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IBM, MS Critique MySQL
magellan writes "InfoWorld has an article reporting how both IBM and Microsoft are dissing MySQL. While it is understandable from Microsoft, it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative. Sun Microsystems and Yahoo are quoted as providing positive opinions on MySQL." On the credit site for MySQL, though, Bingo Foo writes "MySQL has finally answered its detractors who complained about its lack of transactions. A press release today reveals that InnoDB is now fully integrated with the stock MySQL product, allowing ACID-compliant transactions, rollback, and crash recovery. Let the religious wars begin!"
Except for the fact that IBM has a competing product. IBM can like open source all they want, but they would be stupid to promote something that does for free, what they sell a product to do.
One word (sort of anyway) DB2. IBM has made a ton of money on databases. It isn't surprising that they would diss a substandard newbee.
Beware the wood elf!!!
I can understand why IBM would bash MySQL, though. After all, they are selling DB2 -- so they have to compete with a free SQL db. Remember to keep in mind that both IBM and MS are primarily interested in keeping up revenues from their commercial DB products when reading their complaints on MySQL.
"'So far, I still see MySQL and some of the other open-source databases as really niche players,' said Sheryl Tullis, product manager for the SQL Server database at Microsoft."
niche players? Oh.. I get it. No other DBMS opens your box to more Trojans and Virii than SQL Server. I guess they're worried about losing market share in that arena.
Reading an article based on scalability of MySQL and just reading the Other religious war (hacker cracker as it has degenerated) the banner ad popped up "Hackers look for this". It really puts a bad taste in one's mouth... Especially as it detracted from the article (which was just a scathing anti-MySQL anti-OSS Database rhetoric.
Hmm... Maybe that's a good thing.
So far, I still see MySQL and some of the other open-source databases as really niche players," said Sheryl Tullis, product manager for the SQL Server database at Microsoft.
"With open-source, you're not going to get a platform that's as reliable or scalable or as secure as what you're going to get with a leading vendor," Tullis said.
One of my old profs used to say, "consider the source."
This is obvious microsoft bullshit, as open-source platforms are more reliable, and more scalable than anything from microsoft.
What's interesting is that IBM now sees open source as a double-edged sword.
Let the fud wars begin!
Why is this disturbing? The fact is, MySQL is a sub-par database. It lacks many of the features of commercial databases, and is blown away by many free ones such as PostgreSQL. Just because IBM and Sun support open source doesn't mean they're going to support BAD PRODUCTS. Let's use a little common sense here.
Is your browser retarded?
IBM and Sun are *not* open source allies. This is not a war you retard it's business. They will only support open source and free software when it is profitable for them to do so. IBM sells a commercial database and has no interest in MySQL.
(P.S. Does MySQL have any support for checkpointing and hot backup, or do I have to take the whole database down during maintainance?)
I don't suppose it ever occured to the submitter of the story that IBM might have taken an objective look at MySQL and formulated it's remarks based on first-hand observations, instead of the rehearsed and oft-repeated rhetoric of open-source fanaticism.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Cynicism suggests they may be more likely support open source projects that they don't have a competing product in.
********************
I object to Intellect without Discipline.
Well, since both vendors have their own db throwns to protect, it doesn't suprise me.
I've used all three products and there's nothing wrong with any of them. M$ and IBM are just complaining because of the whole 'transaction' issue and, of course, cuz mysql is free.
I dunno, I wouldn't give it much thought. People are gonna use whatever they use, regardless of who disses what. If you don't have cash and you're an open sourcer, you'll choose either mysql or postgres. If you're a windoze or big app person, you'll choose either oracle, db2, or m$ sql. simple as that.
I would not fault MySQL for this, though, since after all it was designed and still mainly used as an SQL wrapper for flat file data, and this is why it's usually much faster than full-featured RDBMSes. The problem is with mindless open-source advocates who try to pump up MySQL as the be-all, end-all database solution. For a personal website or small business, MySQL is more than adequate, but its lack of higher-end SQL features make it a poor fit for large, distributed, mission-critical corporate or university data storage.
IBM and Microsoft's customers are generally in this higher end of the database spectrum, where Oracle or DB2 makes much more sense. It's no surprise that they would want to put MySQL in its place as an entry-level database system, where it belongs, and I fail to see how this story qualifies as news.
are you reading slashdot? Slashdot uses MySQL.
-Tolerate my intolerance
MOst arguements I have seen against MySQL (including mine) are far from zealotry. SO now (after how long???) it has transactions. Big deal. Let me know when they support sub selects, sequences, schemas, and any other number of basic features any database using programmer worth his meat uses every day, and then maybe I'll have another look. Until then, I'll stick with Postgres, which has had all these features for a long time, and has much better performance than MySQL on any moderate to large database.
IBM and Sun are supposed to be open source allies
They are not allies they are businesses and as such are responsible to the stock holders. They are in business to make money. IBM has been cozying up to some Open Source projects as a way to bolster its other offerings and to more effectively compete with MS and their other competitors.
IBM sells DB2, while MySQL does intersect a subset of the potential customer database needs, so they are naturally critical. Nothing amazing here.
I find this very disturbing, especially in light of the fact that IBM and Sun are supposed to be open soure allies.
Sun and IBM are both "profit-wise organisations", they want profit, PERIOD. They are obviously not interested in your little "crusade", their don't see the world as "Open source allies" and "Open source enemies".
Then MYSQL is a minivan. You can just get in and drive it around. Sure it can't carry a crane to the worksite - but who really cares?
This is one thing I hate about the computer industry. Everyone thinks that because their particular system is flexible enough to (badly) handle many things it wasn't directly designed for, that it's a good idea for them to target all those other things as competition.
It's not like some multinational corporation is going to channel their $100B/year of revenue tracking through a MYSQL database. So why should Bob Novice who wants to build a simple email tracker for his family have to use a database which requires six months of training before the word Go?
If you look at the complaints in the article
Open-source databases "don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options," said Jeff Jones, director of strategy for data management solutions at IBM. "They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise," Jones said.
All of that is absolutely true. The MySQL response was also true the missing functionality in products such as MySQL is not needed by some companies
One of the posters below made the comparisons between a landrover and 747. You don't need a 747 for all tasks and there is nothing wrong with making cars and not planes. MySQL is a really nice alternative to both flatfiles and overkill complex databases for departmental servers. Oracle and DB2 still have major features for enterprise servers that MYSQL and Postgres just don't have. Especially DB2 where the advantages of I-OS and Z-OS over Unix can be felt. In some ways Oracle probably has the most to fear because with Sun backing MySQL there is a good chance that as far as Unix systems go within 5 years it could be comparable.
In terms of ease of use for departmental level servers SQL Server beats out MySQL. An open source project like Access would do a ton to close this gap.
``InnoDB is now fully integrated with the stock MySQL product''
This once again proves the ability (and tendency) of OSS to catch up with closed-source software. As any software, the earliest prototypes are far inferior to existing software, but good projects will catch up with and even outdo the competition in an amazing pace. Thanks, MySQL adversaries, for complaining so much about missing features!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I laughed out loud when I saw that it featured a quotation by "head of the SQL Server project" opposing a quotation by "head technical Yahoo." Somehow I'm much more reassured having a Yahoo on our side than a stuffed shirt...
it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative
Being a defender of OS doesn't imply that you're not allowed to bash individual products. MySQL is fine for a lot of sites, but I'm sure that in IBM's world there are plenty of applications where it's definately not sufficient.
I once heard one of my teachers say that MySQL basically is a wrapper for a file-system. Granted, he was also working for a company that is in direct competetion with MySQL, but as such, he has probably also taken a good long look at MySQL and thus have a good idea of what is going on behind the stage.
Besides the FUD (both MS and IBM are sellers of massively overpowered SQL servers), there's good reason to warn customers about MySQL. It's still a toy -- it can't scale for shit, has trouble optimizing queries and setting up multiple indexes and transactions are a huge performance hit. This is the point at which someone mentions a good DBA is already optimizing the queries. I would like to point out that a company trying to avoid paying $2-$20,000 on a SQL server license don't have the $60k+ to pay a good DBA.
Some consultants are no doubt going to tout to companies the impressiveness of MySQL and hook them on it for its value without telling them that it's not as scalable. Which would mean costly conversion in the future to one of the other database systems, which could have been avoided by just using them in the first place.
I am not a fan of MS, but SQL Server is an impressive piece of software. I've dealt with it my entire career, while running mysql and postgres at home. I would never deliver a product based on MySQL to an F500, or any company that's going to do more with their database than manage a small ebusiness server.
Postgres, on the other hand, is very full featured and a joy to work with.
