Oracle and MySQL -- Good Move or Bad Bet?

sendai-X writes "With the recently announced purchase of Innobase, Oracle has shown it's intention to further support open source. This is key as open source enters the mainstream in business and in light of the success IBM has had with the Eclipse project, and Sun recently looking at purchasing PostgresSQL. What do Slashdot users think about this merger? Is it beneficial to the market and database users by having the largest database vendor openly support MySQL and provide an upgrade path to Oracle? Or is it just another cog in the Oracle machine in their attempt to dominate the enterprise IT market? Will this change the database market landscape? Will it help or hurt IBM and Microsoft?"

Comments

Purchase PostgreSQL?

[stoolpigeon]

...Sun recently looking at purchasing PostgreSQL
 
That would be a neat trick wouldn't it?
 
They could buy a company that sells Postgres support or makes a version of Postgres that they sell, but they aren't going to be 'buying postgres'. This is may seem like nit picking but it is somewhat important. PostgreSQL is free software in every sense of the term and Sun is not going to buy it. They are not going to purchase control of it.
 
I guess they could try and hire all the main developers or something. Though I think that'd be tough too. And I'm glad of that as Postgres is my favorite rdbms. I like that it is free and as far as I can tell is going to stay that way for as long as it exists.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[tcopeland]

> they could try and hire all the main developers or something

Right on, yup, that's about the only way they could do that - by hiring Tom Lane or some of the other gurus. But they can't "buy PostgreSQL". There have been some interesting discussions on this on the pgsql-advocacy list recently as well.

> And I'm glad of that as Postgres is my favorite rdbms.

Same here! 3.5 million records and cranking along; PostgreSQL is meeting RubyForge's needs very nicely.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you havn't been following the Nessus saga. Seems the parent company of that GPLed software has now decided that the next version *WILL NOT* be GPLed leaving many in the lurch and with a forked version with at present little support.

I know of folks that have donated code that are completly up a creek without a paddle (e.g. their code will be used in the *NON* GPLed software).

Don't be so sure that this can't happen, and especially with changes to the licensing (AKA: Sun's license vs. GPL).

Personally I don't think these are good things to be happening. I'd rather see the companies grow and get bigger and then possibly bought by a larger one (AKA: Suse and Novell), but that's just me.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jadavis]

The Innobase purchase/ MySQL debacle is really an indictment of their business and development model.

MySQL AB is at the epicenter of development of MySQL DB, and requires copyright transfers for any outside changes. Paid developers at one small company largely create and support the entire database. Some users get a sense of security that there is "one person to go to", and a single focused business behind it. In some ways this business model worked well... their marketing was very successful, and the database might be described as more "unified" than, for example, PostgreSQL, where things like FTS and replication are independently developed (which is actually good, but can confuse users who think that "it's not good enough to be included").

However, the PostgreSQL development model has been working very effectively, not dependent on any one company. A short list of contributors includes the likes of Fujitsu, Sun, Affilias (manages all .org and .info), Software Research Associates (SRA), Red Hat, Aglio DB, EnterpriseDB (won LinuxWorld "Best Database Solution" last year, beating Oracle), Command Prompt (I probably left a lot out).

When Great Bridge hired a bunch of the PostgreSQL developers, then got scared and pulled funding, the developers went back to the community. The community was the core to begin with, and development continued as always. Other companies came in to support it, and development has never been stronger. More importantly, the community has never been stronger.

The reason MySQL DB users are concerned, even though the source is GPL, is because MySQL DB is heavily dependent on MySQL AB. If MySQL is forced out by Oracle, what's left aside from some source code? There are a lot of users who would rally and try to build a community. But building a community to support an RDBMS takes more than just a few good programmers. It takes years to build the kind of community that works like the PostgreSQL Global Development Group (PGDG). It takes programmers, organizers, advocates, managers, advocates, support channels, channels for accepting new developers (for instance, if a company wants to pay for a feature), decision makers, and arbitrators (to prevent too much forking). And it takes a lot of time to figure out who does what, and when they do it, and how to reconcile conflicts or scheduling difficulties, how to work as a team so that work is integrated properly and time is not wasted.

If someone has a proposal for a feature, who do they ask so that it's heard? Will a reliable decision be made about whether/when to progress? Who should step up and program? Who will open the channels of communication between the programmer and any other programmers working in similar code areas? Who will enforce project "standards"? Who will devise the standards? Does it go in this release or wait 'til the next? When is feature freeze? Who determines what quality level constitutes a release? Should the patch be backported? If it breaks any compatibility, who will devise a proper release timeline to avoid hurting existing users too much?

It really takes a long time to build those conventions and organize people into a functional development group. MySQL DB users can only hope that MySQL AB is still around for a while. If MySQL AB goes the way of Great Bridge, MySQL DB may be left in chaos. In the meantime, start forming a community that can operate outside of MySQL AB. The monolithic development/business model seems to be in question right now.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[einhverfr]

MySQL AB is at the epicenter of development of MySQL DB, and requires copyright transfers for any outside changes. Paid developers at one small company largely create and support the entire database. Some users get a sense of security that there is "one person to go to", and a single focused business behind it. In some ways this business model worked well... their marketing was very successful, and the database might be described as more "unified" than, for example, PostgreSQL, where things like FTS and replication are independently developed (which is actually good, but can confuse users who think that "it's not good enough to be included").

Among the technologies that MySQL licenses from third parties under commercial redistribution licenses:

Berkeley DB (Sleepycat Software)
InnoDB (Oracle, formerly Innobase)
MaxDB (SAP AG)

See the problem? MySQL itself is largely a langauge parser and a simple and technically inadequate storage engine (for anything where data integrity matters). In other words they don't own any of the foundations of their technologies.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Cyno]

PostgreSQL is free software in every sense of the term...

But PostgreSQL is not Free Software in any sense of the term...

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[toofast]

Eclipse's downloads database grows by just shy of 1 million records each day. We keep the current month and last month's records on hand. We also have a tool to run queries against it. Just massive.

Handled by MySQL.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jadavis]

Yes, that's the difficulty.

MySQL can only go through so many "rebirths" (MyISAM, BDB, InnoDB, ____ ) before the users figure out that the only thing that's really "MySQL" is the language.

And people don't make new database installations based on syntax.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 million people download eclipse every day? whatever you're on, I want some!

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[aled]

May you elaborate on that? sounds like a lots of inserts in a simple log table. May be the volumen is high but not complex transactions or queries. Please correct me if my guess is wrong.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jaseuk]

Please elaborate, a BSD licensed software is the most "free" of any license, your free to do whatever you want with it including supplying it without the source. Under a BSD license EVERYONE has those same freedoms, whereas with GPLed software that option only exists for the original author.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jaseuk]

MySQL could of course start using the postgres engine with the MySQL syntax and admin tools around it.

Might be a bit weird, but it's certainly possible.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jadavis]

That would mean "death cycle" for MySQL DB. Nobody would base any new installations on MySQL if that happened. PostgreSQL has it's own SQL parser.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jaseuk]

The MySQL fans would continue using MySQL, particularly if all the remaining clients and tools continued to work in a similar way.

If that were true people would be switching to postgresql in droves. Its purely due to the lack of Postgresql hosting as a standard part of web hosting packages that are stiffling adoption.

J

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[sco08y]

MySQL itself is largely a langauge parser and a simple and technically inadequate storage engine (for anything where data integrity matters). In other words they don't own any of the foundations of their technologies.

That kind of nuts and bolts nerd attitude is bad enough with mainstream programming (compilers will never be fast enough, shared objects will never be fast enough, virtual machines will never be fast enough...) but it's lethal to DBMS development.

One of the fundamental principles of the relational model is that you separate your logical constructs from the physical implementation. If anything, using other people's storage software was one of the few things they got right! (Of course, the rest of the time they succumbed to the nuts and bolts nerds and talked about how high they could score on arbitrary benchmarks and how integrity was for sissies, &c &c.)

A DBMS is a *system* and when you design such a system you need to step back from the details of implementation and work out a rigorous, mathematically grounded plan for how it is going to work.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[David_W]

But PostgreSQL is not Free Software in any sense of the term...

I hope I'm not feeding a troll...

PostgreSQL is released under the BSD license, which according to the definition by the FSF, is Free Software. (It is not, however, "copyleft.")

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[toofast]

That's exactly what it is .. from what I read the parent's 3.5 million records is equally a log table.

Just comparing 3.5 million records to 45 million.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[StormReaver]

"May you elaborate on that? sounds like a lots of inserts in a simple log table. May be the volumen is high but not complex transactions or queries. Please correct me if my guess is wrong."

Consider yourself corrected. I am running a PostgreSQL database with complicated foreign key relationships among tables with millions of rows each. Most of the tables have a couple dozen columns. Joins on these schemas typically involve 5-10 tables. Result sets with appropriate where clauses are typically in the low thousands, but respectable.

These joins usually return instantaneously (or nearly so). I do have some odd cases that can take several seconds to run (and aggregate functions on these sets can take a very long time -- sometimes a couple minutes), but those are not common.

Our main PostgreSQL server handles all the image archiving for 5-6 departments, serves billable data to another primary department (I'm being vague on purpose to appease my boss' desire to not advertise who we are with what we do), serves as the back-end data source for our web server, and seems to just accumulate responsibilities as time goes on.

This is in addition to acting as a file server, internal web server, print server, mail server (not our primary one), and general purpose server as needed. Except for a couple bad warts (very slow aggregates, for example), PostgreSQL has been very good to us.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[toofast]

My bad, I reread the parent's article, and it's not one table with 3.5 million rows, it appears to be the total rows in the database.

I just wanted to compare fish stories on large tables. Our downloads table (currently 43M rows) is mainly insert-only, but I run a series of queries against it each month for stats. There's also a web-based stats tool that's open to a select handful of persons.

Nothing transactional, but still a large number of rows to query.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[toofast]

Very impressive stuff. pg seems to haul ass. Our biggest table is ~ 40 millions records of download logs, but mostly inserts. We do query it often, but queries are simple LIKE "%something%" and there are seldom any joins. Although the filename (which would be the most important column) is a varchar (usually over 60 charachers) I never bothered indexing it because I fear it will slow the writes down to much to be useful. What do you think?

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[einhverfr]

One of the fundamental principles of the relational model is that you separate your logical constructs from the physical implementation. If anything, using other people's storage software was one of the few things they got right! (Of course, the rest of the time they succumbed to the nuts and bolts nerds and talked about how high they could score on arbitrary benchmarks and how integrity was for sissies, &c &c.)

You have a point. But my point isn't that this is technically good or bad. The point is that their decision to offer non-Free licenses for sale has made them vulnerable to these sort of hostile actions by entrenched competitors. I.e. it may make decent technical sense, but it is lousy business-wise. I.e. they are in a worst-of-both-worlds licensing-wise and really are not able to really commit to one model or the other. It would have been smarter had they acquired Innobase....

PostgreSQL and Firebird can get away with their own on-disk storage engines because PostgreSQL has a larger contributing developer base than MySQL and InnoDB combined and Firebird gets its storage engine from Interbase. But in both cases, the project has control over the storage engines. They can't be hurt by hostile takeovers by companies like Oracle.

A better parallel might be how EnterpriseDB is largely a patched PostgreSQL which alters the parser to be closer to Oracle, and leaves the PostgreSQL storage layer intact.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[einhverfr]

As I mentioned in a previous post, this would lead to:

1) Bloat. Running MySQL on top of PostgreSQL?

2) Code merging would be a pain. PostgreSQL is process-based and unlikely to be internally threadsafe, while MySQL is thread-based.

3) Breaking backward compatibility unless you want to force PostgreSQL to truncate numbers etc ;-)

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its purely due to the lack of Postgresql hosting as a standard part of web hosting packages that are stiffling adoption.

Oh. OK. Thx. TTFN.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[allanw]

Also, don't forget that each core PostgreSQL developer works at a different company. It'd be really hard to damage the core devs just by damaging one company.

See http://www.postgresql.org/developer/bios

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

that, and fucking PHP - developers use mysql_* functions, so porting to postgres is non-trivial, so most applications only support mysql, so most hosting customers only want mysql, so most hosting providers only provide mysql.

New PHP developer comes along, sees that most people use mysql, and that PHP has mysql_* functions, so uses mysql_* functions, and the cycle continues.

the database specific functions in PHP need to be removed, perferrably also burned, the ashes scattered and the earth salted.
In its place should be a generic database agnostic data access layer (there already exist a few such as PEAR::DB), that is standard and bundled with the core language, so that it's always there - like JDBC in Java.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Dan Ost]

2) Code merging would be a pain. PostgreSQL is process-based and unlikely to be internally threadsafe, while MySQL is thread-based.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around this statement, and am failing.

Can you elaborate on this?

