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Sybase Releases Free Enterprise Database on Linux
Tassach writes "Sybase announced today that they are releasing a free (as in beer) version of their flagship database for Linux. The free version is limited to 1 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 5GB of data, which is more than adequate for all but the most demanding applications. This release provides a very attractive alternative to Microsoft SQL Server, and gives developers and DBAs an extremely powerful argument to use against the adoption of Microsoft-based solutions. For those who are unfamiliar with the product, Microsoft's version of Transact-SQL is nearly identical to Sybases's. This high degree of similarity makes porting applications between the two platforms very easy. Sybase is supported by numerous open-source projects, including sqsh (SQL shell), FreeTDS, and SybPerl."
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People who just want a full featured database aren't really all that interested in the source.
Well I want a full featured database and would like to have the source. That makes it "people - 1".
they are usually interested in using more than 1 cpu and just 5Gb.
the sybase offer is useless.
Where I'm working, we use MS SQL Server an awful lot. And we write an awful lot of code that uses it. We don't spend any time reading source, or trying to find holes / improvements to it. We're too busy.
They're giving you the product for free, but you don't want it because you can't have the source.
I'm sure they'll miss you.
More free shit to play around with. It's great for them, I play around with it, I learn it.
Soon they will have another tech that knows how to operate it. A small business may end up using it so they can ditch the MS SQL stuff and move to a more robust enviroment. They hire a admin, he needs a assistant? I am aviable, and I trained myself enough to be familar with it.
Whoopie.
Then as the company grows, so will it's need. If it's a decent product then they'd definatly pay for it after using it for year or two for free.
Best damn advertising you can hope to get. Got to love it. Sure beats the snot out of ending up being another MS victom and another footnote in history:
"So and so company had a product similar to the insanely popular MS Widget. Although widely considured superior to MS's solution by a large part of the industry, MS's continued dominace of the desktop arena gave the leverage nessicary too".... blab blah blah
Did I mention I also get some free shit to play around with? (given a choice between free and Free, Free usually wins, but we'll see how it goes)
The limited database size of 5 gig makes it worthless to just about every Open Source web site or developer other than the very very small guys who would rather use something like MySQL or PostgreSQL instead.
How exactly is it helpful to release a free version that most people can't use in real world applications? The answer is, it isn't.
Move along people nothing to see here.
Shareware strikes OSS back!
What happenes when Sybase stops maintaining the `Free' version?
Microsoft's version of Transact-SQL is nearly identical to Sybases's.
Just how nearly is it? I'd like to know in terms of things just broken enough to make finding them absolute hell.
When they say it is limited to one proc, do virtuals count (ie, P4 HT?)
.
.
I've never looked at Sybase and have no clue how it works; especially their licensing . .
I'm assuming if I have a true multiproc system, it's only going to utilize one physical proc . .
Anyone have the dirt, I couldn't find a detailed link on the limitations other than the single blurb that was in the original post.
MS, Sybase & Ashton Tate jointly developed the core engine up until the mid nineties at which point there was (I believe) a very acrimonious split due to some licensing argument. That was at version 4.2 and so the SQL syntax remains common between the two. Since then I'm sure there's been a certain amount of divergence (and then some!), but it theory porting should be easyish (famous last words).
I used to be a Sybase DBA and still dable with it a bit. It's a very nice db, and at one time was a real contender against Oracle. It still has a very strong footing in the Financial sector as it was deemed to be faster than Oracle. In todays world of cheap hardware and spare cpu cycles I don't think that's quite as important.
As far as I know, MS SQL Server was originally based on Sybase, hence the similarity in T-SQL. Some time ago Sybase used to make the latest-1 major release for free under Linux, if I am not mistaken.
They stopped that and are coming up with this now... At least interesting as an alternative to MSDE which is also limited concerning concurrent connections and size.
All your (Sy)BASE are belong to us!
I fact, I've been waiting for free-download Oracle/DB2 "personal database" or some limited opensource release of Oracle/DB2 for a while. This release will put much pressure to Oracle, IBM and of course, MS. This is one major strong point of Linux, which pretty much is ignored by the press. With MS solution every small piece of software is at least shareware, and while the cost might be nominal, you still have to go trough the process of buying/registering it. With Linux, you may have to buy some software, but most of the stuff you need can be found around the net, just couple of clicks away from being ready for you to use.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Take an example of when an individual's age suggests this individual is an infant. In this case, I would immediately disable the widget that receives anything to do with children since an infant cannot have children. There is much more...all in the name of business logic. Cb..
anything to improve the current mysql replication situation..