This isn't to say that MySQL doesn't work for your web log, your cd database, your employee info database or your company wide contact system with SOAP front end. It's to say that I wouldn't trust it with any data I needed 100% responsive and 100% reliable.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
a pocket knife is a lousy axe......
love is just extroverted narcissism
Don't forget that IBM recently bought out Informix and now sells InformixSQL as well as DB2.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
I don't think that either company has ever suggested anything other than self-interest wrt open source.
Now they don't have any interest to back MySQL, so they try to encourage the use of DB2 or whatever else.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now that they support transactions they evolved from Trabant to Honda, but definitely not to Ferari. MySQL still lacks important features - like subselects, or a non brain-dead query rewriter/optimizer(MySQL is indeed lightning fast, but only for relatively simple queries). The problem, IMHO, is that a lot of developers learn databases on-the-fly (in a non-rigurous manner), and as a consequence have no idea what to expect from a DB.
Never believe the marketing department (of either side in this story)
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"it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative. "
Just because you support Open Source, doesn't(or shouldn't) mean you blindly like something just because it is open source.
Would you really want your multi-terabyte real time database to be MySQL?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This seems to be a great indicator that MySQL is being used and is a threat. If it truly was a terrible product, there would be no need for MS and IBM to make these comments.
What's not to be worried about? Everything!
Let's not forget two things here:
:-)). Now if they start dissing PostgreSQL, which I stake my job and reputation on the reliability of, then I will begin to reel off the reasons why I parted ways with IBM, and would never go back...
1) IBM sells a very capable (as in, "Runs the UPS package-tracking system, at 15TB the largest publicly disclosed OLTP database in the world") system called DB2, and they make money doing so.
2) MySQL has only recently included transactions in the base package. They still do not handle subselects or foreign keys, both of which become very useful when dealing with large databases.
Why on earth *wouldn't* IBM recommend against MySQL for their enterprise customers? IGS does not service the sorts of customers that are typically suited to using MySQL (US Census Department excluded
Hint: it's not because IGS technical people are anything less than world-class. Management is another story. But don't think IBM engineers don't know what they're doing. They're damn good.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
And they were not wrong at all. At this time, DB2/6000 was missing some exotic features Oracle was having. Anyway, some peoples decided to adopt DB2 and IBM continued to improve DB2.
I don't see the point about a lack of endorsement of OSS by IBM because they are just saying some features, they think are required by enterprises class architectures, are missing by MySQL. It's just plain truth, MySQL is missing some features. It's up to the customer to decide if these features are required or not.
In short, a storm in a glass of water...
Achille Talon
Hop!
Anybody who has built very large, mission-critical database systems would never think of using MySQL. MySQL is great for small, simple applications, and has been very popular for web content site because of it's quick speed or reading data, but it's lack of truly robust transaction support (until recently with the 4.x release) scares big corporate DBAs. Not to mention its lack of stored procedures, sub-queries, and many other SQL programming features and strong 3rd-party management tools make it a 2nd-tier RDBMS in my mind. But I don't mind using it for web content or for simple apps that I want to run on Linux or a low-cost ISP network that includes MySQL support.
Use it for what it's good for. If other products are better at doing other things, get over it.
Microsoft's bashing is pretty obvious. And IBM's is somewhat surprising as well, though they may use some open source RDBMS as part of their Linux product lines and push DB/2 for larger products, just ive they do with AIX vs. Linux.
Even RedHat pushes PostgreSQL over MySQL as their RDBMS product of choice. MySQL can't even get props for best RDBMS among the open-source world, though it's the most popular.
Open-source databases "don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options," said Jeff Jones, director of strategy for data management solutions at IBM. "They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise," Jones said.
No, it doesn't keep them out of enterprise. To manage some status data on some non-critical web server, out-of-the-box MySQL is perfectly adequate and much easier to use than fully-grown RDBMSs. Maybe it's a lot less scalable, but then it runs on the hardware you've already got.
But I can understand that it's quite frustrating for the big database vendors that some people do not care about online backup, transactions, stored procedures, views, replication etc. etc. and position even current stable MySQL versions against traditional RDBMSs. (Don't get me wrong, MySQL is fine if you don't need those features. You can already pick a subset of the features which are supported by MySQL in a single table type, and MySQL 5.0 will arrive one day and probably qualify as an RDBMS).
The classic example, a transfer of funds between two accounts. The withdrawal from one goes OK, but the post to the other fails. According to the MySQL crowd, it's OK for the bank to loose that money. Or to try to fix it up later, while checks are bouncing.
Now that they have transactions, at least sometimes, on some tables, if you set it up that way, I'm waiting to find out what else they think I don't need.
MySQL treats performance as a primary feature. That's almost always a bad idea. Correctness HAS to come first. If it doesn't have to work, I can make it go as fast as you want,
They need to let the general public know what it is - slightly better than flatfiles. MySQL offers a better quick and dirty solution, but is by no means an enterprise-class database. In fact, I really don't know how MySQL AB can stay in business (?). Anybody who has really used MySQL in a heavy duty capacity will know it's deficiencies.
Several developers (web developers specifically) do nothing but sing the praises of MySQL, and with nothing but glowing reviews from those who only need the small subset of database capabilities MySQL provides, PHB's and project managers might be lead down the golden path. IBM and MS are just letting the average PHB know that it is not an enterprise class DB.
Otherwise, nobody would ever know it isn't the best thing since sliced bread. Yeah, sub-queries, foreign keys, stored procedure language, replication,
It is in their best interest to put mysql in it's place. Of course, they aren't slamming PostgreSQL, if they were then they would be out of line.
The main thing missing from MySQL is subselects, views and subselects- the TWO main things missing from MySQL are views and subselects... and triggers... Oh I'll just come in again....
Among MySQL's deficiencies are such diverse elements as subselects, views and triggers...
(Ashamed to say I've forgotten the rest...)
Atually, MSSQL has many more standard features then MySQL. I would never use MySQL as a main database in a corporate enviroment.
Just for the record, I would use MSSQL either, it's too slow.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I read the press release. It sounds all nice an hunky dory, but when you to the website, what do you find? 4.0.3 is a beta product. The Max 3.23 release does support InnoDB, but it has for quite awhile.
The big news is really that 4.0.3 is actually beta, not an alpha.
Unfortunately the Max compiles were listed for a long time as unstable on MySQL's website, causing many companies to ignore it.
When a 4.x stable branch is out, and 3.x is obsoleted, then I'll be a happy camper. 4.x adds improved fulltext indexes, UNION, MERGE tables, REVOKE and enhanced user limitations, multi-table deletes, enhanced replication, dynamic server variables (no more restarting the server to make my.cnf changes take effect), not to mention the InnoDB integration which adds transactions, row level locking, and foreign keys.
IBM and MS can spew whatever sort of FUD they want to about MySQL. I say use the tools you like and that get the job done. Would I run a multi-million dollar data center with terabyte plus databases on MySQL? No (postgres maybe though). But a very select heavy website, with fairly small tables? Sure thing!
MySQL is blindingly fast for most small applications, as well as being fairly easy to install and administer.
Brickshelf and Geekshelf both use MySQL as the backend for their galleries. Together they serve about ~200,000 gallery pages per day (over 500,000 in a recent slashdotting). It is always _super_ fast, even during the slashdot effect (locally -- bandwidth limitations still have an effect for remote users). It's very reliable too, db server uptime is 111 days. The mysqld process has been running since Aug. 12. Since then there have been over 8,000,000 connections to the db. It's rock solid.
This is obvious microsoft bullshit, as open-source platforms are more reliable, and more scalable than anything from microsoft.
The problem is that the two lines you quotes are basically true. MySQL IS a niche database. It is good where there is little updating/inserting and mostly reading going on. Web sites are a excellent candidate for these operations. Having worked with many different RDBMS, Oracle and MS SQL server are probably the best all round databases. By all round, I mean features/price/performace/ease of use/etc... They, for the most part have good performance, are reliable, and decently scalable (Oracle more so). Now if you are getting into very large datasets you start to look toward other niche players such as NCR Teradata.
Just because something is OSS doesn't mean it is the best thing out there. MySQL is good at what it does - a fast filesystem that is able to be queried by a small subset of SQL. It has come a long way since it first came out, but I'm tired of people trying to compare MySQL to real RDBMs. If OSS is really looking to push a RDBMS then they should push postgres instead.
Back about a year ago /. experienced a major outage. Roblimo at the time noted, "By 7 a.m. it was obvious that this was not a typical, easily-fixed, reboot-the-database problem."
Can anybody imagine an SQL Server or DB/2 customer being satisfied with that solution? That's what IBM/MS is saying.