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[einhverfr]

MySQL uses one thread per network connection, while PostgreSQL uses one process. There are strong ramafications of this design decision. This decision on MySQL's part may give them marginally better performance on Windows, but I am not sure to what extent they use Async I/O in reads to make that happen.

However the more serious one is that threads all have the same access to all the memory in the process space, leading to all sorts of possible issues. If you plug in code from a non-threaded app into a threaded model, you are asking for various problems, if I understand the architectures correctly. Timing and concurrency issues are the major ones.

Now, it is true that PostgreSQL does make use of Sys V Shared Memory Segments and then uses semaphores to control concurrency. But this only controls access to a certain clearly defined shared resource while in a threaded model, every resource is shared.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jadavis]

Except, in reality, MySQL falls down when it comes to separating logical relations from physical storage.

The storage layer you choose should never affect the semantics and behavior. If you choose MyISAM instead of InnoDB, transactions are no longer isolated or atomic.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[GreyPoopon]

MaxDB (SAP AG)

This is most likely the primary reason that Oracle made their move. SAP actively supports MySQL development, and promotes it (and naturally MaxDB) for use by customers who don't need huge enterprise-scale databases. Oracle and SAP are in fierce competition, and Oracle will most likely do anything they can to get in the way.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Dan Ost]

I still don't see how this has any implications for me as
a developer who writes database clients. Whether or not the
database server is multi-threaded or multi-process has no
effect on me as long as the operation of the database is
correct and has adequate performance for my needs.

Am I just missing the point of the original statment?

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach on, brother.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jaseuk]

The other problem of course is that the vast majority of web apps are primarily developed for MySQL, Pg support is almost always beta and usually has bugs that need working out, it's almost always easier to just use MySQL in these circumstances.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[davegaramond]

By the way, can you really use MySQL (or PostgreSQL) for SAP nowadays? Does SAP really "actively support" MySQL? In what ways?

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Nutria]

BSD vs. GPL is like the difference between libertine & liberty.

Sure, the libetrine can do anything he wants, but liberty implies responsibility.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[StormReaver]

I haven't benchmarked inserts, but I haven't run into any noticeable slowdowns when inserting into tables with no foreign keys. However, my multi-million row tables are foreign key heavy, so resolving all of them for each insert causes noticeable lag when when inserting large batches.

If you're doing just a handful of writes in a batch, then indices certainly won't slow down the insertion process. If you're inserting large batches, then the general wisdom I've picked up on the newsgroups is to do them within a transaction. That will increase insert performance since PostgreSQL won't be auto-committing each one.

Index updates on insert shouldn't cause you any problems if you are using indices judiciously. More importantly, the strategic use of indices will more than pay for any insertion delay with the massive performance improvements on your selects. Good index placement is what allows me to get near-instant results on my complicated joins. Without the indices, some of the very same joins have been known to take 30-40 seconds.

Probably the best tip I can give you is to learn the basic usage of the explain keyword, and check that your queries are doing index scans rather than sequential scans (after you place your indices). Sometimes PostgreSQL will guess the wrong data type when you present it with multiple possibilities. If the data types in your where clause don't exactly match the data types of the columns that have been indexed, then the indices won't be used.

For example, all my tables use bigint for the primary key. When using a where clause like: ...where pk = 5;

PostgreSQL will assume the 5 is an integer. That will not match the bigint data type of the primary key, and will cause PostgreSQL to ignore the indices. In cases like that, the solution is to cast the 5 to a bigint: ...where pk = 5::bigint;

That will let PostgreSQL choose the right index for the table scan. Also, PostgreSQL will do a sequential scan if it thinks that it will have to touch a relatively large number of rows in the table(s) being queried. Aside from those two things, PostgreSQL makes good use of indices. The select times on unindexed verses indexed tables is very dramatic on large tables as your select criteria get more restrictive.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Cyno]

You're right. PostgreSQL is Free Software, but it just doesn't require all derivative works to be Free Software.

I assumed the 4 basic freedoms of Free Software included the copyleft, requiring your customers to grant the same rights to their customers for redistribution. It apparently does not. Don't know how I came to that conclusion. Thanks for pointing this out.

So basicly Free Software is Open Source software. That's kinda dumb since Stallman has been trying to tell everyone Free Software is not Open Source.

Personally, I wish the 4 basic freedoms of Free Software included the copyleft. It would make it much easier to argue in favor of Free Software vs. Open Source. But try telling that to the FSF. /shrugs/

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, RedHat's database is just a rebadged Postgres, isn't it?

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[GreyPoopon]

Sorry for the late reply. I see that I appeared to be implying that MySQL is supported by SAP. It is not. However, the company MySQL AB is now responsible for MaxDB (which used to be ADABAS and was owned by SAP). SAP supports development in both MaxDB and MySQL. To the best of my knowledge, neither MySQL nor Postgres are officially supported by SAP at the moment. However, based on a MySQL press release, efforts are being made to develop a "next-generation" version of MySQL that I assume will be officially supported by SAP. As of today, MaxDB is the officially supported product for low-end installations, and for big enterprise installations, the cost of even Oracle is only a small fraction of the total costs involved. To be honest, the actual database used doesn't really matter that much (except in some very specific performance-oriented situations), as SAP has its own layer built on top of the database. It is extremely rare that you would access the database outside of SAP's compatibility layer.

Good move for Larry

[Anonymous Coward]

because you know he needs the money, now he can get everyone to do the work for free and he still gets paid

at least cribs shows us he can have all that cash and still have no style

Oracle and Innobase

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is just going to subsume the useful bits into their product and kill off Innobase.

It's beautiful QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Larry Ellison. How can anyone doubt his true and pure intentions for Open Source? Has there ever been a more generous and loving man? Clearly this is a man who saw the potential to give back to humanity by reward the creators of innoDB, while simultaneously being able to give the resources to it that it richly deserves.

Clearly his ultimate goal is to put Oracle technology into MySQL so that he can give it away for free. Now, you may say I'm a dreamer... but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join Larry and me. And world shall live as one.

Re:It's beautiful QWZX

[einhverfr]

Maybe Oracle will resort to dumpster diving(pdf warning). to discover PostgreSQL, MySQL, and FirebirdSQL's super secret source code... ;-)

Re:It's beautiful QWZX

[einhverfr]

I guess I should give the relevant quote:

" Oracle, the world's second largest software giant was recently the
subject of much scrutiny. It was discovered that Oracle had hired a
detective agency, Investigative Group International (IGI), to find out
some dirt on its direct competitor, Microsoft. Essentially, it was
alleged that offers were made to the janitorial staff from the office
of Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). ACT is a trade group,
which is known to be pro-Microsoft [11]. Oracle stated that they hired
IGI to investigate trade groups that were pro-Microsoft during the
anti-trust case involving the world's largest software giant. In
reality, such an investigation would only ultimately hurt Microsoft.
Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle, was directly involved in funding the
investigation. In fact, this whole scenario has been referred to as
"Larrygate" [10]. "

Re:It's beautiful QWZX

[Darth Liberus]

Yes... Larry Ellison is the man who loves flying his private jet at San Jose at full throttle over San Jose in the middle of the night, and the $10,000 FAA fine be damned!

Re:It's beautiful QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen all that before with DEC RDB. Oracle bought it and buried it.

Bad for open source, maybe

[Scareduck]

This puts a key part of MySQL under Oracle control; they could elect to kill InnoDB at some future point. I just don't see how this is a win for FOSS. To me, this isn't a likely danger, though. Oracle has recognized that the food chain has moved away from the database, and up to applications that rest atop it. This was what powered their aggressive drive to acquire PeopleSoft. (On the other hand, if they really believed their core product was declining in value, why would they make it so damn difficult to buy in the first place?) From that point of view, owning MySQL simply means they're not dependent on their own inflexible, expensive platform. Call it a very expensive hedging of bets.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jadavis]

they could elect to kill InnoDB at some future point. I just don't see how this is a win for FOSS. To me, this isn't a likely danger, though.

I think it's very likely that Oracle does just that. Oracle wins on several fronts:

(1) Set back a competitor by a lot, possibly completely knocking it out of some markets.
(2) Cause more OSS FUD: "What will happen to your open source vendor? It could evaporate tomorrow. Stick with Oracle, who will be there for you."
(3) Shift the market back toward the mentality of traditional relational databases, where there is a lot of emphasis on data integrity constraints, and expensive DBAs, and less emphasis on casual users.

MySQL had the potential to cause them a lot of problems. Oracle found a way to stop that. If it was a predatory move against MySQL AB, everything was perfect, including the timing. Many companies were just waiting for the 5.0 release to try it out I'm sure, and the next thing they know Oracle has MySQL AB by the ____. It's too coincidental, and too perfect, there's no way it's a "merger".

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[HiThere]

Well, as I understand it, it's not that straight-forwards. InnoDB is licensed as a GPL program as well as under the proprietary license. They could fold the project, but then someone else could pick up the GPL code and fork it. This wouldn't be so good for MySQL's business model, as they wouldn't be able to sell a proprietary DB including InnoDB...though there's probably some complicated thing they could do. The proprietary fork would be just about guaranteed to be a lot more hassle than it has been. The GPL branch of the code, however, would be able to continue essentially unchanged...but perhaps without commercial support...so someone would need to put together a new team to develop the code, which would now be strictly GPL, as the basic copyrights would be owned by someone else, and the only rights to work on the code would be those ceded by the GPL. (Basically, this means that all descendent code would need to be GPL.)

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[Audacious]

I too would see this as a wedge Oracle can drive into the MySQL people to try to make them comply with Oracle's wishes (like maybe making MySQL read Oracle DBs or some such). InnoDB probably should have waited until after negotiations with MySQL were over before selling out to Oracle as then Oracle would have had to wait until the end of the new contract before attempting anything. Now though, Oracle has a pretty good way to strangle MySQL or at least make it a major inconvience for MySQL. Time will tell but my money is on the fact that Oracle did this with the full knowledge that those negotiations were coming up and they wanted a way in. This would lead me to the thoughts that: 1)Oracle is seeking new uses for its own DB engine (and not InnoDB), and 2)That it may be trying the Microsoft Extend and Engulf tactic.

It is my sincere hope that, if InnoDB or MySQL were in financial woes, that they would at least ask for help. I am sure that there are enough people in the world that, at like $5.00 or maybe $20.00, we would be able to help them out so they could continue making these products we have come to like, love, and use without resorting to selling their business off to some large corporation that is only focused on making a profit whether or not they help anyone else. At least I am willing to skip a meal, eat at home, bring my lunch, or whatever it takes so I can help support those companies that support me through these offerings.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[einhverfr]

If it was a predatory move against MySQL AB, everything was perfect, including the timing. Many companies were just waiting for the 5.0 release to try it out I'm sure, and the next thing they know Oracle has MySQL AB by the ____

As you say, this effectively silences the hype surrounding 5.0. It is a very savvy move by Oracle. (I know this is redundant, but it is worth emphasizing).

Now, MySQL doesn't really compete with Oracle *yet.* However, it is likely to me that if Oracle causes MySQL to go belly up, it makes a lot of sense for them to acquire them too....

Good think that PostgreSQL can't be acquired in the same way (though some contributing companies, such as EnterpriseDB could be).

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jadavis]

The GPL branch of the code, however, would be able to continue essentially unchanged

By who? Not by MySQL AB. It takes a long time to make a new community work effectively.

MySQL AB is between a rock and a hard place, I think we can agree here. If Oracle cuts off InnoDB from commercial licensing, MySQL will stop developing/supporting it, it's only a matter of time. They simply can't have a GPL version that's better than their commercial version. Then, without transactions or RI, their "enterprise-ness" and usefulness will be called into question.

So that leaves the community. But the community is too wrapped around MySQL AB to function on it's own just yet. That will take time.

And that time is precisely what Oracle doesn't want MySQL to have. If the development of MySQL DB is set back by 12-18 months, that will surely be a victory for Oracle, who will secure a strong lead ahead of the most popular open source database. The wind will be stolen from the 5.0 release, and another few rounds of businessmen will make long-term commitments to Oracle (in the form of licenses and hardware).

What is the downside to Oracle?

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jadavis]

Now, MySQL doesn't really compete with Oracle *yet.*

Indirectly, they do. You could look at it like Oracle is nipping it in the bud, I suppose.

Oracle certainly doesn't want a company running around to a bunch of people saying "Database" and "$495" in the same sentence.

And they certainly don't want a lot of casual database users who shift the market away from Oracle's traditional database model of "data integrity, expensive DBAs, referential integrity, expensive DBAs, redundancy, and expensive DBAs", to MySQL's model of "throw your data here, and when you ask for it, we'll send it back to you".

