine is gpl'd...

http://www.sapdb.org/

This whole item is a fuss about nothing is marketing mroe than policy.

They're probably just ticked off that the OSS community didn't jump on their wonderful SAP DB database! So what if it's the crappiest amalgamation of computer languages ever seen to mankind? It's open source, man! You were all supposed to fix it for them!

Maybe only only their own Open Source Software?

http://www50.sap.com/linux/

Well SAP just proudly presents,
more then 1000 Customers are
running mission critical Systems
on Linux. For those who do not
know, moving a Company to SAP can
easily cost millions of USD. Money
is not a primary issue. Stability
is! So do not put MS and SAP into
the same spot, MS does not work in
the Linux-World. Mr. Agassi is a
manager, who just farted through the
wrong hole. Do not worry, SAP is rather
a OSS Supporter. Go for http://www.sapdb.org/

This Article is not good journalism, as you
can see from the comments below. A real
Journalist would have asked more critical
questions.

Or you might sap from sapdb, an open source replacement for oracle database ( well older version of the oracle db that is)

They don't like open source yet they have some..

http://www.sapdb.org/

Ingres. Here

Mysql Here

Postgresql Here

Firebird Here

Grandparent: and apart from that DVDs will be burnt using the superdrive.

Parent: If there is only one way to get data in, through one application that can enforce the integrity on entry, and check it on retrieval, you may be OK.

Sounds like you have two routes to your data right there, whatever application does the updating *and* mysql_dump (or whatever it is called that does the backups) Ask yourself, is there any moment in my application I do not want a backup to be made? The correct use of transactions should ensure there is not. Running backups at night is a proven unseccesfull sollution to this ;-) Just a side note, your application threatsafty should be perfect to trust you application for data integrity control. It is just as close to perfect as your database system code right?

Postgresql isn`t the only free as in speech alternative, there is sap-db as well which even has a lot of oracle compatibility features.

But what are these alternatives you mention that are so much better suited for every possible scenario?

There is, of course, no tool that meets the needs of every possible scenario. Instead, there are tools that meet the needs of common scenarios. Most of what MySQL is being (improperly) used for could be easily replaced with PostgreSQL. Postgres offer similar performance, but takes a minor hit for data integrity. As a bonus, you gain sub-selects, stored procedures, SQL-92 compliance, and other features of a "real" SQL database.

MySQL is quite decent for something like a blog, but why even bother with a complete server in those cases? An embedded database such as Berkeley DB or HSQL (formerly Hypersonic) would provide better performance and would get rid of security issues inherent in running a complete database server.

In still other instances, SQL databases are misused for large object data storage. In many of these instances, an Object Database such as ObjectStore (or your favorite open source choice of the 1000+ options) will provide better performance, without sacrificing much in the way of database management. (Standard database management tools are usually insufficient for dealing with databases containing large amounts of LOBs.)

Basically, the choice in database and database technology should be carefully weighed against the application instead of saying "I know SQL and MySQL is 1337!"

Some other database options include:

DaffodilDB
SAP DB
FireBird DB
Cloudscape (Soon to be open source)
Xindice (XML Database)
ObjectDB
DB4O
Prevayler

It is quite interesting what they are doing with MySQL-Max with seems to be their enterprise solution. They teamed up with SAP DB, an open source database technology that SAP bought from Software AG to tease Oracle a bit. It is based on Adabas D a commercial database that has a "oracle compatibly mode" via ODBC.

It is quite interesting to see a mixture of SAP DB and MySQL united in MySQL-MAX. (Infoworld article)

Take a look at SapDB. Now if people could explain why this is not given the same level of exposure as MySQL & Postgre

Instead, try to improve your current solution an bring its cost down:

1. If you are scaling up by adding servers, see if you cannot add something like two Linux servers instead of one Sun (for a fraction of the price, naturally).
2. You haven't said which software packages bring up the license cost (besides Oracle, of course). But for most, there are open source alternatives. Sure, they might take more work to set up in some cases, but certainly less than rewriting the whole application, no?
3. You might even want to evaluate if you can replace your Oracle by a SAP DB instance if that is not your bottleneck (Hint: Caching! Caching!).
4. If, as you say, hundreds of KB are used up for every logged in user, then, in all likelihood, there are big inefficiencies in your code. You should profile it / have it profiled for both CPU and memory efficiency. Then tune the 5% of the code that use 95% of the resources, instead of throwing away 100%.
5. Are the outsourced programmers up to snuff? Maybe have the code checked by a third party (who could also do the profiling / tuning). Because a bad programmer can bring down any infrastructure, be it J2EE, .NET, PHP or whatever. It's the man, not the machine.

Adabas is now known as SAP DB, and you can download it at www.sapdb.org.

It's GPL. If Sun wanted, they could certainly ship it with OpenOffice.