The database caps of the free version are high enogh for the product to be usefull for web applications and smaller projects, a market that is completely dominated by free alternatives such as Postgres and MySQL. Almost everyone who shelves out $$$ for a database server run much larger systems.
I bet they are hoping that by giving away the product for free to people who would never buy it anyway, they get droves of people who are experienced at running their system who will eventually buy it for larger projects 'cause that's the system they know how to use.
Kind of like how SUN sells computers to universitys dirt cheap.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
At our company, sybase is our main supplier for database software (ASE mostly). We are slowly changing to MS-SQL, because we're slowly becoming an all M$-shop. (And I'm slowly looking for another job...) .nl. We are now serviced from out of .uk. .NET.
We run Sybase on Alpha/Tru64. We've had our issues during the years, a lot of wich have been resolved by Unix-patches, so I guess Sybase as a DBMS is quite stable.
Support by Sybase however is less cause for optimism, as they recently shut down their presence in
Sybase is, IMHO, rapidly losing their grip on the market. Existing implementations take years to rebuild on a new platform, but it is happening, and I think in a lot of places, and M$ is the main beneficiary.
The way people are using databases is changing. People want multi-tier applications, and the Sybase portfolio can't compete with M$
Sybase should be looking at new markets, and I think this is a good move. The advantage of people being familiar with your product can work wonders, look for example at how WordPerfect got big years back.
It isn't necessarily the speed - it's also the ease of maintenance compared to Oracle. Sybase is limited but it works, while Oracle is very powerful and fiddly. Fiddly is bad when you have a lot of dataservers.
Don't click this link! It's a porn shock site!
Who modded this up?
my god. i've never seen anything so pathetic and obvious case of brainwashing in all my life.
"...extremely strong argument against Microsoft solutions" a baseless and deliberate assumption like this in injected into what seems like 75% of slashdot stories. This is stupidity in the extreme. if MS makes the more appropriate solution, you damn better well pick them, for your own server-monkey sake
if your motivation is just 'no microsoft at any cost', you are a tool of all these jerks riding high on the general sense of ill-will they cultivate and the work of those countless volunteers that built the friggin apps they are pimping (esr, i'm looking at you)
It's as if slashdot's mission is more about indoctrinating the anti-MS mindset than championing free software.
here's a good point to remember: use the right tool for the job. it's as simple as that. sometimes it's MS. Sometimes it's your favorite fanboy project founded on idealism and granola. sometimes it's also Redhat or IBM (think big $$$).
having your ability to assess these tools tainted by such fervid invective, knee jerk hatred as slashdot gots to offer, well, you are going to reap what you sow.
no guarantees
too many limitations
Some people actually do pay for their software. And I'm sure the same people will be more than happy to buy this DB if, after trying it out for FREE, find it satisfactory or better.
I can't believe how many whingeing morons I've seen tonight saying "Argh! no source!! ev1l!!" and "aww, only five gigs! stingy bastards, I won't be able to run my eCommerce site on _that!_"
Get real. There's plenty of free databases around that you can use, slashdot uses MySQL doesn't it? Piss off and use that.
You probably wouldn't know a real database from a hole in the ground and continue to be bewildered at why some corps spend $50k + on real databases for years to come.
That company from Redmond, bought the tech from Sybase; the toy database you didnt mention is certainly capable, and is more than adequate for small-medium sites. Unless you meant Access.
And Oracle is already the 'Oracle' of linux, it was among the first enterprise DBs available, and lots of Oracle internal sites already run on RHEL.
This move by Sybase is mostly just a tease- you would probably need to buy a license if you need anything that requires Sybase's capabilities.
Even Oracle will mail you a full devkit, with the enterprise DB+all the goodies. However I cant imagine anyone using this in Production boxes.
Sybase has a nice niche among banks and some large datawarehouse-type environments. It is an order of magnitude easier if you're from an Oracle-Db2 background.
see comment
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
This is, IMHO, a very good thing. Sybase is an excellent DB (I've worked with some top developers who swear by it) and a much better option than MsSQL for small projects where 1 proc/5Gb is more than enough (and there are lots of projects like that). Considering that no client I've ever worked with has been willing to go for PostgresSQL/MySQL (preferring MsSQL), this will be a welcome victory against Microsoft, as Sybase has a pretty good name in the db game.
Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
You are missing the point. It makes it easy to convert from Microsoft SQL. Imagine thousands of independent software developers with an alternative to MSQL within easy reach. Their entire solution cost is now reduced, and they will sell better. At least the ones that take the chance.