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[einhverfr]

And they certainly don't want a lot of casual database users who shift the market away from Oracle's traditional database model of "data integrity, expensive DBAs, referential integrity, expensive DBAs, redundancy, and expensive DBAs", to MySQL's model of "throw your data here, and when you ask for it, we'll send it back to you".

Provided you don't end up with date overflow errors (you aren't doing scientific apps where you need dates after 10000AD or before 10000BC, are you)? And a dozen or so "what you put in might not be what you get out" errors.

Of course the same is true of MS Access... MySQL is more of a competitor of MSDE than of Oracle in nearly every instance.

I would never trust my data to MySQL even in 5.0 for a number of data-integrity related issues. PostgreSQL or even FirebirdSQL are far better.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jadavis]

that they would at least ask for help

They are a commercial company. It only makes sense for people to donate to the cause itself, that is, the actual development of the MySQL DB product; not the shareholders behind a company that is associated with the cause. How would you feel if you donated some money, and then the investors liquidated or changed the business model? Your charity just went to some suits.

I am willing to skip a meal

It isn't a hunger strike, dude. At least make enough use of the bounties of modern society to eat 3 meals per day!

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jadavis]

In PostgreSQL, I get:

=> select '1000000-10-10 10:10:10'::timestamp;
ERROR: timestamp out of range: "1000000-10-10 10:10:10"

I'm a big PostgreSQL fan, but you're just being rediculous if you ask MySQL to accept arbitrarily large years. It should error out and be done.

How many scientific applications require you to know what day of the week Oct 18, 20000000000000005 is?

I think you're looking for the "float" datatype. And if you're not, you really should make your own type, because your needs are obviously very specific.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[Audacious]

I'm afraid you are too late! :-) I only eat once per day usually. Sometimes twice, but that's just me and yes, I would just fast for that day probably. You are right though that they are a commercial company. This does not, though, mean that they have stockholders. Some companies are privately owned and those do not have stockholders other than the owners themselves.

As for my eating habits - my wife has tried to change me in that regard but I'm not a breakfast person and would rather just drink some water at night. But don't think I'm skeletal or anything like that. I eat a normal meal at lunch and then may have some hot/cold tea or water before going to bed. I'm actually overweight due to the fact that I program all day so live a very sedentary lifestyle and my metabolism is quite slow. I go work out at Bally's about three times a week, do yoga, and - for whatever reason - never seem to gain muscle mass (my father also was unable to ever gain a lot of muscle mass even though he worked out quite a lot with weights). I did manage to lower my body weight somewhat by weight lifting but not since I used to go running (until my knees decided I should not do that anymore) have I managed to get my weight down to a reasonable amount. Not that I am horribly obese (aka the piano man) - I am though, overweight.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

a few thoughts:

>> Now, MySQL doesn't really compete with Oracle *yet.*
> Indirectly, they do. You could look at it like Oracle is nipping it in the bud, I suppose.

my thoughts as well

> Oracle certainly doesn't want a company running around to a bunch of people saying "Database" and "$495" in the same sentence.

Well, the lowest-end oracle database licenses can be very cheap, and a $600/year mysql license does not complete with an oracle database on $500k of servers and storage. But back to your first point - someday mysql will.

heh, or at least innodb would have.

> And they certainly don't want a lot of casual database users who shift the market away from Oracle's
> traditional database model of "data integrity, expensive DBAs, referential integrity, expensive DBAs,
> redundancy, and expensive DBAs", to MySQL's model of "throw your data here, and when you ask for it,
> we'll send it back to you".

hmm, i don't think that has anything to do with it:
1. oracle dbas don't make more than java/.net developers (around $60-$90k / year US)
2. they don't make any money off the oracle dbas at GE/Ford/MCI/Accenture/etc
3. they *do* make money off their database, and its competitive edge are the advanced features - which
        can save you money - if you're in a position to take advantage of them. Now, they won't save you
        money on your bowling league database project (though any kid could dba an oracle database for that
        job). But when you've got complex security requirements, high availability requirements, high-
        performance requirements, etc - then oracle will save you in labor & equipment over mysql.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[einhverfr]

How do I create a type in MySQL?

MySQL freakes out at years with > 4 digits. PostgreSQL is a bit better, but for really large years, you may need to create your own type. This is fairly simple in PostgreSQL but hardly feasible in MySQL.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jadavis]

I agree with you in general, but your example is just not working for me. Typically, you would use a "float" datatype for an extremely large year, not a timestamp/date. MySQL has a float datatype.

But in general, I agree that type extensibility is a vital component of an RDBMS.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jadavis]

Note that I said "shareholders" and not "stockholders". MySQL is private, but they got something like $20M in VC not too long ago. If you give charity to MySQL AB, you're just lining the pockets of the VCs, who aren't in it for the spirit of the GPL. I recommend the FSF or some other organized group that can effectively develop software -- and give you a tax break. Here are some of the places I have given money:

- FreeBSD: Interestingly, I gave them money before I even really used FreeBSD, because at the time, they needed small donations. Now I use it in production and I love it!
- PostgreSQL
- FreeNet: I regret donating money to FreeNet. I sent them like $10. My intention at the time was to promote free speech on the internet. When I figured out that it's really nothing but horrible filth, I decided that I didn't want them using anything of mine to support that kind of content. The internet is free enough, hopefully.
- LinuxFund: I actually just use a mastercard, and it builds up money in the linuxfund account. I think they're still looking for a good place to spend it, so I would say they're not very organized. But I suppose they'll probably end up just kicking it off to the FSF or something, so it should work out.

Next time I make a donation, it will probably be to FreeBSD, FSF, OpenBSD (gotta love openssh), or PostgreSQL.

By the way, usually increasing your eating frequency is good for losing weight and gaining muscle (not to mention general health & feeling good). I suppose whatever works for you. I don't gain muscle easily either.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jonadab]

> Cause more OSS FUD: "What will happen to your open source vendor? It
> could evaporate tomorrow. Stick with Oracle, who will be there for you."

This one could backfire. What can happen to InnoDB or MySQL can happen also to Oracle. There's always a bigger fish. There are, after all, larger companies with their hands in the database market (two of them, the way I count). Sure, Oracle's offering is in every way superior to a certain larger company's database (probably to that of both larger companies, but especially to the one that's a larger concern, which I am going out of my way to avoid naming), but when has that ever stopped a business from being shut down or otherwise incapacitated by a larger competitor using devious means?

> Many companies were just waiting for the 5.0 release to try it out
> I'm sure

I know of a company that officially cites stored procedures as a critical reason why they can't make their product work with MySQL. This is presumably just talk, as their product doesn't work with Oracle either, or anything else that doesn't come out of Redmond (well, okay, the web service does work with other browsers, at least), but it is nevertheless the excuse they currently are using. One of their engineers actually asked me, when he found out I'd used MySQL a little, if I knew how soon their new release was coming out, since he'd heard they were implementing stored procedures. (I guess management was feeding the engineers the same line they were feeding customers.)

This is neither here nor there for the company in question, partly because they're a Microsoft shop anyway and so I can't imagine they'd actually support MySQL, and partly for another reason I won't state here. Nevertheless, it seems to me that your observation above may have some merit; surely this ISV I'm talking about cannot be the only one that considers stored procedures an important feature.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[jonadab]

> that will surely be a victory for Oracle, who will secure a strong lead

Umm, Oracle *has* a strong lead. They're the big boy in this market. What they'd allegedly be doing (*if* they do what you suggest, which at this point is speculation, however likely it seems) is [attempting to] squash a much smaller competitor. MySQL AB is certainly not the competitor they'd most like to squash, nor as far as that goes the second, but those companies have strong businesses in other markets (markets where Oracle has no product) and are overall larger companies than Oracle, so there really isn't a whole lot that Oracle can do there. Whether they would consider it worth the potential negative PR (and other costs, but that's probably the largest cost and certainly the most difficult to quantify) to squash this much smaller player is an open question. Personally I think it would be unwise, but I don't make decisions for Oracle.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually here is why I don't think Oracle will screw too much with MySQL (assuming they can see the big picture). They pull the plug and essentially bitch slap MySQL AB. This has the domino effect of landing a kung-fu death blow to MySQL as many or most jump to Postgresql. As divided communities Oracle can do pretty well. Once everyone jumps to postgress you suddenly have nearly ALL open source projects supporting it alone, not Mysql OR Postgres OR possibly both. You tore down one compeditor only to make the other nearly invincible. MySQL is good for small projects, but Postgres is more on the level of taking on Oracle. Tipping the boat and getting all the smaller projects on a product which is more compeditive with your own doesn't make much sense in my opinion.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[HiThere]

You are right that it would take a long time to put a community of developers together. This means that changes and upgrades would stop, or slow to a crawl, for quite awhile. But it wouldn't retrogress, and it would continue to work in all the places that it works now during the interim. And what came out at the end would be a pure GPL product without the double licensing.

As to whether that would have any advantage at ALL over the competition, e.g. PostGreSQL, I don't know. Presumably when the Linux developers contemplated a change that would break the existing code, they would consider the effects. (This doesn't always happen, but MySQL is probably a significant enough product that in this case it would.) They might even come up with a patch for MySQL to fix the problem. (And some of those who did that kind of coding might segue into occasionally providing tweaks to the MySQL code base to more nearly satisfy their own needs.)

So things wouldn't stop happening in the MySQL environment. They'd just slow down. (A LOT!)

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[MemoryDragon]

I rather doubt any community would arise after the downfall of MySQLAB people simply would start to look for alternatives, that could give Firebird the well deserved push and also PostgreSQL would get another boost, after the obvious one it has gotten since 8.0.

Re:Bad for open source, maybe

[Audacious]

Thanks! I'll have to consider donating to FreeBSD, (already have to FSF), and OpenBSD. I've tried PostgesSQL and decided upon MySQL instead - but maybe I'll donate to them. If I knew how to give points I'd mark your message up as interesting. :-) Maybe someone will do it for me(?). In any event - thanks! :-)

When I tried increasing the eating frequency (and eating smaller meals) I gained weight. When I tried working out every day as some of the weight lifter guys suggested (and followed their methods) I started gaining weight because I began feeling like I was starving and so I ate more. It seemed a vicious cycle so I cut back to three times a week. It maintains my weight (varies up and down by about 5lbs) and I don't feel like I've got to eat everything I can lay my hands on. Now I'm trying to change my diet more towards fruits and veges. I'm seeing a little benefit from this but nothing drastic so far.

Anyway, I think we have drifted a bit. So thanks again. :-)

As far as I know

[jbellis]

Nobody outside of Oracle has any idea what their plans are for Inno. Pretty hard to call it a good/bad bet, given this.

Re:As far as I know

[mackertm]

Please stop being reasonable. This is Slashdot, we'd rather see some wild speculation.

Thank you.

Re:As far as I know

[kpharmer]

> Nobody outside of Oracle has any idea what their plans are for Inno. Pretty hard to call it a good/bad bet, given this.

Right, after all Larry Ellison & Oracle might have bought Innodb in order to both:
    1. improve a competitor's product (mysql)
    2. slash their own throats by cutting their primary revenue stream from the oracle database

Could be.
Wouldn't be impossible.
You never know.
Better just wait and see.
Cross our fingers and hope.

and the fact that in one fell swoop they can kill a competitor would never occur to a company like Oracle with such a philanthropic reputation.

Nope.
Never.
Not in a million years.
Not in this lifetime.

Re:As far as I know

[aralin]

FYI. Almost nobody inside of Oracle has any idea either. There are 55,000 employees and I would bet that 54,900 of them have no clue. Including me. :)

Scary

[Spy der Mann]

Everytime something gets out of our control we get scared. InnoBase is no exception.

I think that the only people who can answer if the move was good or bad, are the MySQL developers. I'd suggest Slashdot to have an interview with them so they can dissipate our fears.

Re:Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd argue that the MySQL devs, if they are employed by MySQL the company are likely to be less than perfectly honest if this is dangerous to their employer.

Re:Scary

[teslatug]

I think it's more like people get scared when something gets *under* [the] control [of a large company].

Bad move for Oracle...

[FatSean]

They would be better off dumb-grading their heavy-duty wares for the low-end user, rather than manage two code bases...two support structures, two...two....two....

Oracle IS database...so it seems silly to get another completely unrelated code-tree to deal with. They should have acquired some sort of application server to sell paired with their DB like IBM does with WebSphere and DB2.

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[Pootie Tang]

Something like Oracle Application Server maybe?

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[Vancorps]

Oracle already has their own app server which is mighty slick so yeah, I have no idea why they would want to aquire something in the realm of InnoDB. The decision makes no sense at this point but I'm sure time will tell.

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[benjamin264]

They would be better off dumb-grading their heavy-duty wares for the low-end user

Or, as a company that has a Linux version and recognizes that bringing out a complete DBMS for small applications can be overkill, it might be smart to have a smaller product that breaks a shop into PL/SQL and makes it easy to upgrade to Oracle. Plus the added bonuses of being an open source product... I think that might be what they call a strategic purchase.