I suspect that if it weren't for slashdot running mysql, it would have long since died off, especially, amongst the free software zealot crowd.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Of course IBM and MS will bash Mysql, it's to be expected.
But before you think that the bashing is solely due to marking ploys, think again. Mysql IS lacking many of the features that "real" databases have. In the past MySQL was unabashadly vocal in not including these features as they could be programmed around, and would slow down the database.
Remember, we're not talking about the latest SQL extensions, but common things like FOREIGN KEY, and stored procedures.
MySQL rocks when you don't need the extras, but that's not a reason to migrate to MySQL, or to ignore that MySQL lacks features common to general-purpose databases. Just because MySQL is my favorite "quick and dirty" db, does not make it the best tool for all jobs. That's like arguing that MSAccess is most popular db (by having the most installations) therefore it's the most technically advanced/secure/useful/etc.
Everytime these articles are posted on Slashdot, you can almost certainly gaurantee everyone pationatly defending their favorite database. It's like getting engineers from Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota and Dodge... (ok, Nissan too just so I don't get flamed by a Nissan owner...) into a room and asking what's the best pickup truck. They'll all have their valid points on why theirs is better than the other. However if you really read between the lines, the examples are almost always geared toward a certain scenario.
Example:
Chevy: My Chevy has more horsepower then the Toyota, so I can pull larger trailers.
Resonse from Toyota: Well I get better gas milage...
Now apply this to our debate:
IBM (DB2): I can handle multi-terabyte databases while maintaining referential integrity.
Response from MySQL: Dude, I'm simply pulling straight-forward data on a very strict budget....
Bottom line is there's a tool for every job, pick one that works for you and be happy with yourself. Don't blindly say my database can do all and screw everyone who doesn't agree.
Microsoft (surprisingly) nor IBM seemed terribly negative on OSS databases, including MySQL.
What I came away with was that they think databases like MySQL don't have some key features that are important to enterprises like supporting a massive number of concurrent users or a price tag with a non-zero integer followed by lots of zeros (US$).
Which sorta implies MySQL, Postgres, etc. are great for the other 99.9% of database applications.
We have one quote on MySQL from IBM, from Jeff Jones. In the end, he's saying the MySQL isn't an enterprise level product because of some missing functionality, and scalability and performance.
Considering that I've seen much harsher comments on MySQL here at /. during the database wars, this doesn't seem that off base.
It's the Microsoftie, Sheryl Tullis, who describes MySQL as a niche player and then disses open-source in general with her "you're not going to get a platform that's as reliable or scalable or as secure as what you're going to get with a leading vendor".
This is typical MS FUD, and should be dismissed as worthless. Since the "leading vendor" is MS, and since their products are NOT reliable, scalable or secure, her commentary is laughable.
Too slow? Check TCP-C all the fastest entries are running MSSQL now granted these are share nothing clusters which isnt very realistic for the real world but slow is no longer one of MS's shortcomings. Reliability, true scalability, and a few other things I would fault them for but not speed. Actually it kind of sounds kind of like MySQL =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative
Not really... If you look at some other opensource software like.. oh I dunno.. dopewars, I'm sure that the majority of most IBM execs wouldn't support that either. The point is, just because someone is an OSS proponent, doesn't mean that they have to like all open source programs.
This is a perfect example of attacking an easy target (MySQL) in an attempt to tar more serious competitors (PostgreSQL, SAP DB) with the same brush.
A number of replies have correctly pointed out that MySQL is missing too many features to compete with SQL Server or DB2 (or Oracle), but that's much less true of other open source databases.
Clever, slimy marketing and the reporter fell for it hook, line and sinker.
What I really dislike about slashdot is that every time somebody even takes a quip at an open source project it's dismissed as FUD (a word which gets thrown around so often that its meaning isn't even clear anymore).
Has anybody ever stopped to consider that many, many closed source projects are just better than their open source counterparts? Open source doesn't automatically mean better (hell, in my experience, open source usually implies an inferior product).
I'd choose IBM DB2 and MS SQL Server over MySQL any day of the week.
To get a little off topic I'd also choose MS Office over kOffice, Photoshop over GIMP, etc...
It's not that all open source projects are bad, it's just that a lot of them don't even begin to compare to the software that they are trying to emulate.
(JARRING CHORD)
(The door flies open and Bill Gates of Microsoft enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Steve Ballmer has goggles pushed over his forehead. Sam Palmisano (IBM) is just an idiot.)
Gates: NOBODY expects the InfoWorld Article! The chief thing missing from MySQL is subselects...subselects and views...views and subselects.... The two things missing are views and subselects...and triggers.... The *three* things missing are views, subselects and triggers...and an almost fanatical devotion to row-level transactions.... The *four*...no... *Amongst* the things missing from MySQL
Slashdotters: I didn't expect a kind of InfoWorld article.
it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative
Can you say DB2 ??
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
That doesn't describe MS SQL Server, or at least version 7. This is what I've been working with exclusively for the last 3 years. I frequently find it deadlocks and kills processes, or connections timeout. It does some very annoying things with locks that block other processes for long periods of time. I'm not saying it doesn't scale as I'm impressed at how fast some of our queries joining through a 100 million+ row table run, but it does have some serious issues too.
IBM *is* exactly right about MySQL, and for that matter most Open Source databases. It takes years to mature a major product like AIX and DB2, and the GPL competitors (which I love and use daily) do *not* have the same functionality. They are *lite* versions of the real deal. The two most important features of Open Source products is they are 1) Free, 2) come with source code. It is *not* their functionality!!!
IBM and Borland will do *allot* to improve these GPL products and all the grousing by people with little to no expereince in the *real world* won't change that.
we run mysql at the public company i work for to handle every aspect of the intranet for 500 employees.
i have a meeting at 3pm PST with the oracle DBAs to teach them how to maintain it... whatever that means.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Well, security, in this, case only goes as far as the hundreds of attempts daily to connect to port 1433 on my Linux box at home. Other than that, I'd say SQL Server is a solid product!
Coderz 4 Life
I think that we all need is an tpc result of both MySQL and Postgresql. After that, then we know if they can compite with the real "databases" of today.
sight of the fact that MySQL was never intended as an "Enterprise" DBMS?
Look at the very top of the O'Reilly book. What does it say there?
"Databases for Moderate-Sized Organizations & Websites"
Please note that it doesn't say:
"This is a free product that kicks Oracle's ass"
It is explicitly intended to be, and I quote:
"Inexpensive, lightweight and fast."
To accomplish this they restrict themselves to a subset of the SQL language.
Why do you think that *adjustable* wrenches come in different sizes? If they're adjustable wouldn't you just get the biggest one and use it for everything? That philosophy might seem like a good idea, until you try to turn a 6mm *aluminum* nut with a 14" wrench!
It's OK for tools to come in different sizes and types. Pick (are you ready for it?) the *right tool for the right job.*
Does MySQL suck? For many particular jobs, sure, but that's the fault of the person who attempted to use it for those jobs. Conversely, there are situations and jobs for which it is everything *but* MySQL that sucks.
I just don't get the *one true DBMS* holy wars. Diversity be good. Monolithism be bad. Get with the program.
KFG
So if we look at the whole platform, open source uptimes win hands down, compared to Windows, which, just like in the "real world (ie: windows are made of glass)", breaks easily.
Nice shot at SAP, I must say!.
I find this very disturbing, especially in light of the fact that IBM and Sun are supposed to be open soure allies.
Um. It's possible to support open source but still think that an open source application sucks.
Same with MicroSoft. I know from teaching at the University of Washington that the adult students who are coming in on the Windows side are using MySQL on that platform. Its easy to install and obviously a lot cheaper then install SQL server.
MS has a long term problem with MySQL on their platform and I am sure that they realize this.
You can't grep a dead tree.
as a MSSQL DBA, I can say that virtually all the issues I've encountered in the last 5 years with SQL Server were resolved through code optimization. It is only as good as the developer and DBA.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
I don't see how this relates to database and what roblimo said last year... am I blind? I read the comment you made as "slashdot went down a year ago due to a database failure that couldn't be fixed by a simple reboot." Of course, if hadn't have read the article I might have just taken as that, but...
It was improper network setup...
So... could you be more specific?
Wes
Every time I see comments about girls and marriage, I worry that Slashdot may no longer be of the geeks and for the geeks. Fortunately, then someone comes along like you and describes a database system as "a joy".
It's not often /. leaves me with a huge grin anymore but the image of you jumping up, punching the air and yelling, "Woohoo! I get to work with Postgres!" left me with one.