I'm not sure so many independent software developers use MS SQL anyway, but there has for a while been a light version of MS SQL, MSDE, available for a free download, with most of the features of MS SQL but with similar restrictions to this Sybase offering.
But this appears to be targeted mostly at Linux developers so it's competition for PostgreSQL and the Abomination That Shall Not Be Named.
postgresql officially supports Windows from version 8, then how can Sybase on Linux suddenly claim "a very attractive alternative to Microsoft SQL Server"?
depends who you are selling to ... my company sells to a few (UK) local government authorities and SQL Server is a "tick in a box" on their checklists. Sybase currently isn't, but being a "brand name" will probably help it there.
Postgres doesn't even come into the equation
...that microsoft sql server is sybase (albeit 1993 codebase)
This is good. Though people will complain, they always do, about everything.
:)
While I'm a pgsql myself, the more the merrier. As long as there are many differend dbms's we'll all be safe, because homogenicy is the root of all evil.
This will hopefully help Sybase stay in buisness longer thanks to the increased popularity it will give them, which therefor is good for me as a pgsql user.
Simply because improvements caused by competition and the lack of common ground for root exploits.
Now, if only MySQL would just die we would all be better off
Imagine thousands of independent software developers with an alternative to MSQL within easy reach.
I also still dont get it. we converted from MsSQL to postgreSQL easily. a simple program converted all data over a weekend (3 seperate databases with over 10Gb data in them) and the software changes were extremely minimal.. SQL syntax differences are not difficult.
Yuo cant simply point your app at the new database and let it rip anyways, changes have to be made to your apps no matter what DB you switch to.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you're expecting to take a recent Microsoft database script and run it on Sybase without any problems you're dreaming.
I have worked with both a few years ago (migration from Postgres 6 to Sybase 11) and sybase performance was outstanding, compared to Postgresql.
I hope postgresql performs better now.
Moreover, this is not the first time Sybase makes this offer : Sybase for Linux 11.0.3 was free to use on Linux, with no limitation.
I personnaly used it for my Web shop, as this database is not only fast and secure, but also quite easy to program with ( especially compared to Oracle ).
The only drawback of Sybase is the lack of standard administration Tools. You have to use a product like (overpriced and windows-only) Emabarcadero DBArtisan.
I fact, I've been waiting for free-download Oracle/DB2 "personal database" or some limited opensource release of Oracle/DB2 for a while.
I may be way off-base here, so apologies if I've missed the point, but Oracle have allowed free-downloads for at least a couple of years: Linux version of Oracle 10g.
Not free-as-in-speech, and if you want to deploy it commercially it's not even free-as-in-beer, but it does seem to meet your "personal database" criteria: it's the reason I've more Oracle experience[1] that SQL Server experience (though MSDE briefly threatned to change that - to some extent).
I'd need to check, but a few years back DB2 was also a free download, with the no-commercial-depolyment caveat. I'd be surpirsed if it still isn't; it's a neat trick to get developers hooked on cheap/free versions so that their organisations then migrate.
[1] Twice as much - a whole extra week ;)
This is where the serious fun begins.
does everything that runs on Linux have to come with the source and an oss license???
I bought and paid for Textmaker for Linux and also Opera for Linux, both closed source programs. This Sybase move now means that I can download and play with a serious database. It's a smart move because it means that I will be gaining skills in programming for that database engine, skills which are seriously marketable.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Most distributions can't ship the client libs for the closed source databased. Thats makes it's somewhat difficult if you like to use things like a distro shipped version of php.
We use sybase at work and I try to use freetds as client lib ehenever possible because it's easier to maintain (The ebuilds are alreay there in gentoo).
You can already download for free, Oracle for Linux,Windows and a few more platforms. All you need is an OTN membership. However its only for Non-production use i.e. you cant run your business off it.
As for Open-sourcing the DB engine, you can keep dreaming though..
5 gigs is real pittance for the amount of data being collected these days, almost making this useless. What happens when the 5 gigs fills up ?
Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
cmon Firebird(Interbase) is much better than this strapped DB http://www.sphere-data.com/docs/ib_vs_ss.shtml
Ah yes... but what if you are stuck on an application that you don't have access to the codebase? With this "most" ms-sql or Sybase SQLAnywhere applications can simply be told where the new datastore is and work.
