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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."

4 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. I think PostgreSQL is more of a threat by srn_test · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We used to use mySQL, but moved to postgreSQL for performance reasons, and we're glad we have.

    On the postgreSQL general mailing list, people rarely talk about mySQL anymore (let along mSQL). It's (mySQL) is generally regarded as a good alternative to the Berkeley DB stuff (i.e. non-relational), whereas postgreSQL these days gets lots of traffic from Oracle people wanting to go somewhere cheaper.

    Oracle mustn't be happy, I'd think.

  2. Re:Version 4 Will Tell by RevAaron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't specifically mean the kernel. That would seem a bit unnecesary, unless it provided a pretty big boost in performance and was universally used by applications and the system alike to make it worthwhile.

    The point would be for a unified model of data format, access and storage. No more file format worries. Empowering users to manage and manipulate their data. Easy sharing between apps on the same machine, over the network, across platforms.

    The important change isn't in capability but in the way of doing things. Since I do not mean stuck in the kernel when I say OS integration, I simply mean that it would be a core part of the OS used by all applications. Instead of files as we know them. This could be provided by an existing user-space solution, but until there is some standardization the benefits wouldn't really materialize. E.g., it doesn't matter if MySQL is installed on this Linux box on my desk if none of the applications use it.

    --

    Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  3. Why not mySQL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Philip Greenspun wrote a short and excellent article on ACID compliance. The article is 3 years old, yet mySQL still has problems as they developers don't seem to believe that ACID is important. Open ACS on "Why Not mySQL"

    mySQL is, unfortunately, a SQL interface to a bunch of files based on various index sequential access methods. It gets its speed by ignoring transactions, triggers, stored procedures and other things that, when your company is successful, will need in its database. mySQL's replication is also not guaranteed and when its spotty, it doesn't tell you.

    The open source DB community is a powerful force with a lot of potential and a lot of success. That success is in markets where transactions are low and/or not critical to the customer.

    mySQL and others need to ensure that they have these features:

    • stored procedures (implementation outside of the A in ACID aren't complete - perl, java, python, etc)
    • Referential integrity, foreign keys, transactions
    • hot backups where you don't have to take the database down to get a backup with guaranteed integrity.
    • reliable replication (argue away, only shareplex, NT SQL server & Sybase have it today)
    • sub selects
    • temp tables
    • function based indicies
    • automatic partitioning
    • rollback (true rollback w/transactions)
    • triggers
    • block and row level locking. A select on a 50 million row table shouldn't lock the table.
    • joins that do not lock tables due to full table scans
    There are a lot of good reasons for using mySQL as a platform to begin the development of a project. For personal use, it's hard to beat! If you are a professional in a company that needs to support real clients with real data with real guarantees, spend your money on a real database.

    Where do you want to spend your R&D money? On your product or on the database that does most of the things you need, but not all of the things you need. Don't you want to spend your time building the product that pays your salary and makes your customers happy? Why spend time on the database, just buy something that works.

    One more thing, a not unreasonable architecture for a database driven application is:

    • UI layer
    • Business rule/application layer
    • Application Programming Interface
    • Stored procedures (potentially hundreds)
    • Database
    Good luck.
  4. My Story by SloWave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A couple years ago I started a large hardware conversion project for a major telco. One of the requirements was a fairly large database to support real time call processing. I had already told the customer that I would only do the job if it was on a non-Microsft platform so I didn't need to worry about them wanting SQL Server. However, since they were a large telco I assumed that they wanted a well know commercial product so I proposed either Oracle or Informix - their preference. Their director of DP said something like "it's too bad we can't use MySQL" since they were using it for some smaller applications, unknown to me. My next comment was "do you want to use MySQL?". The answer was "yes, provided it could do the job". I said "I will make it do the job". Now it's been about two years and MySQL has almost faded into the background. It just runs, unlike my experiences with Oracle and Informix where you have to constantly administer them. That's my personal experience, your mileage may vary depending on your skill and attitude.