God bless you. God bless your pure, innocent love of databases.
They forgot to mention the Trek, Lego, LOTR, p2p, and 'f*** the **AA' communities.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
And in any case, dismissing all criticisms as anti-OS propaganda is not constructive. The Open Source movement does not have a future if its adherent cop a "The Emperor Cannot Be Naked" attitude.
Three alphanumerics: DB2
It doesn't get much clearer on why they would put down any other product than their own.
Just because somebody is pro-open source does not mean that he/she/they should promote everything that has been open sourced. It actually is possible to say negative things about an open sourced piece of software without being anti-open source, you know.
This is the second article I looked at today that seemed to be random thoughts stuck together as a series of paragraphs. There was no real value added by the auther other than basic research. I could have written this article with a script that grabbed snippets from various sites and strung them together. Hmmm, interesting program idea...
Don't lump MySQL and PostgreSQL together. Name one feature that Oracle and DB2 support and PosgreSQL doesn't. The only thing I'm aware of is clustering, but if you need that, you probably have the money for it anyway, so IBM and Oracle will be happy to milk you. Other than that, what does Oracle or DB2 have that PostgreSQL doesn't?
Sigh... I agree that MySQL is not a database, and anyone who goes out of their way defending it should get a reality check. But it's really a shame that the true gem of the Open Source world gets left in the dust. Everyone uses MySQL "because everyone else does"...
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
"Critiquing" a product is not necessarily equivalent to "dissing" it or "bashing" it. Please be aware of the connotations each of these words has, and use the one that's most appropriate.
Also, can we please not bring up PostgreSQL and the inevitable Postgres/MySQL pissing match this time? This article is about MySQL. It is not about PostgreSQL. You can post about how great that product is some other time.
I would think they would be considered and enterprise environment.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
If MySQL wants to make serious inroads and be considered a decent database for business it needs things that other primetime databases has like:
Stored Procedures
A good gui (MyCC is a good start - not a web one)
Functions
Replication
I know most of these things are in development or are in beta but lets get moving folks. Sure MySQL is fast and all but it can't hold a candle to MS SQL Server for ease of use and features. It's free which is great but it really can't compete in business yet. From that context it deserves to get dissed. Both dissers, by the way, sell their own databases so don't be too surprised by the negative press.
Have a Happy.
Rather than ripping IBM for criticising - fairly, IMHO - MySQL on a laundry list of technical (and NOT philosophical) grounds, I would think the open-source-rah-rah crowd here should take pleasure at noting this: when open-source software is being evaluated NOT on the basis of whether or not it is open-source, but RATHER on its technical merits, a watershed has been marked.
Ultimately most people don't care about the history wrapped up in a product - they care about whether or not the product does what they need it do. Jews who lost family members in WWII drive Porsches (for instance) now without blinking, even though the cars bear the same name that built the most powerful German war machines, for instance, because Porsche makes a damn good car.
If open-source software is being evaluated on whether or not it can do the job, rather than on the merits/loopholes/risks of open-source software, that's a Good Thing (tm) for the OSS crowd - it means the hangups companies may have for OSS are as big as they were before. It means products are being evaluated as products, and not as proxies for philosophies or agendas.
I'm using it. I'd be interested in hearing from some people who are beating on it in some serious production environments.
Thanks!
The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
Let's start by pulling our heads from our asses and think about this subject from an intelligent viewpoint. MySQL is NOT the right tool for every freakin' site. I like MySQL for my little sites that get like 100 hits a day and store very little data. MySQL sucks major ass when you attempt any enterprise application use. It fails horribly with large tables and is extremely difficult to manage. Postgresql is the best Open source database, period. It is fast, reliable, and has all the features you will need and is rock solid.
Use MySQL for your little web site and use Postgresql for the real stuff. As for DB2, Oracle, MSSQL, I don't see the value in any of these over Postgresql.
LoRider
A database that can only handle one subset of our customers per database instance is too amateurish to consider for much beyond managing a Christmas card list. And, come to think of it, without Unicode it couldn't even handle my Christmas card list.
I can imagine some niche uses, but I would never consider it for a general-purpose database platform for a company with international aspirations.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I've spend the last few years developing web apps and I have to say that I have never ever needed most of the features a commercial db would offer me. :-) but as far as serving websites is concerned: it's MySQL all the way!
(I've never really needed transaction support, i've never needed subselects.) On the other hand, I have not seen anything as fast or as simple as MySQL.
Sure, MySQL is not my first choice when it comes to bigger style apps which would rely heavily on the database (that's what postgres' for
If I were IBM and had to sell some DB2 licences, I too would say everything else is rubbish, same for Microsoft, that's called marketing I was told...
I know it sounds like a bitch to code, but honestly it only takes a few more minutes to rewrite views as 'create temporary table' statements, and then run queries against them. You obviously can't update data this way, but I haven't found many M$ $QL $erver views which have been updatable either. I am using temporary tables until MySQL-4.1 is released which will have views anyway.
Sure moderators, rate me as being a troll. I obviously am just making my opinion up to stir up a flamewar. I couldn't possibly think that MySQL is a piece of shit, oh no sir.
--
Doesn't IBM realize that, by being a proponent of open source, they're obligated to say only nice things about every single open source project under the sun?
Doesn't anyone see the irony in the slashdot blurb? "It's surprising to see IBM diss MySQL; In other news, MySQL just got transactions!"
MySQL is a fine departmental database, but a lousy enterprise database. That will probably change, of course, but for the time being both Microsoft and IBM are right.
Cheers
-b
This is about the zillionth article posted on Slashdot debating the fact that MySQL doesn't have subselects while PostGreSQL does, and yet I still don't know why one would do a subselect instead of a join. In fact, I don't even have a good idea when I'd start caring about row-level locking vs. table-level locking. I've performed the usual Google searches on the subject, but have yet to find a good resource discussing the pros and cons of such things.
What I'd like to look at is a practical reference on such matters; something that combines table size/design, query complexity/frequence/methodology, and hardware requirements. I 'get' the concept of normalized data tables. I'd just like to 'get' the concept of quering equally well.
Or maybe it is just that MySQL really is a toy.
danheskett wrote:
n ium/mgoals.html)
> is it really that much of a stretch to believe
> that maybe IBM and MS have a leg up on MySQL in
> terms of experience with scalability and
> reliability?
I don't know about IBM, but I can say a few things about MS:
"Scalability": well, SQL Server better scale, since Microsoft plans on using it as its new filesystem Yukon, and possibly as the filesystem of a distributed network encompassing every computer on the planet! (http://research.microsoft.com/research/sn/Millen
"Reliability": A data loosing bug in SQL Server was discovered by the Russians, and loudly denied by the US, and of course, Microsoft. Here is a link that describes the bug, with code samples:
http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/nukesoftware.html
BTW, Microsoft, Godzilla really does want to know what your software has done with his sacred nuclear materials. I'm sure he would be thrilled to receive an explanation when he comes to Redmond next month to visit his old friends at Nintendo America.
Shinoda: "The age of Millenium."
Io: "What does that mean?"
Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself. There is one flaw in its plan: Godzilla."
"Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Anyone realize this?
Lotsa boosterism in the story titles themselves, but there's never, ever, ever been a Slashdot story about MySQL where 3/4ths of the population didn't basically say:
MySQL may be fast, but it's underfeatured. Postgres does rule, though!
I don't get it. Does anyone but the people doing the writeups actually think MySQL is meant for large scale terabyte databases?
One core law of computer science is that the best solution to a small problem is never the best solution to much larger problems. Actually, the physical world works in much the same way -- a human sized insect would collapse quite quickly.
It's not the law that's surprising, it's that everyone keeps repeating it as if anyone else believed otherwise...
--Dan
Twin brother of Fernando Poo. They parted ways after a bit of an incident.
I dont care what anyone says mysql is a piece of crap. postgresql is a real database and its free. ive been using it for quite while and i love it it does anything i want it to do. postgress is also 100% opensource. mysql is not.
Warning: Can't connect to MySQL server on '216.54.182.62' (64) in /home/admin/common/functions.php3 on line 10
when a site is under heavy load, yet I never see anything like that from Win2K + SQL Server : /
Just console me here, tell me that its something all the site admins are doing wrong, and that mySql doesnt suck or maybe its PHP, its always on these PHP + MySQL sites
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Yes it has, you can try mysqlhotcopy and mysqldump.