We hae several POS and ERP applications on our campus that have been locked into MS-SQL or SQLAnywhere (bleh!). Yesterday after downloading sybase and getting it installed I was able to transfer and fire up test instances of 7 of the 9 applications without ever needing to ask the company that wrote it to make any changes for me.
Would I prefer these apps be FOSS... YES! We are slowly writing new versions as we get time... but it takes time and this gives us a way to save money now.
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
I would say that's a very common mistake. I've spent a LOT more time downloading and building stuff and man it's hard.
Bleh, nothing is a couple of clicks away except total destruction of your boxThe fixed ABI has its own problems - see Opcode DB. (of course the problem's all due COM with the a.pVT->xhx() calls).
Don't delude yourself about anything in Linux being a click away. Shareware you pay with cash, Free Software with your time - I've had to hack proxy support into at least half-dozen things that has crossed my path.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Will a dual core chip be a Single CPU ?.
Is HyperThreading treated as a dual CPU ?.
And if you treat them differently , they are still a single socket chip, so why the discrimination ?.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
The thing is free whatever the motivation behind it. If you don't like it then don't use it so stop whining. What did you expect , them to say "Here , have our full database system for free, no restrictions! We've planted a money tree in our garden, we don't need sales anymore!".
Wake up to the realities of commercial life , its what keeps the worlds economy running.
I fact, I've been waiting for free-download Oracle/DB2 "personal database" or some limited opensource release of Oracle/DB2 for a while.
So, err, maybe you wanted this?
DB2 UDB Personal Developer Edition
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Right! Here's something else to consider...in the past, when you had an application people might want to evaluate before they committed time and money to buying the full product, what did you do if it required a database and you were concerned your clients may not have an existing database implementation? Exactly...you included the free MSDE engine so people didn't have to go out and spend money on MS SQL or Oracle for what was only an evaluation. If it worked out well and the customer bought the software, they now had a database which, if MSDE wasn't up to snuff for a full production deployment, could be painlessly migrated to MS SQL. The engine is exactly the same, so no translation is necessary.
This worked out so well, precisely because MSDE was free to redistribute and easy to migrate to MS SQL, that MSDE is now included with thousands of applications. And remember -- if you ever outgrow its limitations, it can be directly moved over to MS SQL.
Coincidentally, MS SQL (which, as everyone is ecstatic to be able to point out, used to be Sybase) continues to gain market share. Sybase (see above) does not.
The big three at the moment in terms of market share are Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Oracle is #1 but is slowly losing market share to IBM and MS. Sybase is #4 -- but that #4 translates to 3.6%. And it's static -- they're not gaining any of that market share being lost by Oracle.
Someone please mod parent down. Free-downloads of all kinds of Oracle products (including their full RDBMS database, or the Lite version, or the personal version, or almost any of their products) have been available for about 20 years.
I know -- I have a copy myself. I also have an evaluation CD of IBM DB2.
But these products are positioned for evaluation of for the professionals. They are not positioned positioned to compete against SQL Server, MySQL or Postgre.
But this is the whole point of SyBASE offering. And my point is that Oracle and IBM are soon forced to respond.
They are not likely to offer their full product as GPL/OpenSource or even a free download, because it would be too risky and might cost them much of their software licensing business.
But they are likely to produce a more limited version; either with a restrictive license -- or with less capabilities -- or a free download product with no source. But way or another, they must eventually respond.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Sounds an awful lot like Microsoft's new free version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, currently in Beta. Almost exactly like full-blown SQL Server, but only supports 1 CPU, 1GB of RAM and 4GB DB size.
The "developer" edition has been available for a couple of years, and comes with a lot of the "extra" features turned on (such as Java in the database), but is limited to one engine and 25 user connections. It's also a version that you can't use for production purposes. It is available for a number of platforms (Windows, Linux, Solaris).
The new "Express" edition is (AFAIK) only available on linux, does not have the 25 user connection limits but instead has a disk space limit, and is usable in a production environment.
Michael
yes
PostgreSQL has had support for stored procedures and triggers for quite some time now.
it's a DB that you really need to keep an eye on from time to time. Lots of people are still touting that it does not have stored proceedures and usually those people are simply talking without knowing.
it works quite well and the link above is the first one I could find on google that detailed it.
I can find more when I'm not surfing and posting from my Zaurus on the way into work.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Postgres is much faster now than it was in the 6.x days. Back then it had a (deserved) reputation for being slow. There were many speed enhancements put into place before 7.x was released.
Postgresql is still not quite as fast (in my experience) as MySQL, but the comparison is not fair due to MySQL's lack of features.
