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MySQL A Threat to Bigwigs?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tradeoffs dept.

Disoculated writes "Is MySQL a threat to bigwigs? is the question asked in CNN's technology section. The article notes that MySQL is running perhaps 20% of the web databases but its revenue is merely 0.02%... yet the company is still making money and putting out an excellent product. Is this a sign that the database market is in for a drastic change? Of course, there's no mention of PostgreSQL or mSQL, but I guess that's typical."

3 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Version 4 Will Tell by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Informative

    MySQL is very adequate for 99% of all users including most large enterprises and certainly most websites.

    I used to be a big fan of MySQL, mostly because it was moderately capable and free. Now that I have tried Postgres though there is no way I would go back.

    Yes, version 4 will be an improvement, BUT it is still missing many key features like views, triggers, full outer joins, update with subselect, that are already present in Postgres, and the fact is I've been using the features that MySQL is promising for the future for a year and a half now.

    The following site does a very good comparison between the feature sets of MySQL, Oracle and Postgres.

    http://det-dbalice.if.pw.edu.pl/det-dbalice/docu me nts/all/html/db_compare/db_compar_chp01.html

  2. Other open-source dbms by pspinler · · Score: 5, Informative

    that have received little comment so far:

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

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

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

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

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

    Check 'em out.

    -- Pat

    --
    The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred
  3. MySQL AB comments by martenmickos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Great discussions on this thread! We are reading them carefully to learn what we can do better.

    Let me just comment on the overall impact of having such articles appear on Fortune.com and CNN.com:

    The article is indeed the result of PR work done by MySQL AB, but the value of it will benefit the entire free software / open source community. We need to get many more business articles out there, so let's be happy about this one, and let's produce more of them!

    Although this very article mentions MySQL only, please have a look at other articles where we at MySQL AB consistently mention the other open source databases. Here are two such articles on prominent business-focused sites (one of which, incidentally, is powered by MySQL):

    http://www.open-mag.com/01943583279.htm

    http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id= A2 44_0_1_0_C

    Our ambition is not to be a threat to bigwigs per se, but to make superior database software available AND affordable to all. With your help we can do it.

    Marten Mickos
    CEO, MySQL AB