You can have a look for some other features looking at this comparison: http://www.geocities.com/mailsoftware42/db/
they actually have a few good points. Of course they bundled it with other open source databases which was not quite fair, as some, such as firebird (interbase derivative) outruns it and had native transactional support and advanced capabilities such as transaction shadowing. And yes I have ran all the open source ones side by side comparitively and actually have found that mysql has a LOT of missing features and is slower than firebird/interbase even with it in non-transaction mode with firebird in using full transactioning/shadowing support. Those of you that think an add on transactional engine such as in mysql (I know its bundled now, but its still an add on) is as good as a database built from the ground up with transactions in mind has not been working with anything of any real depth. And what of the lack of stored procedures, what of triggers, is it that you are just not ready to accept reality that you do not have to code everything client side. In fact I suspect you have tried little else than mysql if you think its worthly of more than a small scale usage, think again. Some day mysql will gain procedures. triggers and the lack I hear, but at the present, in the same tasks as firebird and the commercial databases, I find it wanting and somewhat crippled.
I dare say pulling a lot of records to client side to compare with other tables, even on the same machine and updating them will take quite a long time whereas it might take less than a second for 100000 to be updated with some criteria with a stored procedure.
Of couse you can send parameters to a procedure and you can return them from it, either as single value from an execute procedure or a select on the procedure as if it were a table creating extremely custom data sets that you just cannot get from a view. Which brings me to views, mysql dont even have views as far as I know, now that is pretty important.
Also about triggers, would it not be nice to be able to have your server create a series of sub table records for you when you insert the primary one, and also delete them when you delete the primary, or update them automatically, even pulling data from various other tables at high speed, all wrapped in the protection of a transaction off the main table? Well thats once tiny aspect of the use of triggers.
Well I hope you realize just how simple and wanting mysql is, do not think you have power until you have actually been exposed to it. Try firebird (http://firebird.sourceforge.net) if you want to see what you are missing, or a commercial counterpart before you decide mysql is good enough. I see mysql is supposed to add all these features in 5.0, but its just now starting in the 4.0 tree, I welcome it but in the meantime, look around.
Let the religious wars begin!
You mean, they haven't already? :-) I read somewhere that both IBM and Microsoft are dissing MySQL, but Sun Microsystems and Yahoo are quoted as providing positive opinions on MySQL.
Seems liks a religious war already, without me getting involved.
There is a LOT of better database software than MySQL. I don't mean to slam on the project or the product, but why don't we go into things that are pretty standard that it DOESN'T do.
1) Enforce foriegn table constraints
2) Allow for subselects
3) Shall I continue? For most DBA's this is enough. It was for me.
No offense, but it REALLY is mindless to defend MySQL's capability against the systems that MS and IBM put out. It's ESPECIALLY mindless to put them up against Oracle.
MySQL is fine and all, but anybody who's going to fight on their side of this holy war is a fool. The product may be coming around, but it's just not there yet. We're not talking performance here, we're talking about database software that does what modern databases are SUPPOSED to do... not just nifty features. If I have a STANDARD database in 3NF, I'm going to get errant data from MySQL... end of story.
That's not slamming on it, that's being "honest." Most of the people here who post and know what they are talking about agree with me on this.
So, instead of throwing our fists in the air and saying "you can't do that," lets all just admit the shortcomings, and present "the truth." No FUD from our side either. When we have a better product (it will be what MySQL becomes, but not what it is), then we can start bragging.
"While it is understandable from Microsoft, it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative."
Hey, MySQL is open source... that's great! But what the hell does that have to do with anything? The guy from IBM says, that open source databases (read MySQL):
"Don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options. They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise."
Now, as is very apparent from the fervently religious DB wars in past articles, these criticisms are _very_ valid, and there are many people, other than IBM, who feel similarly as well.
The IBM guy wasn't saying that the lack of functionality in MySQL is a symptom of its open source nature, he was just saying that it isn't there! With this in mind, why in the hell should IBM push a product that doesn't deliver (open source or not!)
Do you expect IBM to give all open source software that it reviews higher marks than its proprietary brethren based solely on the fact that is is open source? OR, should maybe some sort of objective criteria (read performance/features) be used? I guess you just choose to ignore this blatant bias based on the fact that it fits your ideology.
God-damned slashthink.
-Matt
Duke '05
"The door flies open and Bill Gates of Microsoft enters"
:)
Let me try and follow your train of thought here, because I find it rather fascinating.
You typed "Bill Gates".
Then, you concluded this was not enough information to uniquely identify this person to Slashdot (or the entire Solar System), and proceeded to add "of Microsoft", to clear up any confusion.
Does that about sum it up?
(Lighten up.. I'm just kidding!)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
They are dissing it because they think everyone who needs a relatively tiny, non mission critical database should use MS SQL 2000 on some huge quad processor box.
Of course MySQL is not in the same class of DB as DB2, Oracle, or, even though it kinda sucks, MS SQL.
Fact is, BDB!=MySQL!=PostgreSQL!=DB2!=Oracle
BDB (Berkeley DataBase) is a simple, DBM-style database that only has key/value pairs. Notwithstanding this simplicity, a company (Sleepy Cat) has been making a profit with this product! It's used extensively by OpenLDAP, which is an "enterprise ready" application, capable of scaling to handle every single person or thing on the face of the earth today.
MySQL is not "under par" or "substandard", it is written to perform simple queries rapidly.
PostgreSQL is not "a toy", it's designed to be a feature-complete, modest SQL engine, with features over performance. (Though performance gains of recent have been quite staggering)
Oracle is the "nut buster" of a database. Based on code now some 20 years old, they've had the time (and the money) to make a truly upwardly scalable application. For those to whom the tens of thousands of dollars price is not a problem, Oracle is it.
For those who want high performance and database replication for simple databases for cheap, MySQL is it.
For those who need to build complex datastructures and access them on a budget, PostgreSQL is the one.
For those who want a very simple values-container, BDB is what you want.
The scale is not linear, with "bad" on one side, and "good" on the other.
I would not even consider BDB for most of my mid-tier web-based software. Nor would I consider Oracle. Postgres fits just about perfectly - I need transactions, and frequently have to perform nested outer joins and subselects in a single statement.
On the other hand, the LDAP-based network I manage runs just fine on BDB, and one of my recent projects (a large database of registration information) works best on MySQL.
Which is better - a sledgehammer or a screwdriver? They're both tools that get a job done. Don't call a screwdriver "deficient" because you wouldn't want to crush a brick wall, and don't call a sledgehammer a "Piece of Sh--" because you can't turn a screw with it!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Scalability has been so oversold that it drives me nuts. Yes, sometimes it's an awfully good idea to have -- you have something crucial to your company that might drastically grow. Maybe a .com's backend. But, as you pointed out about your "small ebusiness server" bit...sometimes you know that your load isn't going to increase by 100x and overload the server.
Scalability is what the DB vendors like -- "you're already running DB X? Great! Just drop another $Y to us -- you're already semi-locked in to us!"
May we never see th
show tables:
\d
while it is true that that native myisam type drops all foreign key constraints on the floor, innodb does support foreign keys. and I'm pretty sure innodb integration into mysql was the whole point of this article.
I was flabbergasted when I read it, but it's true and it works...
try it yourself... build a couple of referential tables in mysql using the innodb table type. inserts into the child table will fail without correlating data in the parent. likewise deletes from the parent will fail if child data exists.
it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative.
I know a little (and nto much more) about databases, being more a sysadmin than DBA.
IBM's claim seem reasonable - that MySQL isn't suited for extreme high end use. This seems reasonable. Just because IBM chooses to advocate quality Open Source tools where they see fit doesn't mean that IBM must think every Open Source app is quality.
Maybe IBM just used MySQL and found it lacking.
IOW, Slashdot is not your everyday ho-hum implementation of MySQL. It is custom written and tweaked. But still, Slashdot's MySQL database dies about once a week (ever try to log on, and all you get is a cached copy of the homepage as if you're logged out?) Your OS could have an uptime of 5,432,234 days, but that means jack shit when it comes to your DB dying every 7 days. That's unacceptable.
For one, I'd love to see Slashdot run on a _real_ database -- e.g., Oracle or DB2 (I believe MS-SQL is out of the question around here). Since Sourceforge/OSDN is in bed with IBM, I don't see how Andover.Net can't snag a copy of DB2 for free, and use it as a poster-child.
Plus, Slash already comes with Oracle scheman creation scripts. It can't be that hard.
While people can argue the technical merits of each database app till the end of time, first, a lot is dependant on individual situations. One server we run FoodPlaces Restaurant Guide has a far larger database set than our XXX Binary Image Newsgroup (USENET) Server. The hardware is slightly in favor of BinFeeds, but we have lotsa problems with table errors and such, even though currently the FoodPlaces tables are far larger and far more complex.