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

= 9J =

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

= 9J =

But if you care about your data so much that you are seriously going into replicated systems, the couple of most popular free packages at least aren't there yet even in basic ACID reliability.

What are you talking about? PostgreSQL has supported ACID reliability for years.

Plus, PostgreSQL also now supports replication, the same as the one that PostgreSQL, INC. has been selling as an add-on for years (they finally opensourced it).

Another database that I would check out is SAPdb. SAP originally created it to be a competitor to Oracle, so that their customers wouldn't have to buy Oracle databases (read: pretty complicated setup, but worth it). But now they've opensourced it too, and as far as I know, it supports replication. And in the next release when MySQL takes over (Q4 2003, it'll be renamed MaxDB, and MySQL will be working on the code as well as SAP), it will have a proxy available so that you can just use MySQL database drivers to access it.

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.

According to the FAQ it supports clusters/high availability of several types (towards the bottom), has Oracle 7 compatability, and has the option to upgrade to commercial support (something available for Postgres, MySQL and most others as well). It's got an install base of users used to large environments and has been reasonably proven in the field. Just a thought.

Duh ..., the first link should have been SAPDB

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 !!!)

SAP no doubt wants a piece of the enterprise DB pie...

They've been at pains to claim otherwise. According to material on the SAPDB web site, they *are not* interested in selling a relational database system. Rather, they want an enterprise-class, royalty-free database they can use as the basis for their core apps.

SAPDB is trying to popularize its main applications (ERP, CRM) in smaller businesses than those in which they have traditionally been popular. Microsoft is just now entering this same space; SAP will never be able to compete with Microsoft in the small(ish) business market if the price of SAP's software must include an expensive relational database license.

Here's a quote from the whitepaper.

A significant motivation for the Open Source initiative is the price structure for database licenses. This affects not only SAP, but every provider of database-based solutions that must procure database licenses in order to sell them on as part of their own solution, therefore imposing costs on the end licensee. SAP AG hopes to enliven the market through the Open Source initiative and to encourage users to critically examine the high-price policies of the market-leading database providers.

I agree 100% as much as I love to see mature open source databases with enterprise featuers I got to admit that it is still not coming anytime soon.
IIRC 6-7 months ago a marketing person from Oracle came to our company to discuss if Oracle will be suitable for our next development project, our customer contracted us to develop an online electronic components database with over +20 Million component with all their information, spec sheets. In the first year the database is expected to reach 0.7TB.
I recall asking her that we plan to implement heavy server side logic in stored procedures, and she said "if it couldn't be done with Oracle then it can never be done", you get to love Oracle's marketing people but technically she was right.

The only ready-today open source database that comes near Oracle (actually it is equivalent to Oracle 7) is SAPDB and what drives me really nuts is that the open source community ignores it completely in favor for something like MySQL (not that something is wrong with MySQL).

If you're just starting in web development, don't use MySQL unless you have absolutely no choice. It will hurt you in long term.

When you first start out, you're happy that you can put data in and pull it back out. Then you find that your data gets inconsistent for some reason. To stop this happening, database designers put constraints on the data, and use transactions. If the job is done properly, it shouldn't be possible to insert inconsistent data, like a company address that doesn't belong to a company.

Unfortunately, if you chose to use MySQL at the beginning, you're now stuffed because it doesn't provide these features. What's worse, its SQL is rather non-standard, so you're going to have a problem moving to anything else. I know that people will think I'm trolling for Postgres, but I'm not really. Use any database that supports this type of feature. There are two other open source databases which are worth a look: Firebird and SAP DB.

It does take a little bit more time to learn than PostgreSQL, which would be the other GPL'ed alternative, but it's easier than Oracle and needs much less (if any) maintenance.

Deutche Post runs their R/3 system on it, and it's a huge system.

Yeah you're right, my bad. FirebirdSQL is from InterBase. And SAP DB is from...SAP!

Attention, content-management hackers. MySQL appeals, because it's open-source, it's easy to set up, and it handles very simple queries quickly. THESE ARE ITS ONLY VIRTUES . Once your web site starts getting traffic, you have to start looking at a real DBMS that optimizes complex queries and scales worth a damn. Here's one, and another, and yet another.

features that MySQL (and other open source DB's) just don't have, and probably won't have for Years.

SAP DB is free, open source and GPL. It also has all the best big-guy features. Not many people seem to know about it - it certainly has small mind-share. But it is the real stuff - miles ahead of MySQL.

that have received little comment so far:

* Firebird (ne: Borland Interbase)
* SAP-DB (ne: Adabas-D)

Both are good, high quality, commercial or formally commercial products released under an open source license. (interbase public license and GPL respectively)

Further, SAP-DB has excellent commerical support available from SAP, the company, at or better than the same level of responsiveness as, say, Oracle support.

Both are fantastic, enterprise level full ACID RDBMS's with all the great management features a heavy duty shop could want:

* online backups,
* transaction logs,
* restore to point in time
* subselects, views, rules/triggers, procedures, etc.
* great storage management

Check 'em out.