I've read some benchmarks comparing oracle to postgresql and pgsql comes out close on most tests and beats oracle on a few. The benchmarks are gone, sadly, due to Oracle's "no benchmarking" clause in their EULA.
If you want a database that offers what Sybase does, but without those silly restrictions ("5GB ought to be enough for everyone" indeed), you might as well look at Ingres. Open Source but available with full support from CA should you want it.
Where I'm working, we use MS SQL Server an awful lot. And we write an awful lot of code that uses it. We don't spend any time reading source, or trying to find holes / improvements to it. We're too busy.
You might not be reading the source code, but others will and their interests are probably more closely aligned with yours than a for profit institution that is more concerned about customer lock-in. But hey, do what makes you happy.
There are highly capable DBMS available already. From the ubiquitous PostgreSQL and MySQL to the less familiar Firebird, SAPDB, and Ingres, I'd say there's again almost too much choice in the OSS world.
This is a noteworthy announcement from Sybase, but nothing more than Score: 3, Interesting.
All that being said, it would be different if Sybase literally were to open source their product. The reason for this being that while they have diverged since 6.x, Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase were once one-and-the-same. The divergence is, I'm willing to bet, still a minority of the codebase. Making Sybase a drop-in replacement for SQL Server in an OSS environment would be killer.
Just for the record, Oracle has always been available for free download in complete, unrestricted form. So for evaluation, people would just download and install it. Now, running production on unsupported and therefore unpatched Oracle instance - is the whole other matter.
Without problems, you're right. But the changes aren't that great. We do primary development on MS SQL Server (it's easier than Sybase, because Sybase doesn't tell you the syntax of the proc you just wrote is wrong or references non existant fields or tables until you RUN the script. MS has a pre-processor) and I'm the guy who makes sure things run on Sybase. Basically, I do all the compatibility work in a single Textpad Macro. It's actually sort of simple:
1) Strip out the SET statements referencing ANSI_NULLS
2) Convert Niladic function names (e.g. CURRENT_USER -> USER)
3) Add Set DATE_FORMAT mdy, because the default in Sybase is ymd.
4) Find strings unicode strings and strip off the N'
5) Make sure all JOINS have their ON clause directly after themselves...MS lets you nest them, which I think makes for a better looking statement
6) Make sure the retarded VB developer didn't declare all his variables "@foo AS Integer", illegal syntax with illegal datatypes that MS SQL Server would fix for you.
7) Fix the IDENTITY syntax (basically, removing the step and start-at values) on CREATE TABLE
8) Remove ADD CONSTRAINTS that are really defaults or primary keys, and move them to ALTER TABLE ADD DEFAULTs
9) UNION ALL statements don't have column names during parsing in Sybase, so you can't do ORDER BY id_name, you have to do ORDER BY column_number. I think this is cleaner anyway, and it lets you change the name of the column more easily (can be important with ADO.NET, when mapping datasets)
10) Table variables don't work so hot in Sybase. I just create temp tables with hashmark names, same idea with a little less performance.
And I think that's it. Not that bad, really, and the script you end up with is comaptible with both MS SQL Server AND Sybase! I just finished a program that (unlike MS SQL Server) doesn't add crap like this to its scripts, thus making it trivial for us to port our apps back and forth.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Since I've used Sybase ASE 12.5 recently, I'd like to make Some considerations:
-It is very sensitive about the OS configuration, only runs well on supported platforms (RH Enterprise, Suse, etc). If it finds anything not conforming its requirements, displays the annoying "Proccess is infected with 11" (meaning Segmentation faults).
-CLI client totally crippled: the user has to type go after each command, no line-editing, no history, poor output formatting. Fortunately, sqsh, mentioned on parent, is a nice replacement.
-ODBC driver for Unix/Linux not available for free.
-Native C/C++ API, ctlibrary, implements a finite state machine, enforcing the programmer to ask twice if the result set is done.
-Conversion to Transact-SQL data types from MySQL or Postgres is very tricky, because it doesn't have sub-integer types (smallint, mediumint, etc). Also, it uses different escape characters: eg. '' (two apostrophes) to represent one apostrophe inside a delimited string.
From what I saw, it's not worth it migrating from MySQL or Postgres. If the migration is from MS SQL, though, it is a very interesting move, since the compatibility among the two is is still good.
To reminisce a bit, I first started using Sybase when they were at version 4.8 and I was starting work with one of the fledgling genome database projects. They practically gave away licenses to such groups (80%) discount. They were known then, as now as a business-oriented RDBMS. They failed to continue in this vein, and the support costs started rising faster than our budgets. The Linux version cost less, and the annual maintenance was far less.