The reason quite simply seems to be the way MySQL handles threads, concurrent operations, locking and errors. FoodPlaces is primarily database read queries with no updates, inserts or such, while BinFeeds uses tons of update, insert and fetches. MySQL bombs horribly in such a situation.
Point is, I can post tons of numbers showing the amazing power of MySQL based off the limited updates and inserts on FoodPlaces and the high traffic of the site, or I can post logs of table crashes that sometimes exceed 2 an hour for BinFeeds, with only adequate performance.
It may be interesting to see TRUE real world results that show how MySQL handles varying ranges of each database "function" occuring "concurrently" (inserts, updates, deletes, fetches, etc). For a BinFeeds setup, we should have stuck with DB2, even with some of the xtra coding it needed. We're going back to it in October. For FoodPlaces (which is what erroneously made us switch to DB2 for BinFeeds) MySQL is ideal and the performance is fine.
The really big problem is that MySQL.com does/used to advertise the following:
From MySQL.COM
MySQL is the world's most popular Open Source Database, designed for speed, power and precision in mission critical, heavy load use.
From that statement (also in the manual), and the FoodPlaces results, as well as more in the manual touting MySQL's ability to handle concurrent operations, we made the decision to switch BinFeeds to MySQL. Bad move - based off good test results for FP and other similar type sites - and more importantly off erroneous, misleading info in the manual.
-Rob
WebMaster:
BinFeeds
XXX Thumbnailed Image Newsgroups but
Actually I already mentioned this in a previous post, but the open source version of interbase that is actually being developed is firebird, interbase was put out there as open source then sort of abandoned by borland.
Borland now sells a commercial version of interbase again (based on the open source code 6.0 beta and some of the older orginal firebird updates before 1.0 release no less), and shun the free one which is more current and has less bugs as far as my testing has shown.
The free abandoned code however was picked up by the orginal developers and named firebird for continued development due to naming restrictions.
Some of the developers incidentally quit borland with their blessing to start a new interbase company, then borland sort of said they never said they would back the venture and that they could not use the interbase name for their version.
The wife of the man conceived interbase and was there even before it was called interbase (it was groton database system back then) now heads the open source bunch and many key developers from borland, and elsewhere, and many users are involved in firebird at various levels.
I can testify for its speed, its quite fast and efficient. They are doing a major re-write to make it easier for cross platform (though it supported many platforms including windows, netware, linux, as400, dos, various unix, and things that no longer exist, it was convoluted spagetti code).
Hey if it was good enough for the M1 tank databases, its good for me (the M1 computers reboot when it fires due to EMP, so interbase was chosen for stability, extremely quick crash recovery and restart, and the fact that interbase has no maintenance schedule since its self maintaining is great too).
http://firebird.sourceforge.net is its official home now.
Let me get this straight... MySQL just added support for TRANSACTIONS, and its developers are wondering why corporations deploying million-dollar solutions don't use it? My God. Transactions! That's the most basic aspect of any database, and their support is still hot and gooey in the middle. I'd be scared too.
I suspect that if it weren't for slashdot running mysql, it would have long since died off, especially, amongst the free software zealot crowd.
/. and Yahoo finance site also (and 100s of other companies). But, Yahoo, after all, is not as big as Slashdot; so no biggie.
You mean if it weren't for
Whoop-dee-doo! If you need "wizards" to create a database schema or add a table you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the DB. Maybe you'll complain about the lack of that dancing paperclip too?
2) Formal security accredidation
NT also has formal security accreditation. That's why it's so secure...
3) Multiple CPUs for update / insert select on single table
PostgreSQL got that.
4) Both bitmap and hash indexes
I'm assuming by bitmap you actually mean btree. I'm not sure if PostgreSQL has hash indexes, so I can't comment on that. But it certainly wouldn't result in a big speed advantage.
5) Dual / curcular logging
Can't comment on that.
6) SQL-92 catalog schema
PostgreSQL aims to be as much standards compliant as possible. Case in point: I once wrote very complicated queries for DB2; I then ran the same queries PostgreSQL and they worked perfectly. If anything, from my experience, PostgreSQL supports more of the SQL standard than the proprietary counterparts, not less.
7) Full support for XML syntax queries
Wow, that's very useful! Why is it that everyone seems to think that XML is some kind of magic potion?
8) Better rule based administration
Explain.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
but bitmap indexes are quite different from b*trees, and can speed some types of queries enormously. This is one of the very few enterprise-level features that PG does not (yet) support.
It's interesting that you think that if you're a proponent of Open Source, you can't be negative about something, just because it's also Open Source. Otherwise, how would things that are broken get fixed!?
One of the things that jumped out at me at this article was that Jones's (IBM's) statement was very obviously a direct answer to very pointed, and very unpublished, question.
...then Jones response couldn't possibly be considered "bashing MySQL". He was just answering a question to the best of knowledge.
Jones did not wake up one morning and say to himself, "I'm going to call up InfoWorld and just rag on MySQL because I think its a threat to DB2!". No. InfoWorld called him, asked him a series of questions, kept what would make the best reading, and threw the rest away.
So, was Jones really being "negative" and "dissing" MySQL? We really don't know. If the questions he was answering were:
"What in your opinion is the main reason why MySQL is not beating DB2 and Oracle in the enterprise?"
and/or
"What would you consider MySQL's greatest flaws to be?"
Read the quote again to see my point:
Open-source databases "don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options," said Jeff Jones, director of strategy for data management solutions at IBM. "They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise," Jones said.
The whole article stinks of coaxing negative-sounding comments from people from "big bad companies", pasting them out of context, and calling it "Big Companies Once Again Stomp On Open Source!" Its also quite possible that he also said many wonderful things about MySQL, but that makes for boring reading and would be discarded.
It happens all the time, folx.
The
... but it has RWOMAN. That's even better.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I'm really beginning to wonder why, when we have two well-known OSS RDBMSs, we only see fans appearing when the lesser of them is attacked.
Aren't there any fanatics out there for the big brother that is a challenge to the big commercial databases?
Mac
IBM does have a point, insofar that many enterprises have feature checklists that DB2 satisfies and MySQL doesn't, regardless of whether those enterprises actually need those features. And both DB2 and Oracle do have some features that a few customers actually need but MySQL doesn't provide.
He is me, or rather, I am him.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative.
Perhaps the problem is that mysql, like, sucks?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
How would postgres stack up? I tend to put on in the "DB2/Oracle" side of things, but I'm definetly not an expert.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There is one important feature of MySQL that most people seem to be forgetting - it is completely free (both, but I'm referring to "as in beer"). Not only does it not cost a cent, but it also indirectly saves me money in other areas, for example, my commercial web site host can offer cheaper hosting by using MySQL. And most typical web site uses are for things like bulletin boards, which do not need "enterprise" databases anyway. My database needs are pretty light, so MySQL suits me perfectly, it would be stupid for me to fork out money for a commercial DB.
I find this whole thread a little "off" in that regard. If McDonalds were giving away free big macs, would people take it seriously if an expensive upper-class restaurant started warning you that you must stay away, because big macs are not as good as their food? Of course, it is useful though to have a good, unbiased technical comparison between the various DBs, so that people can make informed decisions about which to go for. But these should be willing to openly acknowledge that MySQL is a very good choice for many low-end applications.
IMO MySQL is an excellent DB for small, everyday, non-mission-critical applications. If you need a "serious" robust DB, with advanced clustering, then buy a commercial one. Of course it would be nice if MySQL was as good as MS/IBM/Oracle etc, but reality is reality.
Misleading title and incoherent central thesis. Unqualified statements such as "The problem is with mindless open-source advocates who try to pump up MySQL as the be-all, end-all database solution" and incorrect statements such as " Even with InnoDB, it still has no provisions for stored procedures, sub-selects or even foreign key constraints" indicate the student has not mastered the material, and is, in fact, just karma whoring.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
in that it breeds bad habits.
But your choices aren't limited to perl & oracle. Postgres, contrary to what's-his-name's post, is very much in the same league as Sybase et al., and it's just as easy to set up and start using as mysql. Just because you CAN do subselect, write triggers, etc., doesn't mean you HAVE to -- you're perfectly welcome to limit yourself to the same feature set mysql has. But it doesn't force you into bad habits when you start to outgrow those.
I'm not a DB guy, but looking at the comments from IBM and Microsoft...
...Big Blue's certainly seem more reasonable. They are focusing specifically on the enterprise market without being dismissive of other uses, while Microsoft regards anything that needs less that MS SQL Server provides as niche. Also, there are MS's usual claims about reliability and security, that history hasn't generally supported. In short, IBM seems to recognize that open source databases have their uses, while MS seems to be spreading their usual anti-OSS FUD.
