Sun Eyes PostgreSQL

Da Massive writes "Sun is looking seriously into the database market - namely PostgreSQL. It says Oracle and IBM and even Microsoft licensing fees are way too expensive for the average punter. This from John Loiacono, executive vice president of software: "We're not going to OEM Microsoft but we are looking at PostgreSQL right now," he said, adding that over time the database will become integrated into the operating system."

Comments

Re:I doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

An NFL punter usually makes between $250k to $1M a year. They can handle most DB costs..

No, they can't. That is the problem...

Re:Question

[meringuoid]

If they take postgres and roll it into the OS- that means the work they do after that wont be coming back to the postgres community? I assume that is the likely course, or am I mistaken?

Well, they don't have to give anything back, if postgres is BSD-license. But in practice, they probably will. Not everything, but quite a bit. It's in their interests to give back to the community a lot of the changes they've made, so that the work done on the free version doesn't unnecessarily duplicate the proprietary version, and so that the next release of postgres doesn't force Sun to rewrite half their modifications. Basically, if Sun want to take advantage of progress made by the community on postgres, then they'll be giving back some of their own. They don't want to diverge too far.

This is more realistic

[Nuttles1]

Unlike all the articles about linux and it's rise as an OS, Open Source databases do not have the same major difficulty. With an OS, every user that uses the computer has to know how to use the system. Conversely, with a database, most, if not all users will not care what database they are using. For example, for my job, I write and maintain a windows application that supports 3 different database back ends. Our clients can care less what database they are using. Only IT and whoever is in charge of the cash will probably care what database is running. In my experiance, IT will not really care what they use because DB issues don't usually take up the bulk of their time. As for whoever is shelling out the money, well that is a toss up, but the trend that I see is that more companies are opting for less expensive DB options.

Again, open source DBs have a chance because not every user works with them directly. Also, the interface, SQL, is a much more standardized interface than with an OS. As a programmmer, writing queries to DB A is pretty darnd exactly like writing queries for DB B. So, I think that their will be much better competition in the database world as in the OS world.

Re:Predictable

[hey!]

PostGreSQL has none of these issues, and can hold its own in a comparison with Oracle or SQL Server.

Depends, you can't exactly put a product like a RDBMS on a single scale. But in general it makes some sense to compare Postgres to SQL Server, but very little sense to compare either of those products with Oracle; although the limited attention span of most "decision makers" means that in practice the marketing departments of MS and Oracle play that game.

Oracle really really wants people to use Oracle for everything, and in truth you can use it for a lot of day to day database tasks, in the way you could use an eighteen wheeler to take your kids to soccer practice. Oracle's not very standards compatible. There's a million ways it traps you into their product. There's endless ways to shoot yourself in the foot, and getting things back requires a kind of black sorcery. In short, Oracle really sucks, unless it's the only tool that can do the job; in which case it's wonderful. Oracle's built so you can perform heart surgery on the patient while he's running a marathon, for the kind of applications where serious money is lost every time the database hiccups; the kind of applications where you have a team of DBAs who are paid six figures and it's a bargain.

SQL Server, to my mind, is mediocre. It's the choice of the departments who believe thing are easier if everthing comes from one vendor, and it's good enough to keep them out of too much trouble much of the time. From a DBA's standpoint I'd guess it's very easy to administer up to the point it becomes useless; if you never get there, you're happy. From a app develper's standpoint, it's pretty dreadful, but these days the style is to put as much as you can in the app tier so that doesn't matter much as it used to.

Don't know much about Postgres in production environemnts. It seems clean and I like the fact you have a choice of stored procedure languages.

Re:If everyone has to re-write the fix ...

[TheRaven64]

So if Sun fixes a bug, they don't have to release that fix to anyone.

True, on the surface. However, if they don't then the next time someone modifies that bit of code, then they will have to re-merge their changes. If someone else fixes the bug in a different way, they have to do code review on both implementations and then decide what they want to keep.

There is a reason people like Apple contribute to BSD projects - it's cheaper to get your patches merged upstream than to maintain a fork.

Hmmm.

[hey!]

The article seems a bit heavy on posturing and light on details, almost like it's there to get the message across: fear Microsoft because it competes with its customers.

Otherwise, it seems a bit curious to me, because it juxtaposes two things that don't seem to go together in my mind: High end database management and penny pinching. Prices for Oracle on low end hardware (x86 servers) are not high at all, certainly not high enough warrant any concern at all in any project that doesn't get staff and DBA time free. Once you pay for a couple of professional staff the Oracle license fees are not worth worrying about, if they are even a bit more productive. Prices for Oracle on big iron are shocking to people whose idea of a big software procurement is a couple of dozen boxes of MS Office, but in those environments they are likewise not out of place.

Oracle's licensing model is incredibly byzantine. It takes days of study to get your brain around it. Once you do, what's obvious is that it is a reflection of the company itself: it's a complex machine designed to squeeze every last marginal dollar out of the customer. But -- the reason it works is that the prics are very carefully calibrated so you don't really save any money by going to the competitor. For example, if you just grab the biggest license you can on the x86 platform to make your life simpler, you will pay dearly. But if you are selective and understand the model resaonably well, Oracle is about the same or perhaps even cheaper than SQL Server on equivalent machines. Of course if you don't know what you're doing you'll be accidentally sending Oracle beaucoup bucks, like CA did a few years ago. I assume midrange and high end licensing for Oracle are the same: they maximize Oracle's revenue for the specific capabilities you license from them, and it behooves you to choose wisely.

Of course, no pricing model works for everyone. Perhaps there are people on high end hardware who just need something that is very fast and very reliable, not highly configurably fast and as reliable as human ingenuity can make it. Which leads me to a conclusion:

Talking about Postgres in the context of Oracle and DB2 is probably just posturing. It would be years, if ever, before Postgres gets the kind of features that make Oracle a must have for many high end applications. So I'm guessing this is really aimed at delaying the encroachment x86/Windows/SQL Server on the midrange, by giving a big vendor seal of approval to Postgres, which is plenty good for the kinds of apps you run on SQL Server, and quite a bit better if the hardware is better.