In the meantime Oracle was very agressive in the higher education market, and still is. These two companies have a lot to offer, even if they aren't Open Source.
A reason why a small company might want to go with a free version of a commercial enterprise level RDBMS might be found in the disaster recover features that each has. I am far more familiar with Sybase internals, having taken a course that told me more than I every wanted to know about how it keeps track of data. And I have also recovered data that otherwise might have been lost forever. Oracle's features are just as good, but I have not had the "pleasure" of testing them when the pucker factor is maxed out.
-----------------------------------------
Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt
5 GB for an enterprise system, especially one that handles lots of blobs, is not enough.
I expect this to be popular with hobbyists and those running simple websites. It might compete with MySQL and Postgresql in this area.
Not in the enterprise though.
-- yawn. --
And if MS ever makes a change into the SQL server that breaks some of your programs or discontinues the product, what will you do ? You either port an awful lot of code that you've written to the new version / alternative product, or get stuck with an aging database product which won't have any bugfixes anymore and will cease working with newer operating systems (and processors - was it the AMD or Intel 64-bit processor that can't run 16- and 64-bit code at the same time ?) eventually. And it's even worse if the code is for selling, as opposed to just internal use - then you won't have the option of staying in the older version, and definately have to rewrite at least parts of it.
On the other hand, if you use PostgreSQL, you simply hire someone to maintain the old version and backport any helpfull new features. And if you want to sell your code, you just bundle your own version of PostgreSQL with it.
Having the source code is like an insurance: unneccessary most of the time, but if you don't have it when you need it, you will be sorry.
The article refuses to load, so I can't check to make sure; but this does have all the characteristics of a demo version. Get people used to using a certain product line, and they are more likely to choose it in the future. Also, the size of the installed base directly affects the likelihood of the third party tools supporting this database, which in turn directly affects the likelihood of this database being purchased over the competitors.
Why did you think Sybase decided to release a free version anyway ? Corporations do nothing unless they think they will benefit from it; therefore, they tought they would benefit from releasing this version free. And the most obvious benefit is the one explained above.
So yes, I'd say they will miss him.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I understand. I'm not trying to poo poo Sybase. It's an okay DMBS. I know about the NASDAQ and many other companies that use it. It is, after all, still probably a top 5 commercial DBMS product.
My point, or at least one of them, was that if you are looking at learning a new DBMS, and your selection critera includes marketability of the skill set, Sybase is a poor choice compared to Oracle and DB2.
Microsoft SQL Server is the DBMS leader on Windows platform. If that's your target platform, learn it. Oracle is the leader on Unix platforms. DB2 is Oracle's strongest challenger in this area. If you're looking at commercial DBMS on Linux, I think DB2 is the skillset to acquire. And, they make it relatively easy because you can download DB2 UDB for no charge. Sybase is respectable, but from a career perspective, marketability favors, imho, in this order: Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase.
All, as I said imHo.
Most companies I know barely want to pay enough salaries for the guys to write the code to use the database, now you want to hire an additional guy just to keep the Database software itself up to date? Most companies will just pay the license fee. Much cheaper. That one guy is going to cost, because you need someone very very goood. Someone writing bad code into the database software is a *bad thing*.
Banks are nearly 100% sybase turf. You cannot get a job in a bank as a SA or developer if you do not know it.
While at it, the people who will be interested in it will be the people who want to get into that sector and need a toy to play. The demand for sybase skills outstrips supply around 10 to 1. Sybase is releasing it for only one reason - so that PHBs do not start considering alternative databases because of lack of staff.
Otherwise at least for me it is in the "not interesting" category until it gets a decent working DBI module compatible with the most recent version.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Postgresql is still not quite as fast (in my experience) as MySQL, but the comparison is not fair due to MySQL's lack of features.
Well, for single user experiences, MySQL probably is faster. PostgreSQL tends to scale much, much better than MySQL. In other words, if you have a DB where you expect to have lots of active users with a diverse set of concurrent activity (selects, updates, inserts, deletes), PostgreSQL traditionally zooms way ahead of MySQL. It's a question of how you expect to use your database.
Basically, it's a myth that MySQL is faster than PostgreSQL. A myth, I might add, which MySQL themselves help propagate. Simple fact is, MySQL probably is faster in the developer's eyes. Once it's deployed, PostgreSQL is more than likely the faster of the two. Granted, there are some corner cases where MySQL is still faster than PostgreSQL, but those are the exceptions and NOT the rule.