Which is what you would expect: IBM is company that bases large parts of its business on open source and free software, but has an expensive, proprietary product competing with the open source databases -- surely, they're going to try to differentiate their product. MS opposes open source and free software, and never misses an opportunity to say something nasty about it.
Finally, I think it's interesting that Slashdot has actually opted for a less sensationalistic headline than InfoWorld. Slashdot's choice of the word "critique" over "reject" certainly seems more reflective of IBM's statements, at least.
mysql vs postgresql scalability
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know companies that have been Microsoft shops since 1985 that are currently migrating from VB/SQLServer to PHP/MySQL because 1) VB is slow and you always have install problems with DLLs/OCXs, etc. 2) SQLServer is big, fat, and ugly. Overkill, 3) expensive, 4) subject to Microsoft's oppresive licensing and "forced" upgrades (which means spending more money).
The companies I know are moving to PHP/MySQL in their effort, quite literally, to ditch Microsoft. Which is amazing since they've been Microsoft shops. The good news is that these aren't open source geeks with an agenda. These are very practical companies doing what works best for them... and at least one of them has been a Microsoft shop since 1985. They've finished the first phase of ditching SQL Server for MySQL, so they won't be paying any more licenses their (nor will their customers). Next to go is VB.
Microsoft (and IBM) can throw out all the FUD they want. Actions speak louder than words, and the fact is that MySQL is one of the most popular databases for websites and, recently, serious commercial organizations are adopting it. And they are saving money. And that worries MS and IBM. After all, stories are being published quite routinely that mention Yahoo switching to MySQL, Amazon (?) saving money by switching OS, etc--how many stories do you really see that say, "We switched to DB2 or SQL Server and are saving millions of dollars!"
As for others in the open source community that diss MySQL, that's just a matter of religion. The internal bickering in the open source community hasn't helped the open source community gain respectibility. Competition is good, even within open-source, and it's sad that some people in the community reduce it to arguments along the lines of "mine is bigger than yours, want to see?"
As long as we're discussing alternatives...
Check out MSDE, Microsoft's free version of SQL Server 2000. The server is limited to 5 simultaneous data connections (any more and the connections are throttled WAY down), but other than that, you get all the goodies. It's intended for development and for small scale applications. You can even install all the free client tools for SQL Server 2000 and they work seamlessly. Not enterprise level, but definitely a worthy competitor to MySQL.
Ok, we can all look at Database solutions from IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and other and see the great features they have.
But there is one very important thing about MySQL and the other free databases.
Without them I would never have been able to make my own websites and applications. If the only databases available were ones that you would have to pay for, the internet would look very different.
I got into making websites with a database backend because I could download one, install and run it for free. If I had to pay for one, I would never have begun working with them and would never have discovered how powerful it is to have all your information in a database.
So I like many others, learned about databases and in the process discovered what I could do with a free database and saw the features in the non-free databases that the free ones lacked.
I have made many small applications for internal/intranet use on MySQL. They would never have been made if I first had to find the money to get a database. After I showed the concept of my application, some of these moved on and got on the "official" system.
So bitch about the free systems, but I still say they have introduced a lot of people to the wonderful world of databases.
So the issue here is should you run your mission critical systems on databases like MySQL?
There is no single answer to this, like in many other projects what you should do is to look at what tools is best for the work at hand. Don't use a hammer to paint the walls, there is no need to buy and electrical screwdriver if you only need to place one screw. On the other hand if your initial stages of your project shows that you might want to build an entire house at one point, it might be a good idea to plan ahead and get the tools that will fit in the long run.
The ones from IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, offers the more than just a db, you can also get an entire platform to build you application on, fx. if you are building anoter e-commerce website, so the idea of getting one of those DBs might not be based on the database itself but also on the development enviroment that's available around it. As I said, in a perfect world you don't define the project based on the tools at hand, but but define what the end result should be and then select the correct tools to get to that. Sadly it is often seen that people have already choosen their tools before they have fully defined the goals of their project. The result is often a product that does not hit right on the spot of what they wanted and countless hours are wasted working on workarounds(making the hammer work as a screwdriver) and compromises that leaves the customer with a feeling that they didn't quite get what they wanted.
And then of course there is the stories of customers wanting to drive in that screw with a hammer and the companies promising that they can make the hammer do that leaving both developers and customer unhappy, but that's another story.
my sig
Of course! Everybody knows that Microsoft SQL server is the pinnacle of security!
[/sarcasm]
Funny how sun, who don't happen to have a competing solution, and dont stand to lose any money by supporting it have no problem with open source database software
IBM has some valid points, I'm sure if you purchase DB2 or Oracle, you're pretty much guaranteed it will work work your software, and will have plenty of easy to use, standard, management tools - Microsoft's arugment just reeks of open-source bashing.
DB2/Oracle has its place. Mysql/Postfix has its place. Even SQL server has its place (in the offices of admins who just want to get a server running on their LAN and don't care about security)
Use the correct tool for the job
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Hmm... I'm wondering why I should give a flying f*** about what MS and IBM think about MySQL. What we are hearing is what Marketroids in competing companies are paid to say. Now that is truly deserving of worldwide attention. I vaguely remember hearing something recently about WAR, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights. But this is truly far more deserving of grey-matter processing time.
;)
Flame away.
--==Hail Eris!!==--
Open-source databases "don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options," said Jeff Jones, director of strategy for data management solutions at IBM. "They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise," Jones said. That's absolutely true: MySQL is well-suited to the needs of small and middle sized businesses (say search engines and invoice databases), but not for the biggest enterprise-level tasks out there (say for the IRS or Social Security). "So far, I still see MySQL and some of the other open-source databases as really niche players," said Sheryl Tullis, product manager for the SQL Server database at Microsoft. Now that's just wrong. The number of companies that can use a middle sized database greatly outnumber those that need big iron. Oracle, IBM, and so on are the "niche players" here. Sure they make money hand over fist, but it's for support contracts and so on for fewer (but massive) clients. Companies will pick the software that best meets their needs. Open source is cheap, easy, and supports the majority of cases. Big iron databases are powerful but expensive to buy and maintain, and only those who can afford them will use them. In this case, Microsoft is simply trying to convince people that bigger (and more expensive) is always better.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
MySQL and Postgres are nowhere near the level of sophistication of Oracle or DB2 at this time. Nobody who knows what they're talking about is gonna argue that at this point. People developing huge database solutions for huge companies with copious IT budgets aren't going to use low-budget tools if they compromise the job. I think IBM and others realize this. So why diss MySQL? Because it attacks the low-end of their market--customers with very moderate needs for whom Oracle or DB2 is way overkill. For example, I know of a local startup company doing simple web application services for a small, focused customer base. First they paid tens of thousands for Oracle licensing (but at least running on Linux). Then they hired some wrong people and were duped by M$ marketing into switching to SQL Server--more tens of thousands for now-XP boxes and SQL Server licensing. All this because of the perceived need to go with "the big popular choice." And all they're using SQL for is basic customer and user records and some lightweight database backend work with JSP/J2EE. I don't have any real statistics, but from what I see, at least 50% of the high-end SQL server expenditure across the industry is probably wasteful overkill.
On the other hand, it would be wise for companies who are currently shelling out megabucks for heavyweight database software (and truly need it) to donate at least a little bit to Open Source efforts in hopes of long-term ROI of breaking free of vendor dependance. I'll say that again: It's not charity, it's an investment in future technology. Be greedy.. support free software. (-:
Yeah. Mindyou, alot of MYSQL stuff I've done is backending Access (MYSQL -->storage. ACCESS-->Forms & queries & automation).
Sometimes the combo is a pig as access is pretty fussy on keeping it's records distinct. Now granted putting an index number AND a timestamp is probly best practice anyhows, sometimes the troggs need a kick up the bum to realise that before hitting "Export" on access and turning the data into mysql, they should autonumber AND timestamp it.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
"If Oracle or DB2 is the Cadillac, then we are the Ferrari," Mickos said.
we being MySQL
this is easy: start "psql -E" and it will tell you the queries it uses for those commands.
e.g.
SELECT c.relname as "Name",
CASE c.relkind WHEN 'r' THEN 'table' WHEN 'v' THEN 'view' WHEN 'i' THEN 'index' WHEN 'S' THEN 'sequence' WHEN 's' THEN 'special' END as "Type",
u.usename as "Owner"
FROM pg_class c LEFT JOIN pg_user u ON c.relowner = u.usesysid
WHERE c.relkind IN ('r','v','S','')
AND c.relname !~ '^pg_'
ORDER BY 1;
A big theme in the comments here relates to the fact that there are different tools for different users, different situations, etc. Although this is normally a good line of thinking, I think many here have had their heads stuck in the OSS sand for far too long. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big proponent of many things Slashdot... OSS, GPL, Linux, anti-DMCA, etc, etc. But I've also used DB2 on an almost daily basis for almost as long as I can remember, in addition to too many other database-type products that I only wish I could forget (Access, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Btrieve, Pervasive, etc).