They should have acquired some sort of application server to sell paired with their DB like IBM does with WebSphere and DB2.

Yeah! And they could call Oracle Application Server... oh... wait...

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[einhverfr]

They would be better off dumb-grading their heavy-duty wares for the low-end user, rather than manage two code bases...two support structures, two...two....two....

Who said anything about supporting or maintaining InnoDB?

There are two reasons I could see for acquiring Innobase. The first is to basically hire the staff of the company and fold them into Oracle's main product development.

The second is simply to damage MySQL AB.

These are not mutually exclusive. MySQL users should be afraid. Very afraid.

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[duffahtolla]

I agree.

Several times in the last couple of years, Oracle has tried to change our license and squeeze an extra $30K out of us.

Each time we said that such an act may make us seriously consider MySQL. Personally, I don't think MySql is there yet, but as a bargaining chip, it works well enough. Oracle backed off.

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[einhverfr]

Several times in the last couple of years, Oracle has tried to change our license and squeeze an extra $30K out of us.

Each time we said that such an act may make us seriously consider MySQL. Personally, I don't think MySql is there yet, but as a bargaining chip, it works well enough. Oracle backed off.

Mention PostgreSQL some time ;-)

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that Oracle AS is pretty slick when set up, the install process is a royal PITA. There's little in the documentation about exactly what install option actually installs (does it install a new Oracle home or not? Can it reside in an existing database structure or does it need a new one all its own? If it needs its own, will it create the database or should you do that first? Etc...)

Oracle is customizeable out the wazoo, but there's very little (if any, in some cases) documentation to tell you how it all interacts so that you know if you change "A", you'll also have to update "B","C", and "D".

And Oracle is also a HUGE memory hog, making it very unsuitable for small-to-midsize installations.

I, admittedly, know nothing about InnoDB, but if it can fix or offer alternatives to any of the above, I can see it greatly benefiting Oracle.

The benefit, if any, to MySQL is not so clear...

Re:Bad move for Oracle...

[rob.wolfe]

You havent been paying attention. Oracle isn;t just database anymore. Hasnt been for a long time actually. Personally I think it is a great move for me because maybe it will mean that some of the enterprise level tools will be able to be used with a lighter backend and that means that more folks can afford to hire me

Possible Conspiracy Theory

[robbyjo]

Well... Is it possible that Oracle "bought" Innobase is to "kill" MySQL (the company)? Look at this: MySQL allied with SCO, which is to me like a poisoning tactic. If there were legal battles, Oracle would likely win. When this is the case, SCO/MySQL alliance roll out. If they lost, Oracle will develop InnoDB using GPL license only, forcing SCO/MySQL to roll out in either case. When MySQL the company is over, Oracle abandon InnoDB with one less (albeit lesser) competitor.

Though you might argue that someone in the future will pick up MySQL code, I'd say that it's less likely. It's far easier to switch to other alternatives such as PostgreSQL.

Re:Possible Conspiracy Theory

[jalefkowit]

Seems pretty straightforward to me, really. Oracle's core business is selling their RDBMS. Their primary selling point against MySQL is that MySQL is a "toy" database because it's not ACID-compliant (among other things). MySQL AB has wasted a lot of breath over the years arguing that ACID-compliance is not as important as speed. To low end customers, that might make sense. To customers whose businesses depend on data integrity -- i.e., the BIG customers -- it doesn't.

Innobase makes a product that takes the "toy" database and allows it to be a plausible option for these clients. That threatens Oracle's business. With InnoDB, MySQL AB could start fishing in the same waters Oracle does.

So what to do? Oracle's move effectively checkmates MySQL AB's ambitions to scale up their business. By controlling the Innobase IP, Oracle presents MySQL AB with one of three options, all of which suck:

1. Abandon InnoDB. This would require MySQL AB to start from square one in making MySQL ACID-compliant, thus re-starting the clock on the day when MySQL is a true threat to Oracle.
2. Abandon ACID compliance. If MySQL AB chooses to not do that work, they will remain a "toy" database and never compete with Oracle in the "enterprise" space. Oracle is happy.
3. License InnoDB from Oracle. It may well be the case that it would be cheaper for MySQL AB to pay Oracle for continuing use of InnoDB than to replicate it themselves. This works out in Oracle's benefit too, because it means they could get a cut of all MySQL sales; this would soothe the pain of losing sales of their RDBMS somewhat. (It's always nice to have a major competitor in a position where he has to pay you to stay alive.)

Frankly this is a smart strategic move by Oracle no matter how MySQL AB responds -- and it's remarkably shortsighted of MySQL AB to have allowed themselves to be maneuvered into a position where it's possible.

Re:Possible Conspiracy Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell are you talking about? You must be the poster child for anal sex.. people as stupid as your parent shouldn't be allowed to procreate.

Re:Possible Conspiracy Theory

[jpkunst]

4. Fork InnoDB from the last GPL'd version.

Conceivably a less sucky option.

JP

Re:Possible Conspiracy Theory

[jalefkowit]

Aah, but InnoDB is dual licensed, just like MySQL:

If you want to combine MySQL and InnoDB to a product which you distribute, and which is not open source, or for which the user has to pay a fee to you, you have to purchase a commercial license from MySQL AB.

So MySQL AB could fork off InnoDB, but they'd then have to change their own licensing model for MySQL, moving it from dual license to plain ol' GPL as well -- which completely wrecks the scheme they've built their business on. Or they're back to having to pay Oracle for a commercial license.

Oracle's Java guys seem to be pro-open source..

[tcopeland]

...they've certainly helped me with the PMD JDeveloper extension a couple of times.

Most recently, I was trying to get the "update center" functionality working this past weekend and I got emails from several Oracle guys with fixes for various problems. It's pretty nice to get help right from the core guys...

Really a bet against MySQL

[CDPatten]

Definitely a cog. Oracle is too much database for most companies anyways, that aside. Oracle really is betting against MySQL not getting good enough to compete at their level. If there is one thing you can learn from OSS history is that it will eventually catch up to commercial and put out a good product. It just takes time. Unless Oracle has a big trick up its sleeve, its relational database hasn't gotten much more impressive over the years. Maybe they are going to introduce a new architecture? In anycase I think its a bad bet for Oracle.

Re:Really a bet against MySQL

[C_Kode]

Unless Oracle has a big trick up its sleeve, its relational database hasn't gotten much more impressive over the years.

I disagree. Oracle 8i to Oracle 9i to Oracle 10g. I think there were great advances. Not just in the database either. OCFS is an open sourced cluster filesystem created by Oracle.

As for my notes on the Oracle MySQL subject.

This was clearly a step towards protecting their (Oracle) business. They can (and probably will) strong arm MySQL in one way or another. How that effects MySQL depends on them and just exactly what Oracle wants to do. MySQL *can* help themselves by using the OSS community if in fact Oracle does try to strong arm them. MySQL made a mistake. They bet their business on someone elses technology. If I were MySQL, I would start looking at their options. Possibly forking InnoDB or finding out exact what Oracle really wants and nailing down a long term deal that will protect and extend MySQL's business with the help Oracle has to offer. That or sell out to Oracle. If I were Oracle, hah I would buy MySQL and use it as a product offering. I wouldn't be supprised if Oracle spoke to MySQL got rejected then said. Hello InnoDB, I want to buy you out! {wink MySQL}

Re:Really a bet against MySQL

[CDPatten]

i never used 8, but 9 and 10 I didn't see that big of a difference to me. Don't mis-understand features are a different thing, but the database architecture itself seemed almost stagnant. What did I miss? You seem like you have used it more then I have... what did was the major architectural change that wasn't just a application feature?

Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[ShatteredDream]

Let's say that they change the license for Innobase, what can MySQL do now except fork the codebase and work hard at trying to play catch up? I can't think of anything at this point and the very reason that MySQL is in this position is precisely because they relied on another company to do a lot of their R&D for them.

Granted, I did a benchmark with the application my group is developing using MySQL and PostgreSQL and MySQL was much faster. MySQL has certainly done a good job for what they intended MySQL to be used for, but let's be realistic about something: Oracle has MySQL by the balls now unless MySQL really beefs up their internal R&D to compensate for the loss of Innobase.

And yes, when your biggest competitor buys out the company whose IP your product uses, you are at their mercy in many ways. While Oracle can't outright crush them, they can certainly make life a living hell for MySQL until MySQL gets serious and does a lot more of its own R&D. Personally I just wish that my professors would require us to use a real, powerful open source database server like PostgreSQL, not MySQL.

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[kpharmer]

This surely isn't a very complicated thing for people to work out - just follow the Very Simple Oracle/Innodb FAQ:

1. Does Larry Ellison (Oracle CEO) do things for the good of the industry or little guys?
        Answer: *Never*

2. Is there any opportunity for the Oracle DB to reuse IP within Innodb
        Answer: Almost certainly not

3. Is there a trivial upgrade path from Innodb/Mysql to Oracle
        Answer: No

4. Ok, with that out of the way - what possible reason would oracle have to acquire Innodb?
        Answer: obviously to cripple an opponent by robbing it of critical infrastructure - through licensing changes

5. How will this benefit OSS Customers?
        Answer: not in any way imaginable

It's like this: Oracle is seeing customers moving to mysql for the small stuff. But they make money on the small stuff too - and even if oracle is superior to mysql in 7 ways out of 10, they're loosing cash to mysql. This move completely kills all mysql momentum in the market place:
    - Mysql now has to dedicate resources to finding an innodb replacement. Good luck - there are no commodity persistant layers that support transactions like Innodb.
    - Oracle can renew the license agreement at a much higher price, thereby winning short-term revenue at MySQL's expense!
    - MySQL was talking about a big-enterprise role just down the road (before they got wind of this buy out and started acting meek a couple of weeks ago). Much of what they're missing is really functionality that should go into Innodb - Heikki Tuuri (innodb creator) has often stated that "partitioning for all table types will probably be available in 2006 or 2007". If Innodb built that they could start capturing a big chunk of the oracle revenue. This threat is now dead - with the only other strong competitors DB2 and SQL Server.
    - In spite of being GPL, good luck on finding another crew of programmers that specialize in relational database engines to this product up. The few that exist in the open source world seem to all work at postgresql.

So yeah, Larry has MySQL by the balls right now. MySQL AB was probably looking forward to a big GA announcement for v5 next month - but there is no good publicity for MySQL in the foreseeable future now.

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[lazarus]

Thank you for your insightful comment on this.

I am a the chief technology architect for one of the largest governments in N.A., and my concern here is that Oracle becomes a little too much like Cisco. At this stage, whether you believe it or not, Cisco has a monopoly on the market (not unlike one of your other favourite companies). Sure there are alternatives, but for people like us who have to pick from a list of RFP responses and all of them come back pitching the same manufacturer, your choices are only between vendors, not manufacturers. You get Cisco whether you like it or not.

I don't think that Oracle needs to buy or partner with anyone else, thank you very much. I appreciate their need to ensure they continue to make a tidy profit, but I would rather see any company pursue that through innovation rather than acquisition. Once you get to a certain size, I don't ever see acquisition as a "good thing" for the market.

For what it's worth...

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[NickDoulas]

I can't see how this will be good for MySQL users or the open source community in general. Oracle has done some good things to support open source products, but not open source products that actually compete with any of their products in any way. I imagine that using Berkeley DB instead as the storage engine could become a more attractive option: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/bdb-storage -engine.html

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be good for the open source community if it gets people to start using a superior and truely free database like postgresql. :-)

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[linuxhansl]

Granted, I did a benchmark with the application my group is developing using MySQL and PostgreSQL and MySQL was much faster.

Care to show us your benchmark, or at least what type of query MySQL is faster at? *Everything* (simple queries, table-scans, index-scans, simple joins, complex joins, multiple self-joins for hierarchical queries, etc) I tried suggested that PostgreSQL is faster or as fast, *except* for connection startup time (as Postgres spawns a process per connection), which is typically handled by a connection pool.

Interestingly I also did not find that MySQL's non-transactional storage are any faster than the transactional ones.

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[Tablizer]

Care to show us your benchmark, or at least what type of query MySQL is faster at?

It appears thru the grapevine that MySQL is faster at read-intensive stuff, especially if you don't do a lot of joins and concurrent writes. However, for a lot of joins or a lot of mix-bag activity (reads and writes), Oracle generally wins, especially for larger tables.

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL ABs collaboration with SAP brought them onto Larry's radar. This brought danger to Oracle from two directions:
1) A general strengthening of SAP's offering
2) The possibility of a new DB option for SAP implementations that might have been deployed on Oracle

This is both a kick in the guts to a new upstart (MySQL AB) with the added benefit of a kick in the balls to an old enemy (SAP).

