Slashdot Mirror

>> No, replication isn't that big of a deal to most enterprise databases. About the only people who really think it's important seem to be MySQL content-management users that want failover. ... And clustering? Although a very small number of Oracle users are using their product for clustering at least there they can handle more than a few gbytes of data. The solution that MySQL purchased a few years ago is limited to the amount of data that will fit into memory

That doesn't agree with this article about MySQL 5.0. http://www.sqlsummit.com/Articles/MySQL5.htm. It mentions MySQL at Sabre Holdings, which does reservations for American Airlines and Travelocity. The replication and clustering described in that article are quite different from what you're saying.

The feature list for Sybase, Oracle, IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server needs work.

Sybase
"Cheaper version of Oracle, much of the same underlying code" is incorrect. Oracle is not from the same code base as Sybase. Early versions of Microsoft SQL Server were derived from the Sybase code base.
Sybase "recently integrated with the java virtual machine to do java stored procedures" -- recently ?? Sybase, IBM DB2, Informix and Oracle did that in the late '90s:
Logic in the Database
http://www.sqlsummit.com/Articles/LogicInTheDataba se.htm/

MS SQL
.. "no Java". There are JDBC drivers, but no embedded Java VM or classes embedded in the database (see above article).
Supports SQL-2003 XML data type and XQuery.

Oracle
Supports XML data type and XQuery.

DB2
XML data type is in next version.

MySQL
Does not support embedded Java classes, XQuery or XML data type.

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 wonder IBM's lost most of the market outside of mainframes and minis.

These market share charts say otherwise:
Application Server http://www.sqlsummit.com/Trends/AppServerMarket.ht m
Database http://www.sqlsummit.com/Trends/DBMSMarket.htm

IBM had $96 billion revenue in $2004.

No wonder IBM's lost most of the market outside of mainframes and minis.

These market share charts say otherwise:
Application Server http://www.sqlsummit.com/Trends/AppServerMarket.ht m
Database http://www.sqlsummit.com/Trends/DBMSMarket.htm

IBM had $96 billion revenue in $2004.

"Mysql might work for smaller applications, but it has a lot of problems when it comes to handling enterprise environments."

Your comment about MySQL doesn't agree with this review of MySQL: http://www.sqlsummit.com/articles/mysql5.htm
Click on the Sabre link on the left to read a case study of an enterprise environment. There's also mention of a terabyte-sized data warehouse.