-- Pat

MySQL is not a threat to the bigwigs, because they compete in different realms. MySQL is a threat to filesystem-storage and BerkeleyDB.

PostgreSQL is a threat to the bigwigs, however.

This is not to say it won't change. MySQL apparently is trying to implement features that would make it compete with real relational databases, but last I heard, views weren't on the list, so I'm not holding my breath.

Other OSS projects that may be a big threat include SAP DB (used to be Adabas D) and... uh... right. There you go. Reply if you're a real DBA and think there's another competitor in the space of true relational RDBMSs. Hint: If you think MySQL could be on the list, you're not thinking of industrial strength databases.

There's also a lot of interest in SAP DB

Try SAP DB. It seriously competes with Oracle and DB2 and is a helluva lot cheaper, not to mention being available under the GPL/LGPL.

Also, keep in mind that SAPDB is available under the GPL, and runs under linux. Its only a matter of time until someone puts in the work to make it run on OS X.

SAP DB and PostgreSQL come to mind.

1. Small, lite-duty engine mostly for embedded or small-footprint apps. Subset of lanugage of #2.

SQLite: http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/

2. Full language, but lacking performance tuning. Mostly for development and smaller shops.

Firebird: http://firebird.sourceforge.net/

3. "Big-iron" version that has full language and performance tuning features.

SAPDB (almost, but still not up to Oracle's standards): http://sapdb.org/

MySQL is not yet an acceptable replacement for a well done installation of Oracle ... I want something others of used

You want this or this.

Comparing MySQL and Oracle is a bit silly. If you want something 'industrial strength' and GPL then SAP-DB may be worth a look.

If you were running a business, you would definitely look to OSS first before considering forking out big dollars for commercial software, right?. For the same reasons, wouldn't you like to see governments do the same? It's still 'your' money being thrown away even if the government is doing it.

• The web-based administration tools didn't install as documented. And the documentation wasn't easy; it required editing the Windows registry! The traditional GUI tools worked okay.
• When I tried to dump a bunch of data into a test database, it didn't all get there. Turns out the database ran out of room in its "data devspace." I never worked with a database before that needed space pre-allocated for the data, and this requirement might be a problem for my clients without on-site DBAs.
• The ODBC driver had a quirk that truncated floating-point values to integers when I dumped the values from a legacy database (Paradox) into SAP DB. The dump went fine if I defined the SAP DB table structure in advance, but the automatic ODBC type conversion didn't work.
• Support is very responsive and competent, but it's only available through a mailing list, not a newsgroup, so it's harder to follow and participate in threads.
• The documentation is thorough, but the online version doesn't have an index. SAP says you can use Google to search it.

Tell me, are you trolling or just ignorant ? Of course SAP DB supports transactions, RTFM !

Oops, clipboard error with the home page. I meant to link to the real site.

I'm switching to Oracle for the simple fact it can do everything I need and more. Great Drivers, great database, great expense. Sometimes you do get what you pay for (unless your California).

The sap db has JDBC 2.0 drivers. Which is better than the 1.0 drivers for MySQL.

Well, according to this they do offer transactions.

i run a FreeBSD shop. i check out FreshPorts.org and there is nothing about SAP-DB to be found. there is MySQL and PostgreSQL a-plenty, though.

freshmeat.net has TWO projects listed: SAP Database and SAP DB. both link back to sapdb.org.

the Windows download is in TGZ format. how many Windows applications come packaged in TGZ? how many come in ZIP, or even more likely, self-extracting EXE?

you'd think they'd get a clue about this, when they have to warn on their own website: Check whether your browser changes the package extension from tgz to tar during the download. If so, rename the package to tgz before installing it.

In response to the php support (and other languages) for sap-db I think this page should suffice most :]

Has anyone else noticed the mysterious blacked out sections on the SAP-DB history page? Creepy.

that SAP DB isn't supported out of the box by Java, Perl, or PHP, etc. but one quick glance shows they support Perl through DBD::ODBC, have an ODBC driver suitable for PHP, and supply a JDBC driver for Java programs.

so now i'm wondering what the catch is. too big? bloated? slow?

well, the minimum requirements on Linux list a base memory footprint of 128 MB. MySQL runs on just about the smallest box you own, and most people tinkering with MySQL are on budgets of $0, meaning, no new bigger boxes for a long, long time.

that SAP DB isn't supported out of the box by Java, Perl, or PHP, etc. but one quick glance shows they support Perl through DBD::ODBC, have an ODBC driver suitable for PHP, and supply a JDBC driver for Java programs.

so now i'm wondering what the catch is. too big? bloated? slow?

well, the minimum requirements on Linux list a base memory footprint of 128 MB. MySQL runs on just about the smallest box you own, and most people tinkering with MySQL are on budgets of $0, meaning, no new bigger boxes for a long, long time.