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Fyracle: Oracle-Mode Firebird
mAriuZ writes "A beta is currently available that allow Firebird to support the major Oracle-based ERP/CRM application Compiere with virtually no change to the Compiere code base. No other proprietary or open-source database system can currently do this.
The best part : Fyracle is open source
if you want to compile it manually it's a set of patches that needs to be run over the firebird 1.5.1 source tree."
I've been watching the devel list as those creating fyracle have been asking about how to go about implementing this compatibility ... don't expect these features to be merged into the main tree. Oracle's made some pretty silly design decisions along the way, and other database teams/vendors take exception at the suggestion they should reproduce the quirks found in other products. They're trying to build a good system from the ground up, nice and clean -- not copy every good or bad decision someone else made.
For some of us, that's a really good thing: ideas get re-thought and we get better solutions. For others, yes, that's a bad thing: software vendors go implementing their solutions for only one database server that costs out the butt, and think nothing of it -- software's expensive, why not make it more expensive? The client pays for it anyway, not the vendor. There are two solutions here: make a cheaper version of the database server (fyracle) or recode the application so it's not oracle-specific.
How many Oracle-clone databases do we need? Should we encourage vendors to continue making oracle-only software, should we encourage them to use badly-designed language features? (Oracle's a bit of a whore as far as implementing just about anything they think will get software sold -- even if it's an absolutely abysmal idea.)
It's strange to me that Firebird got compatibility with Compiere before than PostreSQL. The later has a similar store procedure language to Oracle.
"I think this line is mostly filler"