Re:Oracle has MySQL by the balls

[orabidoo]

In spite of being GPL, good luck on finding another crew of programmers that specialize in relational database engines to this product up. The few that exist in the open source world seem to all work at postgresql.

In other words, MySQL AB cannot count on the InnoDB storage engine for the long term, and therefore needs a new transaction-safe storage engine for its database. This storage engine has to be open source, under a GPL-compatible license. MySQL AB's business model also adds the requirement that they must be able to sell a proprietary version of it, like they have so far with InnoDB, MaxDB and BerkeleyDB.

In that case, there is an obvious arrangement that stands out: MySQL AB should incorporate PostgreSQL's storage engine as a new backend for MySQL, using MySQL's syntax, parser, etc.

First it could be added as an experimental option, then gradually moved to be the default backend, just like the InnoDB engine has become preferred over MyISAM.

PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed and GPL-compatible, so there's nothing preventing MySQL AB from selling you a proprietary version with support, and continuing to offer a GPL version.

Now that would be an exciting move on MySQL's part :)

Clear upgrade path

[tm2b]

It's as easy case to make, to upsell someone with expanding needs from MySQL to Oracle. It makes sense the Oracle would want to bind more of those users to Oracle as an upgrade path.

It's much less easy to make the case for someone to "upgrade" from PostgreSQL to Oracle. PostgreSQL would cannibalize a small-but-significant portion of Oracle's more expensive sales, once the Oracle brand name was attached to it.

Prevents MySQL from lowering standards

[jadavis]

Oracle may have purchased MySQL to prevent them from lowering the expected price of database software. If managers start to hear about MySQL costing $495 (or whatever), then they may expect a generally lower price for Oracle.

Also, the type of database practices common among MySQL users, like pushing work into the application, aren't on a trajectory toward Oracle.

Re:Prevents MySQL from lowering standards

[Martin Blank]

Oracle purchased Innobase, which makes InnoDB, which is a part of the structure on which rests MySQL (which is a product made by a completely separate company).

The concern is that MySQL could see a major part of that structure taken away from them.

Re:Prevents MySQL from lowering standards

[jadavis]

Yes, that's what I meant of course.

However, because of Oracle's hostile move, I tend to think of it as though Oracle bought MySQL AB itself. It's not exactly the same, but it certainly could turn out that way.

Not MyOracle

[KrackHouse]

If Oracle decided to support MySQL it'd be hastening its own demise - Microsoft is avoiding the OpenDocument standard for similar reasons. Aside from acknowledging the capabilities of the competition Oracle would potentially turn MySQL's quirks into a defacto standard which could possibly turn into a real standard. If open source or at least open standards are inevitable as the software industry matures it seem like these big mega-corps that live off of proprietary software licensing will simply turn into coagulations of smart people without revenue worried about outsourcing. Maybe they'll fracture into smaller consulting firms, small is the new big, etc. and become part of the new which will be good for any business that needs a database, which is most of 'em.

Will it help or hurt IBM and Microsoft?

[YA_Python_dev]

Will it help or hurt IBM and Microsoft?

Yes.

Should have previewed!

[KrackHouse]

Here's that last part

Maybe they'll fracture into smaller consulting firms, small is the new big, etc. and become part of the new longtail of innovation which will be good for any business that needs a database, which is most of 'em.

They still don't get it

[rhu]

It just shows how far from grokkin' the source they both are. Neither Oracle or Sun need to buy ANYTHING; if either one would simply hire a dozen decent code jocks and turn them loose on the existing open-source code base(s), donating every frikkin' line of new and/or improved code back to the project(s), they'd be the acknowleged masters of OSS database within 2 years, and every Fortune-100 wannabe would be begging to give them money in exchange for support and peace of mind. At just about a half-mil a year, it would be a bargain.

Re:They still don't get it

[Senzei]

It just shows how far from grokkin' the source they both are. Neither Oracle or Sun need to buy ANYTHING; if either one would simply hire a dozen decent code jocks and turn them loose on the existing open-source code base(s), donating every frikkin' line of new and/or improved code back to the project(s), they'd be the acknowleged masters of OSS database within 2 years, and every Fortune-100 wannabe would be begging to give them money in exchange for support and peace of mind. At just about a half-mil a year, it would be a bargain.

You are kidding here, right? I mean, OSS is great, and as a means of generating better version of/good alternatives to products that help sell your product it is a great idea for business. Becoming the "masters of open source databases" does not help oracle because oracle sells databases. For them the true return on investments from open source software comes from products that either depend on oracle's software or make the software oracle uses work better. If it does not make your software inherently better or inherently required it is NOT a decent business investment.

Really, what this shows is not how far from "grokkin' the source" a company is, it shows how far from understanding business some open source advocates are.

Re:They still don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

6 developers for .5M per year -- try at least double that if you want qualified staff. Tripple if they need security clearances....

Ha! let them

[Richthofen80]

What a joke. Its Oracle's own demise if they buy MySQL.

The problem is that there are two MySQLs. There's 4.1 and lower, which doesn't really support the ANSI SQL standard. You know, wonderful little peeves like 'CROSS JOIN' requires an 'ON' directive because MySQL treats it like an 'INNER JOIN'. Or maybe you want to nest selects that refer to the same table, in a delete statement? Ha. Fat chance.

And then there's MySQL 5.0, which supports all of the garbage in MySQL 4.1 plus a bunch of flags that let you automagically actually support the SQL standard calls. Plus you get triggers, stored procedures, and a pony.

MySQL is prolific, I'll give it that. But its created a cadre of developers who don't know why 'INNER JOIN' is better than just 'select table1,table2', or that string parsing should be done on the application level, not the DB level.

Re:Ha! let them

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"MySQL is prolific, I'll give it that. But its created a cadre of developers who don't know why 'INNER JOIN' is better than just 'select table1,table2', or that string parsing should be done on the application level, not the DB level."

Should they have to? Most DBMS installations today are used for small-medium websites, not for huge business databases.

Not every nail needs a sledgehammer. That's why the media player I wrote years ago used SQLite. That's why my website runs MySQL.

Re:Ha! let them

[jbplou]

Good point, because cross join is so useful it is used so often in applications.

Re:Ha! let them

[neelm]

"MySQL is prolific, I'll give it that. But its created a cadre of developers who don't know why 'INNER JOIN' is better than just 'select table1,table2', or that string parsing should be done on the application level, not the DB level."

And oracle teaching to use (+) for right join in the where clause is that much better?

And what are you saying about strings? Last I checked, MySQL had far more built in functions for strings, dates, well... everything than oracle.

Re:Ha! let them

[TheLink]

Yeah Oracle isn't that great either. For strings, on Oracle it's hard to tell the difference between the empty string '' and NULL.

... Capitalism... ?

[Hasufin_Heltain]

Hmm sorry. But you know what? I don't believe much in big corporate mergers anymore. Especially after the AT&T & Cingular Wireless debacle. Oh god. Save me from the cell phone companies. Do it the old fashioned way...... build the best product.. and beat the customers away from them. So.. do they do that? No. They just buy their competitors. Sounds like they deserve to do that if they can afford it.. but well you know what? That's just one less database they have to compete with. Blah on that.

Re:... Capitalism... ?

[linsys]

In the "Old Fashion Way" as you say, the telecomm industry was ONE company "Ma Bell" well just "Bell" but the phone company in general seems to be shrininking... it's like they got broken up into many companies and kept expanding, now they are all comming back together again with all the mergers taking place in the telecom industry.

Article Summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

I just thought it'd be fun to start a flamewar.

Ask yourself

[FreshFunk510]

Would you trust Larry Ellison??

Licensing

[AxsDeny]

Oracle can now charge for licenses of InnoDB. Since InnoDB is the default table type for MySQL 5.x it means any new versions that are released will, in theory, be a potential source of revenue for Oracle. This beats up the idea of MySQL as FOSS and will lead to one of two things fot the MySQL folks: The demise of MySQL or the re-engineering of the main MySQL trunk.

No shit?

[RLiegh]

No body else saw that coming. Anyways, how is that going to affect PostgreSQL (IE, will the lack of real competition from mysql help them, or not effect them at all?)

Re:No shit?

[WindBourne]

Mysql has never been real competition for postgres, with the exceptions of speed, and ability to run on Windows. Postgres now runs on windows, and the speed of postgres is better than mysql for any half to full complex DB. If the DB is simple, mysql blows it away as well as every thing else, hence the reason why it has made a good read-mostly web DB.

Re:No shit?

[Tony Hoyle]

If the DB is simple, sqlite blows away mysql... mysql has started to bloat and slow down as it gets older.

SCO and MySQL

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Move or Bad Bet? Too many questions surround mysql lately.

Oho Larry , please leave me alone!!!

[managedcode]

Larry, didn't ya hear what Bill said "If the next three persons in line are deal makers, you end up buying companies and if they are developers you develop millions of lines of code". Hey, deal maker get the hella outta of here.
With the recently announced purchase of Innobase, Oracle has shown it's intention to further support open source
Open source software companies can be bought ? This makes the line thinner between Microsoft and OSS movement.
So can Linux Trovalds & lead developers change their mind and decide to sell the Kernel ?
OSS has some serious problems, I better start looking at the Redmond company.

No. Bad for dual-licensing in general

[einhverfr]

Here is the thing. InnoDB is licensed under the GPL, so aside from funding/expertise issues I fail to see how this is so bad for FOSS.

However, the fact is MySQL depends on non-Free relicensing from Oracle now, so they are now very vulnerable at the moment.

Ensuring Oracle's Market.

[torre]

Is it just me or doesn't the situation smell too much of an attempt to control errosion of Oracle's highly profitable data industry. I know this is overly cynical, but If I could take control of a very popular substitute program that's been nipping at my heals I'd do so to ensure they wouldn't further errode my bottom line. I mean, why offer competitive prices when you can get away with exuberant licensing fees. Its a bonus if I can make the deal look good by "supporting" a community in the process. A Win Win strategy if I ever saw one.

I'm going to hold of and see... but to me this just smells as a positioning strategy where Oracle's just positiong major competetion outside the realm of it's cash gererating baby.

Re:Ensuring Oracle's Market.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Win Win Strategy" = Screwing over whoever wasn't invited to the meeting

Well, they could purchase PostgreSQL, Inc....

[einhverfr]

Yes, I am sure if Sun really wanted to, it might be possible to purchase PostgreSQL, Inc. which hires a few of the core developers (including some of the core promoters), but this is hardly acquiring all rights to the RDBMS since the copyrights are decentralized like Linux.

What Sun was talking about was packaging PostgreSQL and shipping it as a .pkg with Solaris. It is smart on their part really....

Oracle did NOT buy MySQL

[arjenlentz]

Oracle didn't buy MySQL, you silly.

That is FUD, pure and simple...

[einhverfr]

MySQL is receiving help from SCO, and SCO is paying for specific development work to create a commercial version of the product for SCO. If SCO believes innovation that they paid for and advice they provided gets into the general product .. they will probably sue.

Not really. SCO's partners are jumping ship and they are paying people to be called partners and sign marketing agreements. Sort of buying press releases in exchange for SCO marketing other company's products.

OTOH, there are plenty of reasons for staying away from MySQL, including:
1) Open Standards
2) Data Integrity (ACID compliance on *all* table types, data validation for *all* clients)
3) Date's Central Rule (see #2 above)
4) Business intelligence

Is the OP on crack?

[Evro]

With the recently announced purchase of Innobase, Oracle has shown it's intention to further support open source.

Is this person high? If anyone thinks Oracle's purchase of Innobase is a sign of support for MySQL or any "Open Source" software, he's either delusional or just a spin doctor. Oracle is an extremely predatory company, more than willing to take some bad PR and lose money if it means they can take down a potential rival.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/conte nt/dec2004/tc20041213_8884_tc024.htm?chan=gl

Trying to spin this as somehow good for Open Source is almost pathetic. Sure, it may have some ancillary benefit in mindshare, like, "Oh, Oracle views MySQL as a valid competitor!" but that doesn't gain you anything in the end.

More Likely Conspiracy Theory

[einhverfr]

Maybe Oracle is attempting to damage MySQL AB the company by controlling key technologies that MySQL AB needs broad license to redistribute commercially. Once MySQL gets into financial trouble, maybe they will buy them at pennies on the dollar.

You are referring to MySQL, I take it.

[einhverfr]

I take it you havn't been following the Nessus saga. Seems the parent company of that GPLed software has now decided that the next version *WILL NOT* be GPLed leaving many in the lurch and with a forked version with at present little support.


Sounds like Oracle and InnoDB?

Now about PostgreSQL. It is a community-owned, decentralized project with many copyright owners and contributors. The core community includes developers from the following companies:

Command Prompt, Inc.
PostgreSQL, Inc.
EnterpriseDB
Green Plum
SRA
Afilias

All code is BSD-licensed.

