Novell Releases PostgreSQL for NetWare

An anonymous reader writes "Ever since Oracle announced they wouldn't port 9i to NetWare, Novell has been scrambling to find an enterprise-capable DB. Now it looks like they're settling on PostgreSQL. This follows their decision to ship Apache as the default web server for NetWare 6. Linux aficionados might sneer at an old workhorse like NetWare, but it's got more than 80 million client licenses worldwide, and it ain't going anywhere anytime soon."

Comments

Re:what is netware?

[iggymanz]

Hahah! you must be a young-un'! Novell Netware was THE workgroup network file/print server for the late 80's. The version 3.x of it had a stability and ease of administration that puts most Unix systems to shame (then Novell ruined it in the 4.x versions with unstable add-ons to do interoperation with other platforms)

They had market share because they could do what Microsoft could not at that time - make a server OS.

Best undelete

[jelle]

This may be 'old stuff', becuase the last time I've used novell was years ago in the 3.x and 4.x days... But there is one thing I've never seen since.

Novell has the filesystem with the best undelete I've ever seen. When a file is deleted, it's really just marked 'ready for deletion when necessary' and becomes invisible (sort of hidden), and it's diskspace is marked 'free/unused'.

With a special undelete tool, a user can later undelete any of his files, as long as they haven't been overwritten. And the OS minimizes that. The lower the diskspace utilization, the longer that is. In practice, it's easily more than a couple of days, often weeks.

Don't Sneer at Netware/Novell

[evilviper]

I don't see why anyone would sneer at Netware. If you've got to administer several Windows machines, Netware is by far the best server for the job.

I don't think I'll hear a single arguement that Windows makes a better server... so what else?

Unix servers for Windows clients don't work very well. For one, MS' native solutions aren't very good, and I haven't seen any client-side programs that can rival the Netware client. It's secure, it integrates nicely, it uses strong encryption (RSA) to encrypt all network traffic, etc.

A Netware server may not be too much like Unix, but it's a hell of a lot better than a Windows Server... and if you've got to have Windows clients, you've got to make some sacrifices.

Netware even has tools to allow Unix compatibility (server-side), so I can't see any reason for an Sys Admin to sneer at Novell.

Re:Don't Sneer at Netware/Novell

[Anonymous Coward]

First let me say that I like Novell. I think NDS is good. Their NOS is reliable and their support is very good.

Now I will detail why they will fail.

Small business will continue to buy Windows servers for its apparent ease of administration and huge application base. They will NOT implement Active Directory unless Microsoft Office requires it. Linux will make huge inroads in to small businesses simply because of cost and administrators are getting more comfortable with it. Novell can't compete with Windows "ease of use" and Linux price. They will be cut off of this market. When RedHat ships an email solution with scheduling and supports it, Novell won't have any advantage left. Why do you think Oracle didn't port 9i to Novell?

Now for mid sized businesses. Companies that have around 500-3000 employees. These companies that are currently on Novell will probably stay for the forseable future, however a bunch of them are evaluating other NOSes. To be honest the ones I see are looking at Win2k and implementing Active Directory. However, because of the economic climate these companies are not doing much spending in the IT world now. Linux is growing in these comapnies simply because of cost, and administrators hate of Microsoft.

Now for large companies 3000+. Can't speak for too many of these, I only know a few, but all of them tend to have some commitee to determine what direction they should go (or their parent company tells them!). Those people tend to lean away from Novell because of Novells "uncertanty" as a company. They tend to play it safe and go with Win2k and Active Directory. However they tend to have every other type of OS, and Linux is making some big inroads for nitch systems. I have NOT seen any of these companies switch off of NT or Unix/Linux to Novell, or give state that Novell is their NOS of choice for the next 5 or so years. Not to say that those companies aren't out there, I just haven't seen them.

What I believe would help save Novell would be for them to slowly abandon NetWare, take RedHat Linux much like Mandrake does, and release a version of it called NetWare X. They would have to port GroupWise to it, and improve their NDS support for it, but they could sell it at the same price NetWare 6 ships today. They could even port their file system to it (Although I bet they could use one of the other journaling file systems). All the development dollars that they currently pay for NetWare could be focused on making their version of Linux great for the mid sized and large businesses. Not to mention that their sofware library would increase by a huge percentage. If they did this then released a "small business package" for around $600.00. They could actually grow that business. It looks like Ray Notra (mis-spelled) may have been smarter than we give him credit for.

Will they do something like this... no. So they will slowly die. At least Steve at Apple gets it.

Steve Michael
smichael@netcapade.net

Re:What the heck?!

[g4dget]

Oh! Whoops! Postgres doesn't run natively on Windows. [postgresql.org] This is COMPLETELY unacceptable.

Well, tough, either port it yourself or you buy Microsoft SQL Server, or you switch to Linux. The world doesn't owe you a free database server, much less one for Windows.

If anything, I think too many open source projects are ported to Windows. That eats up a lot of effort, supports Microsoft, and the users would be better off switching to a free OS in the long run anyway.

For those who didn't know

[Kinlan]

There is a new beta period just been announced for the latest version here... It has a lot of feature improvements that the non-postgres fans moan about (i.e column drop)