It's all personal and professional preference, of course. But for me... the answer is "no - but it helps."
I'm no Free Software purist. I run Linux systems at home and work (right next to Windows and Solaris systems). I've bought proprietary Linux software for both home and work (mostly games and enterprise apps). But when making a choice, I tend to weight heavily on the side of FOSS. Why? Freedom.
I've been bit plenty of times in the past by intentionaly induced limitations, technical incompatabilities, and agressive licensing. Some vendors are better than others. But with proprietary software, the more one becomes dependant on the product, the more risk one runs of being unable to migrate from it.
Granted - there are no guarentees in IT. But an infrastructure designed on Open Source systems tends to allow a greater degree of freedom. Data formats are documented (if not in documentation itself, in the code - which makes migration possible if not easy). Functionality tends to be limited by technical issues rather than marketing. And if the primary developers of a particular project take a turn that conflicts with your environment, there is a good chance that there are others with the same view - migration utilities are developed or oft-maligned fork keeps the project in a favored direction.
That doesn't make FOSS the magic bullet. There are certainly times where particular examples of proprietary software offer advantages that makes it attractive. And that's where this line of questioning comes in. Sybase's offering lacks the freedom that other FOSS databases offer. So what advantages does it have that would make it attractive?
Sybase sucks. Then again, so does every other database product I've ever worked with (Oracle 7i-9i, MS SQL Server 6.5-2000, Informix, Postgres 7.1 - 8.0, *and* MySql). They all just suck in different ways.
7 20775
If you spend enough time with any product, you'll find little quirks that drive you insane. A couple off the top of my head for Sybase:
1. Chained & Unchained modes. Sybase supports a SQL 92-compliant transactional mode, and a hacked up "autocommit" mode, with optional transactional support. The hacked up mode is default, and the SQL 92-compliant mode has some severe limitations.
2. No DDL inside transactions. So what? That includes creating temporary tables. You want to call a stored proc from within a transaction? It better not touch the tempdb.
3. Table-level locking by default. This one just blows me away; Sybase didn't support row-level locking until somwhere around version 11, and table-level locking is still the default. If you're DBAs aren't on top of things, you'll have deadlocks all over the place. They still haven't enabled it for the system tables, so make doubly sure you don't do any long-running code that touches them, or you'll have deadlocks for sure.
If you think I'm bullshitting, check out a quasi-white paper (grey paper?) I posted a while ago to the iBATIS support forms - it's got a lot more detail about some of the problems, and some Java-based work-arounds: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=2
So, would I choose Sybase over the competition? Maybe about 3 years ago, before other DBs got decent replication support - that was one of their claims to fame. Performance doesn't seem to be that big of an issue - hardware is often cheaper than engineering around db limitations.
If I had to rank what I've used in order of preference, it would be:
1. Postgres
Maybe because I've only used it for about 8 months, but Postgres has not *yet* disappointed me. Transaction support has been perfect, and no major performance problems. Then again, I haven't done any stored proc work, so maybe I should give it time.
2. MS SQL Server
I cringe to say this, but MS's developer tools push their DB up on my list. Query Analyzer has excellent "show plan" support, and their management tools are great. I'm generally pretty happy, although their JDBC driver could use some work, and DTS was pretty weak last time I used it.
3. Oracle
Cost knocks this one down a bit, and I'm a bit rusty as well. Last time I ran Oracle on Linux was shortly after it was released, and their install procedure was a *bitch*. However, nifty features like data partitioning were definitly worth the extra money.
4. Sybase
See above. It's decent, now it's free for small projects, but I'm annoyed.
5. Informix
I'm out of date on Informix, but I have bad memories, mostly of constantly overfilling the transaction logs, then having the DB stop working with an unclear error message. I understand the need for a DBA to monitor this on a production environment, but it was a pain in the ass in development.
6. MySql
OK, I'm going to get bashed on this one. The old limitations left a sour taste in my mouth, and too many critical features are brand new. I will reconsider, though, after it has a little more time to mature.
Scott Severtson
Senior Architect, Digital Measures
I'm sure by now you realize they were talking about MS SQL, not MySQL, right?
>certainly enough to evaluate the product with.
Exactly. Like another poster said, they are doing this so people get familiar with their database, then decide to move to it later.
By the way,
Did some consulting for a company. It's a 30 people company. They mssql database is 7 gig now.