PostgreSQL has a much more vital development community than MySQL...

Re:You are referring to MySQL, I take it.

[jaseuk]

This all highlights an interesting flaw in the GPL, this practice of contributions not being accepted back under the GPL seems to seriously restrict the freedoms of contributors.

Although the contributions may appear small, they are usually bug fixes that represent a lot of work. A one line bug fix can take many hours to track down. Without those bug fixes the project isn't anywhere near complete and is a buggy alpha.

The BSD license at least protects against this a little, if a BSD project is closed then others who are financially motivated could afford to throw developers at a fork, this is not possible with GPLed software. Of course the fact that this possiblity exists tends to stop it happening in the first place, analagous two to countries having nuclear warheads pointed at each other.

I can totally understand that people reach a point where they want to make some money out of their work, but getting mindshare and free developer support by using the GPL seems the wrong way to go about it.

Re:You are referring to MySQL, I take it.

[einhverfr]

???

I would say that Red Hat employing Tom Lane, one of the most important developers, of PostgreSQL is a serious contribution. Tom Lane's contributions to 8.1 include:
Improve concurrent access to the shared buffer cache
Allow index scans to use an intermediate in-memory bitmap
Automatically use indexes for MIN() and MAX()

EnterpriseDB has claimed to contribute every generally-applicable aspect fo their work back under the BSD license. They have committed to overhauling the stored procedure architecture for the next version in order to offer SQL-99-compliant PSM support.

EnterpriseDB also employes Avaro Harrera who made the following contributions to 8.1:
Move /contrib/pg_autovacuum into the main server
Add shared row level locks using SELECT ... FOR SHARE
Add dependencies on shared objects, specifically roles

Note that the above issues were just the most major contributions listed in the press release. The 8.1 release represents nearly a year of development by several full-time developers hired by different firms.

But the contributions are not limited to the core source tree. Afilias largely sponsored the Slony-I replication (master/slave with cascade and failover) project by paying Jan Wiek and Chris Browne. Command Prompt released the PL/PHP handler (also open source), PostgreSQL Inc released PGReplicator (though few if anyone still uses this project), and more. My firm is contemplating contributing some table utilities we have developed.

Looking back to 8.0, SRA contributed most of their Powergres Win32 port back in order to get the main codebase working on Windows. This was not a trivial contribution.

Nobody is required to contribute anything back under the BSD license, but in reality it makes a lot of business sense to contribute everything back aside from those that are part of your core differentiation strategy. This is because the community can then maintain it and it is less work for you to merge with future versions. You cannot compete with Free/Open Source in today's economy. So these license wars are just plain silly.

Of course MySQL's main problems have come not from their choice of the GPL but rather from their choice of offering non-Free licenses. PostgreSQL is way ahead of MySQL's functionality despite being of similar ages. This is due in large part to the fact that so many contributions have been made to PostgreSQL by a number of companies. I look forward to the further contributions of Pervasive, Fujitsu, and many others.

When Great Bridge went under, PostgreSQL was not adversely affected. But that was due in large part to the fact that they did not own the core development community. They only had a strong role in that regard. MySQL is more vulnerable to MySQL AB going out fo business, but I think that this is a short-term hazard. Users of non-Free apps requiring MySQL should be very worried, however...

Re:You are referring to MySQL, I take it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course MySQL's main problems have come not from their choice of the GPL but rather from their choice of offering non-Free licenses. PostgreSQL is way ahead of MySQL's functionality despite being of similar ages. This is due in large part to the fact that so many contributions have been made to PostgreSQL by a number of companies. I look forward to the further contributions of Pervasive, Fujitsu, and many others.University Ingres, and has several related commercial and non-commercial products, like Computer Associate's Ingres, IngreSQL, Postgres, Informix, ...

Re:You are referring to MySQL, I take it.

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL is more vulnerable to MySQL AB going out fo business, but I think that this is a short-term hazard. Users of non-Free apps requiring MySQL should be very worried, however...

Why? Does it turn into a pumpkin? Seriously, if you're a "user", then the software is done enough not to need further features from the database to continue doing the current task. Future updates to that sofware could include extra modules and/or complete overhauls to accomodate other databases, but the current version of software should function independently of the status of MySQL AB.

Re:You are referring to MySQL, I take it.

[einhverfr]

Why? Does it turn into a pumpkin? Seriously, if you're a "user", then the software is done enough not to need further features from the database to continue doing the current task.

Because last time I checked, MySQL commercial licenses were on an annual subscription. In other words, you could lose the right to use the software, and MySQL could lose the right to provide you permission to use the software.....

upgrade path to Oracle?

[AstroDrabb]

Most users do not need to worry about any upgrade path to Oracle. Oracle cannot take away MySQL. MySQL is GPLed and we will always have the code.

Oracle may be looking to get enterprise clients to switch from MySQL to Oracle. IMO, I wish them the best. However, Oracle would be dumb (as would MS, IBM) to think that they could switch a small to medium site to an expensive DB server costing $1,000's per processor. The (non-)enterprise versions of Oracle and MS SQL Server are not expensive from a medium-large to large company perspective. However, try to get a small to medium sized company to dish out $5,000+ for a DB server and see how fast they look for other options.

MS is coming out with another "watered-down" version of MS SQL Server for their 2005 version. I wonder how many concurrent users can connect or what the limitations are. I am sure MS won't allow any old company to just use a watered-down SQL server free of charge. If that is the case, I would just write a connection manager to always use only the max limit of connections and save our company a crap load of cash.

IMO, there is always going to be a nice market for the OSS DB's such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. The price is hard to beat and the features/speed for both is great. IME, the only reason to really use one of the paid-for databases is for some very expensive financial type applications where you want the support/reputation. Otherwise, MySQL/PostgreSQL does the same for less. Now if I could only find a way to convince the PHB's at the fortune 500 where I work of that fact.

Re:upgrade path to Oracle?

[Thundersnatch]

If that is the case, I would just write a connection manager to always use only the max limit of connections and save our company a crap load of cash.

Ahh, but that's where they nail you with the license. As I recall from a heated conversation with an MS licensing representative: for SQL server, if the DB services are exposed to the public internet at large, no matter what the means of indirection (web servers, app servers, your own connection manager, etc.) you are required to pay per-CPU licensing fees. Per-seat or concurrent-connection licensed editions of SQL can only be used for *internal* applications. This even applies in the case of database replication; you cannot replicate transactions from a per-CPU licensed public server to a per-seat licensed internal server. They both need to have per-CPU licenses.

This language is in the license, not the code, so circumventing the connection or query governor to use a "smaller" edition of SQL Server to run a web site would violate said license.

Oracle, DB2, and even things like WebLogic all have similar licensing schemes. The small/free/developer editions are only allowed for limited use behind your firewall. This encourages development on the platform, and increases the chances of the sale of a big-ticket installation as applications grow up and out.

Re:upgrade path to Oracle?

[kpharmer]

> Most users do not need to worry about any upgrade path to Oracle. Oracle cannot take away MySQL. MySQL is GPLed and we will always have the code.

no: mysql still has a ton of work to do in order to completely close its functionality gap with postgesql, let alone oracle/db2/sql server. You just leave behind the GPL'd code and what have you got? A complex system that uses another complex product (innodb). Who's going to move that large codebase forward? Database engine code is very complex, and not at all glamorous. Finding good developers to work for free won't be easy.

> However, Oracle would be dumb (as would MS, IBM) to think that they could switch a small to medium site to an expensive DB server costing $1,000's per processor.

I agree with you that the SMB market is more cost-competitive than the large enterprise market. But paying $5k / CPU isn't really that bad - given that the hardware (for a 4-way) costs more than that anyway (all things included). Plus, many licenses are cheaper than this.

> IMO, there is always going to be a nice market for the OSS DB's such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.

sure

> IME, the only reason to really use one of the paid-for databases is for some very expensive financial type applications where you want the support/reputation.

Depends on what you're doing. I'm analyzing security data - with tables of hundreds of millions of rows. My db2 license cost was just a fraction of the cost of the hardware. Getting the same speed out of mysql would require a *farm* of similar servers and would have sent the total server cost through the roof.

Re:upgrade path to Oracle?

[arethuza]

> Oracle cannot take away MySQL. MySQL is GPLed and we will always have the code.

The sources for the current version are in the GPL - but that is no guarantee that future versions of MySQL (or any other GPL-ed system) have to be released under the GPL. If they have 100% of the copyright they can do anything they want and my understanding is the MySQL have been careful to keep their codebase "clean" so that any external contributions have copyright assigned to MySQL or are simply rewritten.

The GPL ensures that people who use the code with a GPL license have to keep the system "free" but AFAIK it doesn't place any real restrictions on the copyright holders.

Re:upgrade path to Oracle?

[WuphonsReach]

That's how I interpret the SQL Server licensing as well from various conversations and research. At the time, we managed to get a SQL Server 2000 CPU license for ~$3000, which wasn't too bad.

But inside the firewall, we went with MySQL/InnoDB (with plans to migrate to pgsql). Once we get up and running on pgsql inside the firewall, there's a good chance that we'll switch over to running our public side on it as well. Hopefully prior to the date that we'd have to migrate to SQL Sever 2005.

How to buy a voice in mySql's development plans

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is the leader in the enterprise market for some good reasons, but mySql has been gaining. That's a long-term problem for Oracle, especially since their product is virtually standing still. Not that Oracle are really to blame: Oracle is already a fine product and its users are somewhat adverse to major changes. In other words, it's much easier for mySql to play catch-up than it is for Oracle to move forward.

This is an excellent opportunity for Oracle to cheaply make sure that mySql doesn't catch up in the key enterprise features: buy a seat at the table where future mySql development is decided. That way, Oracle can "harmonize" the two products' features to prevent "needless duplication of effort." And, of course, make sure that mySql never truly catches up in the areas that really matter to Oracle.

Well played, Larry!

Re:How to buy a voice in mySql's development plans

[mw]

Please don't mention Oracle, MySQL and Enterprise in the same sentence. It's not true, no matter how often this myth is told. MySQL ist NOT enterprise ready. At least not now.

Re:How to buy a voice in mySql's development plans

[Anonymous Coward]

>At least not now.
Precisely... and what better way to keep it that way?

No, but lets be honest.

[WindBourne]

Anybody with any brains will not trust few at the top. McNeally, Gates, Jobs, Ellison, etc. are well known for their ruthless attitudes. While I knock Gates for how he screws over all his partners, the truth is, that they all have done that.

MySQL speed

[Markus Registrada]

If you "did a benchmark with the application my group is developing using MySQL and PostgreSQL and MySQL was much faster" recently, you did it wrong. PostgreSQL passed MySQL long ago, if you compare them apples-to-apples. To choose one over the other based on speed is usually a mistake.

Choose based on administration complexity for a minimal setup, if you like (favoring MySQL), or on license restrictions (favoring PostgreSQL), or on features (PostgreSQL, for now), or on development community size (MySQL), or on development community competence (PostgreSQL).

Re:MySQL speed

[adturner]

He did it wrong? How would you know? You have zero information. We all should know by now that performance testing, especially when it comes to databases is very dependant on data, queries, hardware and various other variables which make generic tests (like TPC or any other published benchmark) pretty much worthless for understanding how a particular database will perform for anything but that specifc configuration.

I personally don't doubt that ShatteredDreams' found MySQL/InnoDB faster then PostgreSQL. I compared MySQL 4.1.12 vs PG 8.0.3 on the exact same hardware using the same data and scripts (basically switched out DBD::mysql for DBD::pg) and found MySQL was over 3x faster for inserts (8 hours vs 28 hours). Why? Because PG is more concerned with data integerity then performance compared to MySQL. I went onto #postgresql and asked about tuning for my environment/dataset and got a lot of help, but wasn't ever able to get any noticible improvement to PG's insert speed without resorting to dropping FK's and indexes or using the COPY command (which makes the whole thing pretty much pointless now doesn't it?).

As it turned out, with a LOT of creative thinking I was able to get the performance to something I could live with (frankly, it's really ugly, but it works and is very specific to our application so it prolly wouldn't be useful for 99.9% of the people out there) so we ended up going with PostgreSQL since it is more robust and has a better feature set (honestly I didn't expect to use triggers or stored proceedures, but they've come in handy a couple of times, especially since we have both Perl and Java code talking to the DB and we only have to impliment certain bits of logic only once).

Honestly, it would be really nice if the PG folks would allow DBA's to be able to do things like turn off WAL for those times when raw speed is more important that data integrity, but that doesn't seem to be a priority.

Re:MySQL speed

[tgl]

Um ... on what basis do you say that MySQL has the edge on development community size?

Sure they've got more *users*, but developers I don't think so.