In virtually every new project started today that has any significant amount of data, you would be silly to use anything less than the most feature-rich RDBMS that you could get your hands on. Going with less is just going to cost you in the long run. There are just so many benefits to be reaped from having a solid foundation. The car/plane analogy is cute, but I would compare it more to building multi-storey house on a foundation of wood chips vs. a foundation of reinforced concrete. And when did overkill become a bad thing? Better to use a solution that you won't outgrow -ever- than something that might not survive the current development cycle.
Usability is a big issue and lots of people here tout simplicity as a big plus for MySQL and OSS in general. Go ahead and spend half a day playing with DB2 for (insert platform of choice here). It is not going to be any more difficult than anything else, and in all likelihood will be much easier than most everything else. This is a mature product with plenty of support behind it. And its available on many, many different platforms, making it a good candidate to use in other OSS projects (well, maybe not with OSX... what's up with that?).
Long and short... OSS is great. But there are other products out there that are also great that work great with OSS software. Some of these products (like DB2) are DECADES ahead of the likes of MySQL. I think they just wanted to make that clear as it would seem that a lot of people (especially here) have never left the sandbox.
What does SQL have that cut/paste/grep/join don't besides tedious syntax?
Transactions? Indexes?
If I remember correcty four years ago, one of the liddle operating sistem
beguns to challange in Enterprise market.
Every1 (mostly we are known everthing and we don't need your goddamn ideas people)
start to pusing their argues agains that os.
Ton's of articles wroted, thoustands fleme wars maded, then now
This lidle operating system called GNU/Linux
is going to win against that big boys.
So MySql people, GO ON, you had everthing, a system which was different
then others. You had tons of zealots. It seems you had everting to win
against to the big boys.
Personaly I hate Oracle. Its damned big very big RDBMS and I don't need
his abilityes and his comlexity. I'm web programmer, and MySql is more
than enough.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Same here, they do not seem to understand that we programmers are actually people too instead of numbers.
. . . may not have figured out what customer service really is yet (release a product open-source and then try to distance ones self from it, what's up with that?).
Aforementioned, its becasue its Borland of course, they claimed it was a mistake and all and fired some folks if I remember correctly for releasing it (I hope thats just aweful rumor), they tried to kill the open source by saying they could not use the interbase name and such, but who cares :). Now they have turned around and started claiming all the new features in the new firebird and even released version 6.5 of their database that is remarkably like the firebird enhancements, but they did release it under the mozilla like license so they can use it commercially and sell it as their own :P. They recently release a free version their delphi/builder for linux (kylix) so people can help them develop it too.
Anyway, based upon your observations and my previous experiences I do think that Interbase/Firebird should be part of a lot of people's toolkits. I have never understood why the product has never caught on.
Yes I do think firebird should be used when the conditions require a more powerful free solution. I think it did not catch on because Ashton Tate bought it from Groton and forgot they left it in the closet (did not market it due to their love of their own DBase product). At least Borland did pay a little attention to it, well they decided it was a nice example database solution to add to their new Delphi/Builder compilers to push BDE onto folks. They never did really market it either. It does have quite a large user base despite marketings mistakes.
At least firebird can market itself as a full featured, free solution now. I think they are better off not closely associating themselves with borland due to Borland's aforementioned lack of support. I use it as a backend to jsp (tomcat) and php for web based use (has two jdbc connection options, the old one interclient and a new native access one). It has perl and an excellent c/c++ preprocessor and a very complete api. Its udf support is awesome, and of course it has multiple ways of seeing the data according to the type of application is nice, for instance, its optimistic non-locking (shadowing) mode is perfect for web use. It of course is great for normal multi user use as an company database also.
There was a very interesting paper at the VLDB 2000 conference (the full PDF is available from that page). Quotable points from the paper (the first lot are section titles):
"Observation 1: Featurism drives products beyond manageability.
Observation 2: SQL is painful.
Observation 3: Performance is unpredictable.
Observation 4: Tuning is a nightmare and auto-tuning is wishful thinking at this stage.
Observation 5: [...] Database systems are not (or no longer) at the center of the IT universe.
Observation 6: System footprint considered harmful.
Observation 7: System-oriented database research is frustrating.
All these observations together strongly indicate that database systems are in crisis: they have reached or even crossed a complexity barrier beyond which their lack of manageability and predictability will become so painful that information technology is likely to abandon database systems as a cornerstone of data-intensive applications."
The paper goes on to argue that for a large number of applications we'd do better to abandon 'universal' databases (UDB/Oracle 9 and their ilk) because it should be possible to ship 'db-in-a-box' style units which support a smaller but sufficient featureset, which can self tune (no DBA required), because of their simpler theoretical basis.
Where is the relevance? Well, MS and IBM complain that MySQL is missing 'feature X'; and most of the arguments here are "yes MySQL is crap", or "yes but it has feature Y", or "yes but product Z is overkill", or "yes but its cheap" - they accept the premise of the MS/IBM argument. I'm pointing out that the premise is actually wrong - its more than reasonable to argue that MySQL has way too many features already.
-Baz
Aren't journalling filesystems implemented in the kernel side? Doesn't that make it (sorta kinda) server-side code? Or, if there's only one client, then of course you can do everything without the formality of having a separate server.
That said, I believe it is possible to fake transactions completely using only client-side code (if you have semaphores or other atomic locks provided for you, that is). I think it's an interesting problem in computer science. If there's proof that this thing cannot be accomplished, I'd be very interested.
As to the benchmarks you cite: yes. I know. That is where MySQL was designed to be used. And yes, right tool for the job is a great motto... and as long as the job doesn't change to include a need for things like transactions or stored procedures MySQL is perfect. Either way, it's certainly hard to beat the price. ;)
I do not have a signature
An AC wrote:
> Confession time: you're the person behind Hubzilla
> [charismac.com], aren't you?
Nope. I am but a humble servant of their sacred majesties, the King and Queen of Monsters.
Honest, I don't even *own* a Hubzilla. I'm not a big fan of Godzilla wannabes.
"Godzilla is the King! Godzilla is the God!
The Power and the Price of godly flame we stole!
The fire from the atom's heart bears a terrible price:
Godzilla is... Our Nuclear Nightmare!"
(From my lyrics to "G-Proximity" from "Godzilla X Megagiras".)
- This is obvious microsoft bullshit, as open-source platforms are more reliable, and more scalable than anything from microsoft.
Is that really true though? I mean, does MySQL support cluserting, fail-over, load-balancing, etc?What MS product are you comparing to MySQL? I'm looking to get out of MS Foxpro, and everytime I look at MySQL, I see rays of light coming from it. ;)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I'm not talking about data in files. I'm talking about the metadata that comprises the filesystem. That's transaction based, and does do rollbacks if power is lost in the middle.
You could extend this to files if you wanted to, once you've established that it can be done for metadata.
My point was that it is certainly technically possible to do the work with client side code. The hard drive does not natively provide "transaction support".
May we never see th
Aren't journalling filesystems implemented in the kernel side?
Yes. I'm talking about the system as viewed as the kernel being the client and the hard drive the server, not the kernel the server and the apps the client.
May we never see th
Posted this month on DeveloperWorks "MySQL is a powerful database for the price you pay for it (nothing), and many companies use MySQL to handle their data. The number is growing daily as companies with low budgets enter the Web market. The open source community has greeted MySQL with open arms. The documentation about this powerful database is abundant, and there are both Linux and Windows versions. " The executives should take a look at their own site.
(6) Men employees will be given time off each week for courting
purposes, or two evenings a week if they go regularly to church.
(7) After an employee has spent his thirteen hours of labor in the
office, he should spend the remaining time reading the Bible
and other good books.
(8) Every employee should lay aside from each pay packet a goodly
sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years,
so that he will not become a burden on society or his betters.
(9) Any employee who smokes Spanish cigars, uses alcoholic drink
in any form, frequents pool tables and public halls, or gets
shaved in a barber's shop, will give me good reason to suspect
his worth, intentions, integrity and honesty.
(10) The employee who has performed his labours faithfully and
without a fault for five years, will be given an increase of
five cents per day in his pay, providing profits from the
business permit it.
-- "Office Worker's Guide", New England Carriage Works, 1872
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