Any non-trivial database job will involve an enormous amount of data.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Microsoft SQL Server Express is free to use and redistribute. It supports 1 CPU, 1 GB addressable RAM and 4 GB database size.
It's based on the core SQL Server 2005 Database Engine, including an advanced query optimizer and the new snapshot isolation level. It also supports the complete SQL Server programming model including T-SQL and CLR integration.
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/sql/
Did I mention that it's free to use and redistribute?
On the other hand, if you use PostgreSQL, you simply hire someone to maintain the old version and backport any helpfull new features. And if you want to sell your code, you just bundle your own version of PostgreSQL with it.
Would it not be more cost effective to hire someone to convert the data to a new format? Getting relational data between different databases is mostly trival. Code changes not so much, but if the codebase accessing the database was written in house my guess is that it's much quicker to change that known code to adapt to the nuances of the new database than to port over unfamiliar database guts.
Oracle's Free (as in speech) software
If you saw Chuck Rozwat's LinuxWorld keynote (2 years ago, I think) you'll know that Oracle uses Linux PCs for its base development. Not just for "back-office apps", mind you, I mean a gigantic development environment with THOUSANDS of Linux PCs. The resulting inevitable patches to coreutils, etc, are all on the oss.oracle.com site above, as are Oracle's (GPLed) Clustered Filesystem.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
I'm one of the heretics that believe that free (as in beer) has helped spread Linux, Apache and MySQL more than free (as in speech), based on nothing more than the fact that the free beer part was what made me start using those products.
But I don't think this announcement will be met by anything but a shrug from most Linux and open source DB users, whetever version of free they believe in. The thought of a product having limitations at all will stop them from even trying it.
It can be relevant for some people, though, and that's for those who're evalutating commercial DB's in the first place and have the budget to buy them.
Sybase 11.0.3.3 was (and still is) free for production use on Linux and FreeBSD.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
"On the other hand, if you use PostgreSQL, you simply hire someone to maintain the old version and backport any helpfull new features. And if you want to sell your code, you just bundle your own version of PostgreSQL with it."
BEcause every company running a DB wants to additionally take on the burden of coding, testing and porting features to it all the while hoping they don't mess it up and can still remain competative.
The kind of money you would have to pay, on an ongoing basis, to hire someone (or more) who can intelligently and correctly port to, tune, test and enhance something as complex as Postgress is shall we say "non trivial".
Your money woudl be much better spent porting to a supported DB system.
--> Fight tyranny and repression.... read
If you are a small business then you can likely afford the $500 that a the most basic deployment of Oracle SE would cost you. 5GB is simply a joke. The alternatives aren't as expensive as you think they are for the domain under discussion.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't understand your logic. When you pay money, you are the customer of someone. What do you mean that students are not customers? They are the customers. They pay dearly for a service - education. Unfortunately, they are not at the top of the priority list for professors, their service provider. Smartest people don't necessarily mean great teachers. There is no direct relationship between a good researcher and a good teacher. You can't learn from the smartest mind if that mind can't communicate very well. Unfortunately for the student customers, they don't have a choice.
Why is it unfortunate that students are not on the top priority list? Research benefits all of us. Teaching benefits a handful of students recieving the teaching.
You are right on about the communication problem. Alot of professors aren't that proficient at teaching, but then that isn't what they are meant to be doing there. Most lower level classes are taught by graduate students anyway (even worse teachers in my oppinion, and I am one).
Some are lucky to have a great advisor, some are lucky to have it figured out themselves, but most simply go through the system, parted with tons of money, in the hope that they may get their investment back sometime in their lives.
That is why I think there should be more done to let students know ahead of time what they are buying, which is an opportunity for a self-motivated enriching educational experience. If they want teachers who are only there to teach, they should go to a community college, or a trade school.
I'm all for open source, but would you even be able to understand it? When SAP released their database as open source, the complaints about the code quality ( or lack thereof) were widespread.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Oracle SE is $150 per CAL. The minimum is 5 named users. So I did get the price wrong ($750 vs. $500).
For a robust RDBMS that is safeguarding key corporate data, that's a pittance. If you don't need the level of robustness that most commercial RDBMS products provide then you don't need a commercial RDBMS of any sort.
Either your data is worth paying for your RDBMS, or you don't need to bother with payware to begin with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I would gain quite a bit actually.
Oracle SE isn't crippled. Sybase is.
With Oracle SE I am not limited to rediculously small datasets, single cpu systems or an amount of RAM currently common on desktops and workstations.
The same is true for postgres and mysql. That is why they are relevant in this discussion.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.