Re:MySQL speed

[mw]

What's wrong with copy? I use it daily, and it works very fine. Even creating a prepared statement helps a lot if you don't want to use copy:
declare add_it(int, int, int) as insert into tabname (f1, f2, f3) values ($1, $2, $3);
execute add_it(1, 2, 3);
execute add_it(4, 5, 6);

Did you try it?

Re:MySQL speed

[Markus Registrada]

... on what basis do you say that MySQL has the edge on development community size?

Mainly because the components of MySQL are worked on by different communities. Innobase is one, Berkeley DB is another. However, now that you mention it, the requirement to sign copyright over to MySQL has to reduce their core developer base. Back when I was on the PG list, though, there were only a half-dozen people doing serious work, but ... that's been five years. How time flies.

Re:MySQL speed

[Markus Registrada]

MySQL was over 3x faster for inserts... Because PG is more concerned with data integrity than performance compared to MySQL.

I did say apples-to-apples. If you ask MySQL to do the same work as PG, it's slower. If you ask it to do less, it's often faster.

Re:MySQL speed

[adturner]

As soon as you can tell me how to configure MySQL/InnoDB to use a WAL or PostgreSQL 8 to not use one I'll be happy to do an "apples-to-apples" comparision. But we both know that neither is possible, so rather then telling me/the other poster we're doing things wrong, why not just admit that you don't know enough about our requirements, datasets or schemas to have formed an opinion based on fact?

Re:MySQL speed

[Markus Registrada]

The addition of the write-ahead log was a key factor in making PG consistently faster than MySQL.

If your application is limited by database writing speed, then chances are you shouldn't be using a relational database for that part of the job. (Eight hours is a damned long time to be banging a disk head around.) The right way is to get the data onto the disk in the quickest, un-relational- transactional-est way possible, and then (presuming you are actually going to run SQL queries against it) index it. Every practical database engine provides a way to do that because everybody runs into problems that don't fit neatly in an SQL-shaped box.

It's true that I don't know anything about your requirements, datasets, or schemas, but I do know the difference between good and bad engineering.

Re:MySQL speed

[adturner]

The addition of the write-ahead log was a key factor in making PG consistently faster than MySQL.

Well then, it's not working very well for me now is it? I'm not saying that PG is always slower or faster then MySQL (PG is sure a lot faster rolling back a large failed transaction thanks to the WAL), but realize that there are times when MySQL is faster.

It's true that I don't know anything about your requirements, datasets, or schemas, but I do know the difference between good and bad engineering.

I suggest you go back to Engineering 101 where they teach you to first figure out the requirements before you start trying to engineer a solution... you'll find it works a lot better that way.

Re:MySQL speed

[adturner]

COPY is great. At my company, we're building key parts of our system based on COPY. However, COPY isn't flexible enough for doing much beyond imports into a single table. Ie, if your source data is imported across a number of tables, then using COPY becomes a horrific pain because you have to manually handle things like sequences, foreign keys and join tables in data structures in code rather then letting the DB do it for you. It's great when you can use pg_dump or custom code to create your COPY data based on an existing DB, but it's a very different thing processing flat files and having to create COPY statements across 5-10 tables.

Using PREPARE/EXECUTE does help, but in my testing, I've found that updating indexes and checking FK's is more expensive then the INSERT itself. PG in my environment seems to be noticably slower updating indexes/checking FK's then MySQL as the number of records in the table increases. Again, you should always drop the indexes/FK's that you can when importing data (as long as it doesn't effect the relational integrity of the inserts), but you can't always drop all of them.

Like I said earlier, I've done some "interesting" things to get good performance out of PG (de-duping 8M+ records using in-memory data structures in code being one of them), but it's a lot more work (not to mention memory intensive) and frankly a PITA. 8 hours may seem like a long time, but for my needs it was acceptable. 28 hours wasn't, and so I had to spend time on optimizing things when I would of rather been working on other things.

YMMV.

Is Oracle still Doomed?

[randall_burns]

I still tend to think that Oracle will be killed by Open Source before Microsoft is. Much of Oracle's revenue stream and prestige depends on the sale of their database server and their financial packages. Those all tend to be high ticket products. Linux could kill Unix because Unix implementations tended to be high end products. Now, Oracle may be able to slow things down a bit by messing with MySQL-still long term _someone_ will produce an open source database that is faster and more reliable than Oracle--and to which Oracle users can easily migrate.

Re:Is Oracle still Doomed?

[Anonymous Coward]

give me a freakin break. I like mysql and it does a solid job, but mysql comes no where near Oracle for transactional throughput on large distributed databases. where mysql wins with a good margin is low end/entry apps. Ms SqlServer, DB2 and Sybase are still behind Oracle in terms of things like distributed tables, replication, clustering and other grid features. Most apps don't need it to be blunt, but when you do, Oracle is pretty much the only solution today. Anyone that knows oracle's market knows the low end was never there. that's not where oracle focused. oracle didn't start to focus on low and mid level until 10g. if you look at the larger pattern, Oracle isn't afraid of loosing the high end. Oracle is trying to take market share away from MS, which is where MS SqlServer has traditionally been strong. By bringing mysql into the fold, they can hurt MS in the db market and make a clear path of migration to 10g. very few businesses have the know-how to scale mysql to terabyte and petabyte databases. for those who know how, it doesn't really matter which database they use from a technical perspective. how many people have 10+ years of working on terabyte databases? one area where MS is picking up steam is OLAP with analysis service, so Oracle helping mysql is a great way to take market share away from MS. before 10g came out, small businesses couldn't afford Oracle. Oracle 8i used to cost 250-500K for a site license. for a mid size company that makes 10 million a year, 250K isn't affordable. whereas 15K for sql server versus mysql is pretty much a no brainer.

Re:Is Oracle still Doomed?

[randall_burns]

I understand the low end aspect of MySQL quite well. What I'm thinking is that eventually Postgresql or something like it will become an Oracle killer. Oracle has quite a few customers for whom their fees are _barely_ affordable. In fact, I think that is more the case with Oracle than even Microsoft.

Re:Is Oracle still Doomed?

[MemoryDragon]

Dream on, given MySQLs track record, they can be happy if that thing works at all over a realy business situation. And opensource killing oracle, dream on, you already know how hard it is to switch operating systems, believe me, moving 20 years of legacy data stored procs etc... from a stable work horse to something like MySQL, no sane DB admin would even think of that, remotely making a plan. Once you have set for a DB moving away makes no sense anymore, and Oracle knows that, hence, they have a foothold in the ORM market which basically abstracts DBs, and also did a really good job as co specificators for the EJB3 entity bean layer (the other co specs came from Gavin King who did Hibernate) and have no problem with it.

The deal comes probably from another side, they do not want to get MySQL to become too cozy with SAP and basically to sum it up, they have them at their balls.

Little fish don't know squat.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I think that the only people who can answer if the move was good or bad, are the MySQL developers.

When a big company buys a little company the people in the little company (even the suits, let alonw the developers) normally don't have anything to say about how their stuff is used once it's acquired. If it's going to be bad for their stuff they typically find out only when it goes bad - by finding themselves transferred to something else or laid off.

An interview might let us know if it's ALREADY gone bad. But if it's OK so far they might go in with eyes shining and stay that way for months before a "Night of the Long Knives".

Having said that...

I have no reason to assume that there WOULD be a Night of the Long Knives, or even that it would be bad for OSS if there were. Maybe Oracle will support innoDB. Maybe they'll expand support. Maybe they'll drop it - in which case MySQL and/or the rest of the open source community can pick up where they left off.

As for providing a migration path into Oracle's DB product, that's just fine. It means you can tell your own suits that, if MySQL doesn't scale after your project is in production for a couple years the they can move it cleanly to Oracle. If they're not betting the farm on MySQL it should be easier to get them to let you try it in the first place. And being able to prototype with MySQL (cheap/free) with assurance you have a scalable followon means you can develop on a smaller budget, making more garage-sized projects practical. Meanwhile, if there's no migration path back OUT of Oracle it's still no worse than if your started with it in the first place.

Re:Little fish don't know squat.

[outsider007]

I agree that the only way this move makes sense is if oracle has an upgrade path in mind.

I'm working for a company that is profitable but uses free-MySQL because there wasn't much money 10 years ago as a start-up. Now we can afford to go to oracle and it might make sense to do it. I'm sure there's lots of companies like mine. If MySQL goes under, we have the cash, we probably won't go with Postgres. Plus let's face it guys, experience with Oracle gets you better jobs then experience with MySQL so I would have no problem making a recommendation to upgrade to Oracle.

Forking InnoDB insufficient for MySQL because

[einhverfr]

of non-Free licensing requirements....

MySQL cannot continue reselling licenses to MySQL w/InnoDB without an agreement from Oracle (at least without risking a lawsuit which gets into the sticky issue of whether MySQL as a work is derivative of InnoDB). This is not like SCO suing IBM. It is like IBM suing SCO, except that MySQL might have a bit more of a case than SCO simply because derivation is not so clear cut (IANAL though).

But it gets worse....

MySQL does not own the copyrights to any transaction-safe table type. Not BDB, not InnoDB, not MaxDB.

Re:Forking InnoDB insufficient for MySQL because

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I think this is hilarious.

MySQL has been progressively tightening down their licensing scheme (e.g., migrating from LGPL to GPL client libraries) and spreading FUD to push more and more users toward the commercial licensing option. They've been making money at this despite the inferiority of their database engine by encouraging ignorance among their user base (Fundamental relational DB feature X? Pshaw, who needs it that?).

And then all of a sudden, WHAM! Oracle jerks that cute little commercial licensing rug out from under them. So, MySQL AB, how much do you really believe in open source?

Re:Forking InnoDB insufficient for MySQL because

[oku]

MySQL cannot continue reselling licenses to MySQL w/InnoDB

An interesting twist is that MySQL has not been reselling licenses in the recent past. About two months ago, I looked at the MySQL website, but there was no GPLed code to download, no trial to download and no pricing information for a commercial offer. They were advertising that they can provide that cute transactional store, but they were not providing it, probably until a customer asked really really loudly.

It is left as an exercise to the reader to determine how InnoDB felt about that issue.

Sounds like another rumor

[rkuris]

They've been talking about buying other companies like Unify for a while anyway.

The reason this didn't go through, as far as I can tell from the trenches, is because Sun suffers from the "not invented here" syndrome.

It is not FUD

[walterbyrd]

> SCO's partners are jumping ship and they are paying people to be called partners and sign marketing agreements.

But MySQL AB does not have to join hands with the company that (with msft's help) is dedicated to destroying F/OSS. Do you remember Scox's CEO writing the US congress and declaring that the GPL was unconstitutional?

Re:It is not FUD

[einhverfr]

But MySQL AB does not have to join hands with the company that (with msft's help) is dedicated to destroying F/OSS. Do you remember Scox's CEO writing the US congress and declaring that the GPL was unconstitutional?

I don't really mind it when companies sign marketing agreements of this sort if they keep it solely on the level of "we want to help our customers."

IMO, there is an issue here in that MySQL has taken this partnership well beyond this level (read their interview on Groklaw for more info).

Re:It is not FUD

[k98sven]

But MySQL AB does not have to join hands with the company that (with msft's help) is dedicated to destroying F/OSS. Do you remember Scox's CEO writing the US congress and declaring that the GPL was unconstitutional?

SCO payed MySQL to support and maintain an SCO port of their software. If SCO is paying to have F/OSS software developed, then that is not destroying F/OSS.

Yes, their letter to those congressman was anti-F/OSS. But MySQL had nothing to do with that.

On the other hand, SCO has in-house developers maintaining the SCO port of GCC, code which contributed back to main and assigned to the FSF. So, by the same rationale, the Free Software Foundation itself has 'joined hands' with this company destroying F/OSS.

Re:It is not FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Payed

(Reaches for the rolled up newspaper.)

Bad speller! Bad speller! It's PAID!

So?

[stoolpigeon]

What does someone preferring PostgreSQL have to do with MySQL?
 
I guess I could understand if he had added a jab about how mysql could never do that. But he didn't. He's just touting the database management system that he likes.
 
The mysql vs. postgres thing gets so out of hand. It reminds me of when I compliment my 5 year old and my 4 year old gets upset because I didn't compliment her too. When I wrote my initial post I thought of mentioning the MySql part of the issue and the trouble they may be in due to the Oracle move, but I decided not to just because it is so difficult to discuss in a rational way. Too many people start digging up the same old tired arguments.
 
I don't care if everybody starts using MySql and it gets voted 'best thing ever'. I'll still be happy as a clam in high tide, running what I prefer. That's the most valuable part of free software in my opinion.

Re:So?

[toofast]

Has nothing to do. I'm just comparing stories, slack your shorts.

I didn't say one platform was better.

Re:So?

