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MySQL To Be Ikea Of The Database Market
Rob wrote to mention an article discussing MySQL's intent to become 'the Ikea of databases'. From the piece: "While new entrants into the open source database market, such as EnterpriseDB and Pervasive Software, have made no secret of their intentions to chase Oracle's market share, Mr Mickos said MySQL is happy to leave them to it. 'We are thankful that they are there to define the market, there is no product if you're the only vendor,' he said. "Pervasive and EnterpriseDB are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion.'"
Pervasive and EnterpriseDB are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion.
That should nip the "MySQL is a replacement for Oracle under all circumstances" posts that always appear whenever MySQL is discussed on slashdot. It should, but it won't.
OIn a different note, isn't the "Ikea of databases" space already a little overcrowded? There's Firebird, McKoi, One$DB/Daffodil DB, Cloudscape, Postgres etc. Guess MySQL already pretty much own that space, so this is just a reaffirmation that they're sticking to their knitting. Doing what they do best. Very wise.
...you can take it home without a big transport, you have to figure out what they mean by odd instructions and you have to perform the assembly yourself, but when you are done you can save a bundle if your time is not that valuable.
Since when are stored procedures, triggers, and views (freaking VIEWS) enterprise features? Log shipping or automatic failover are enterprise features. Procs and views are basics.
Unlike Nintendo, I think the MySQL people have a point though. You wouldn't want a $100k Oracle DB for a website that can be handled by $5k of white boxes running MySQL, just like you probably wouldn't expect a stuck-up billion dollar business to use an open source DB.
I don't know how they manage Ikea in your area, but comparing MySQL to Ikea is an insult to Ikea.
I'd describe Ikea something like this:
Choose two:
Whereas MySQL would be something like this:
Choose three:
Have you actually performed side-by-side comparisons using your own data? I have on many projects. Some are faster in Postgres. Some are faster in MySQL. Guess which one I use? Both. I use Postgres when it is faster. I use MySQL when it is faster. I refuse to be a blind moron like so many on Slashdot: Postgres is best. No, MySQL is best. Who cares - does it run Linux? No, Debian. That is Linux. I use BSD! Who cares, we're here to bash Windows!!!
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
That just proves to me that he completely understands the user space of MySQL.
Thousands of webmasters and home-based coders don't want a competitor to Oracle, we want something that gets he job done quickly, efficiently and affordably.
This idea that every product has to become a behemoth and compete for world domination is the stake through the heart of many a project. Being content with distributing in bulk to an extremely thankful user-base is what it's all about as far as I'm concerned with MySQL. This ensures that most open-source projects will continue to be MySQL oriented, LAMP will continue to dominate the OSS Content Management Services market, and for those that determine it's just not "good enough" for what they want to do there are plenty of alernatives to expand your feature set.
K.I.S.S. is what MySQL has always been about, and I give the guy props for admitting they'll never have the desire nor ability to compete with Oracle.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
This is an attitude that Linux enthusiasts could learn from. Stop worrying about taking on Microsoft and building a system that can convert everyone, and focus on building something that just works really well for the people that actually use it.
Now that Postgres has a pretty easy to use Windows installer, the benefits of MySQL are gone (though it befuddles me that *Windows*, of all things is what made MySQL successful in the first place).
The obvious counter argument is now that MySQL 5.0 supports strict data integrity, stored procedures, triggers, cursors, information schema, and database links, the benefits of Postres are gone.
But that too would be an oversimplification. Really, they're both excellent products, and which one you use is a matter of buisness needs and personal preference.
it makes little sense for MySQL to be going after Oracle directly. They have little or no street cred in oracle's markets and they can't compete on features or quality.
Instead, it makes sense for them to continue to gobble up the low end marketshare while improving their product. Over the years, mysql meets more and more of the needs of Oracle users. Companies like oracle need to constantly climb the feature ladder to distinguish their high end product from MySQL's low end offerings. Without a substantial innovation from Oracle, MySQL eventually matches them on features and quality, gains the requisite street cred, and it's bye bye oracle as we know it today.
Maybe this is what Open Office and other groups should be doing. Don't target the central corporate workspace. Go after the adhoc environments: home users, small businesses, cash strapped schools. Improve the product until it is feature competitive with Office, get the requisite street cred, and then take the traditional MS Office marketshare.
I don't care if MySQL is VHS compared to the postgres beta max... I'm sick and tired of people coming along and and trying to convert people to whatever their favourite technology is like it's the one true religion.
Give it up... I don't care if you like PG, Ruby on Rails or stink on shit for that matter. I'll use what I feel is right for my projects. The only thing this kind of "evangelism" generates is animosity towards whatever product/technology/turd you're pushing on others.
BlackNova Traders
Agreed. I used MySQL a few times back in the day, just because it was extremely easy to set up for extremely trivial tasks. But, IMNSHO, PostgreSQL is *the* ultimate opensource general purpose RDBMS (or O-RDBMS really). If you compare them by real-world attributes (supported features, robustness, performance, etc), PostgreSQL owns the competition, and even gives Oracle's RDBMS a good run for its money. For my purposes, this is how Oracle vs PostgreSQL stacks up right now:
Oracle: expensive, difficult and convoluted to install and maintain, lots of add-ons that PostgreSQL has no desire to match (application servers, Forms, etc), probably better performance on very large databases on very large hardware (but not by much anymore), integrated storage management (as of 10g), and built-in masterless clustering for scalability and availability.
PostgreSQL: free, easy to install (in the case of a modern linux distro, just use the OS package management), very good performance even on complicated things that only Oracle used to be good at, may not scale well beyond 4-8-ish way machines. No built-in clustering, but something may eventually come of the handful of add-on projects that currently do limited forms of clustering.
I don't even see the point of MySQL for anything anymore, unless you're using it for reasons of popularity and/or habit (It's what we already use for 10 other projects, it's what I learned first, it's what I'm comfortable with, it's what most of our new hires will know better, etc). The bookstore shelves reflect MySQL's historical popularity too. Even at stores around here with good technical book selection, the ratio of MySQL books to PostgreSQL books on the shelves is ~ 10:1, and you can rarely find a specific PostgreSQL book you're looking for in stock.
11*43+456^2
The obvious counter argument is now that MySQL 5.0 supports strict data integrity, stored procedures, triggers, cursors, information schema, and database links, the benefits of Postres are gone.
Except that these features have been in Postres for a longer period of time and therefore have seen more stress testing. (Nothing against MySQL's QA.)