[jonadab]

> The mysql vs. postgres thing gets so out of hand.

You want to see out of hand? Start a discussion functional programming versus object-oriented programming with a Python programmer and a Scheme programmer.

Tora and Quest Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be like one of the other important open source SQL tools out there, Tora. Quest "hired" the developer, and made all future versions of the software pay to play. Well, actually they killed the entire project off, and "integrated" it into Toad. Which is only way over priced as compared to the free Tora.

I expect Oracle to do the same. The next Inno will not be GNU/GPL or whichever license Mysql runs on. Infact, I totally expect that they will use a license which differs just enough that it prohibits the packaging of Innodb with Mysql, and that you will have to install it seperately.

Companies buying OpenSource companies means one thing. Closed source and money. Of course, inno is far enough along and has enough external project support that it will probably continue as a branch. But, Oracle will trademark the name, and MySql will have to come up with soem way to get around the trademark. They will also become incompatible with each other nearly instantly in terms of data format.

What if....

[killjoe]

What if Oracle looked at mysql and saw that there was a market for a smaller, free or cheap database server and said to themselves... "Hey let's buy innodb so that we get some of that money".

Everybody is putting an evil spin on this but it could be as simple as hedging your bets.

Re:What if....

[PinkPanther]

a market for a smaller, free or cheap database server

No such market exists.

Re:What if....

[killjoe]

SO just because sybase can't sell their product there is no market? Mysql seems to be making a couple of dollars.

Re:What if....

[stanmann]

Having used both Oracle and Sybase for Database management, I'm unimpressed with Sybase's product.

Re:What if....

[PinkPanther]

My post was, how does one say, uh....sarcasm.

Sybase may be floating along idly, but its iAnywhere subsidiary is doing quite well indeed.

Re:What if....

[Thorofin]

But have you installed both...Oracle is a bear to setup

Re:What if....

[stanmann]

from scratch to database building Oracle was more friendly, efficient and responsive to my desires.

Do you think Oracle will continue InnoDB/MySQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's highly unlikely that Oracle will continue the InnoDB/MySQL relationship.

What's in it for Oracle?

Do you think the InnoDB revenues from a MySQL/Oracle sale would add to the bottom line of Oracle? Very doubtful.

Do you think Oracle will take some of the InnoDB technology and put it into Oracle? Oracle has all the functionality that InnoDB provides, why would they risk destabilization? This is doubtful

So why did Oracle buy InnoDB? To put MySQL into a corner and out of Enterprise deals. Oracle has publicly stated that Oracle is like a 747 and MySQL is like a Toyota. Oracle is trying to keep MySQL out of the lucrative 747 market (Enterprise), but let MySQL continue to sell Toyotas (Low end Web Sites)

This is not good for MySQL. MySQL should have purchased InnoDB when they had the chance. My belief is that Heikke didn't even give MySQL a chance to purchase InnoDB once the Oracle deal came in, otherwise MySQL would have jumped at the chance to stay in the Enterprise Database Space.

All MySQL is left with for the Enterprise is the Berkeley DB. What about Gemini? Any wind left in that sail?

Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin

[Vryl]

Larry knows what is going down.

Linux has commodotised the OS. MySQL and perhaps PostGRES are commodotising the Database.

All the money is upstream. Larry's customers are asking him why should they use Oracle, when MySQL et al does what they want. Larry want to sell them his other mojo, and that is where the money is. Why support the database when a bunch of other people will do it for you.

I would not be surprised to see Oracle tech ending up in MySQL, as a gift from Larry.

I too have counted, counted, weighed and measured.

Larry is losing his way...

[NineNine]

I disagree 100%. I say that Larry Ellison, like a certain McNealy that I've heard of, is getting scared. Programming used to be done by professionals that cared about quality, skill, and experience. Programming used to be a real science. To be a scientist, you had to have the best tools. Real work is STILL always done on Sun and Oracle.

What they (Larry and Scott) are seeing is hype. There's tons and tons of hype about PC's replacing big iron, etc, etc, etc. Even mid-level servers are often just a PC with an open source OS slapped on it by a college kid. Both of them (Larry and Scott) have made their lunges at grabbing the low-end of the market. Why not? Everybody else has. Both companies have gotten burned (Sun moreso than Oracle) with their low-end market dalliances. Why does this happen? They're companies that are not used to cutting corners and slashing prices. They're core competencies are building stable, robust hardware & software with quality being more important to the end user than price.

What I wish that Larry and Scott would realize is that there will always be customers in need of real solid systems as opposed to hacks (what we see in everyday commercial and open source software). They should stick with doing what they're good at, and leave the low and mid-range systems to the people willing to slit each others' throat for a $0.05 cheaper price on Ebay.

This whole, "Sure, we'll just give away all our code that we spend billions of dollars and decades developing to keep the cheap (but very loud) OSS hacks happy!" thing isn't going to pan out well.
 
Personally, I can't really imagine a computing industry without Sun and Oracle. What are we left with at that point? Do-it-Yourself Ubuntu installations and mass-produced PC's all running MySQL? I'd rather go back to punchcards, quite honestly.

Re:Larry is losing his way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Real work is STILL always done on Sun and Oracle.

Real people STILL smoke crack too!

Re:Larry is losing his way...

[Anonymous Coward]

You want any cheese with that whine?

Re:No. Bad for dual-licensing in general

[aled]

Because if MySql AB (the enteprise) closes doors, so goes developers funded by them, their sites, etc. Someone pays the bills now.

Not Even Close

[geomon]

So can Linux Trovalds & lead developers change their mind and decide to sell the Kernel ?
OSS has some serious problems, I better start looking at the Redmond company.

The two thoughts above are completely disjointed. Perhaps you can explain how one open source company being bought leads to the Linux kernel being sold.

Even if your relationship were to hold and the kernel were up for sale, there are several IP holders who will bar any commercial transfer of the Linux kernel to any company. The Linux kernel is a limited partnership, not a sole-proprietorship. Linus may own the name and lots of the code, but he is not the only owner. And most Linux distributions are filled with GNU software. I think we all know where Stallman stands on commercial transfer of the code he controls.

And if you think jumping from brand X OS to brand Y OS is the solution to anything but a technical problem, you will be endlessly investing tens of thousands of dollars with every move (unless you stuck it out with open source apps).

I see your last point as a complete non sequitur.

Perhaps real target is SAP ...

[Anonymous Coward]

As discussed on some other OSS database mailing lists, perhaps the real intent behind Oracle's acquisition is to nip of MySQL 5.0's proposed capability to be a SAP backend, a domain where Oracle would like to continue to stay fat and happy.

Slowing down MySQL considerably would be a juicy side-effect.

And others have also mentioned that Oracle should get a 10 out of 10 on the style scale if they were to release the next version of innodb as GPL only, disallowing MySQL AB from dual-licensing it, therefore seriously hampering the precious revenue stream from the MySQL database product. Imagine what MySQL AB's sales department would have to come up with then! Oracle would be true to the hard-core 'free as in speech' OSS folks [ in this case, anyway ], while at the same time hamstringing their commercial competition from MySQL AB, since their business model revolves around commercial licensing, not support contracts. If MySQL AB then switched to a support contact model and released pure-GPL only for the code they actually owned (can't do BDB and the other external table implementations that way -- they don't own the copyrights), then perhaps that potential Oracle move might have the side-effect of actually maing MySQL more free than it currently is.

Posting anonymously since these are all unattributed quotes by more insightful folks. Apologies in advance if I have misquoted -- going from memory here.

Re:No. Bad for dual-licensing in general

[einhverfr]

When Great Birdge closed its doors did that kill PostgreSQL?

If MySQL AB closes its doors, the only clear users are the developers of non-Free MySQL-based apps.

I actually see a number of possibilities for what could happen after....

1) Oracle buys MySQL and uses it as a low-end offering, and improves their upgrade path from MySQL to Oracle. I think this is quite likely.

2) MySQl truly fizzles. I think this is least likely.

3) The core developers are picked up by other FOSS-friendly companies offering MySQL support services, and MySQL later offers future versions with LGPL licensed client libs avoiding the problems facing current non-Free software developers. This is a serious possibility as well.

Unless the MySQL community shows no interest in both the kind support core developers can offer and in supporting future development, I see no danger for MySQL users if MySQL AB goes out of business. However, the process by which MySQL AB falters could be very unkind to commercial users.

Brilliant if Oracle did it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if Oracle set up a smooth MySQL-%gt;Oracle path, it would be a brilliant move on its part. Users of potentially growing businesses could start on MySQL (as opposed to the MS products), and have a clear transition path as they scale to Oracle. It would solidify MySQL on the low-end, but also solidify Oracle on the high-end. This is all assuming Oracle and MySQL can work together. Heck, Oracle would probably be best off buying the company that does most of the work on MySQL, so they are not competing for consulting dollars... On the other hand, I'd be concerned about them trying to exploit "synergies" and cripple MySQL to make a bigger market for Oracle. Maybe just a large equity stake or something...

What are you talking about?

[Stone316]

Oracle embraces open standards... Sure, they may not be compliant in some areas but they are at least trying. Look at their new fusion architecture.. they are even going to certify websphere on it.

I'll admit it, I love Oracle.. They are the only database vendor out there making real advances.. Everyone else, DB2, SQL Server, etc are playing catch up. I'll be the first to admit they are not perfect... At times i'm as frustrated as anyone else..

Article on open standards..

Anti-Postgre ploy?

[Tablizer]

One theory is that Oracle is afraid of PostgreSQL because its SQL syntax is similar enough to Oracle to make a migration path from Oracle to OSS. If Oracle can prop up MySQL, then it will take market share away from Postgre. MySQL users are less likely to port to Oracle because the syntax is too different. Thus, it is an OSS solution that will not affect sales nearly as much as Postgre can.

Re:Anti-Postgre ploy?

[MemoryDragon]

Wont help too much, but I rather doubht it, I think the buyout was done due to the MySQL SAP connections. It is rather unlikely that Oracle customers move to PostgreSQL, and even more unlikely is a move to MySQL (besides the constant hype that MySQL finally is enterprise ready, it is not, it simply has the basic features you really need not to hose your data at all after a while) I have seen enough DB installations, that I know that a move from one DB to another is not really something feasable normally, once you have set for a DB you usually stay there, because it is very cost intensive even with ORM data abstraction etc... to move away from it. Hence Oracle still has Toplink in their program and did not shut it down and never did anything about other ORM mappers in fact they were one of the key companies behind the really good EJB3 orm specification. They are well aware that they do not loose customers by specifying a good DB abstraction layer. From this angle I also think they see the whole Postgresql issue, it is a no brainer for them, no real lost Customers, they already have all the big ones which roll in the Cash, and they currently move towards app servers, development solutions and CRM systems as extensions to their core business. The whole MySQL issue, probably would give them just a hammer which they can draw if MySQL becomes to nasty from the SAP side of things.

Larry's world

[XB-70]

I have worked with guys like Larry. I just can't believe all the naïveté out there. Do you actually think that Larry's motives are anything but predatory? Are you out of your minds? This guy does nothing in his life but compete. He's sailed the near antarctic southern Pacific in yachting contests for Chrissakes! That is an indicator that at a core level this guy hates to loose. If you think for one pico-second that the InnoDB purchase isn't a tool to hobble his cheap(er) competitor, go dig a hole in the sand and bury your head in it. That said, I can't believe how stupid MySQL AB were to leave their flank exposed like that. Quite frankly, much as I hate to say it, MySQL AB deserve everything they get for not solving their exposure problem. For my part though, I'm very, very disappointed at this turn of events. I think that it could cause uncertainty for years; but the reality is that open source software development requires a ton of dough to sustain (the big projects anyway) because, quite simply, people have to live. We have not, as yet, found a model which solves the real problem: stable financing for OSS development.

Re:Larry's world

[Vryl]

This guy does nothing in his life but compete.

I believe he is competing. Did you read my post?

...this guy hates to loose.

Errr... that's 'lose', methinks. Pet hate.

As for the rest of your rant, time will tell. I think you are wrong.

In the sort term likely beneficial for OSS

[kandresen]

Oracle earlier this year signed a deal with Zend Technologies and launched a tool for making it easy to use Oracle with PHP named "Zend Core for Oracle" Zend Core for Oracle Now they bought out InnoDB.

They are thus probably going to add InnoDB support directly into Oracle products making it easy for Companies currently paying royalties to MySQL to switch to Oracle later on. We know they cannot withdraw InnoDB from the market completely as it is a GPL version of it that would create more threats than benefits just leaving behind. Oracle could of course drop improving on the GPL version, but would likely be hurt by this more than ever - everyone would jump ship for PostgreSQL etc. The more probable is thus that they will try to play nice with OSS at least for the time being.

In the long run however it is more uncertain if OSS will benefit from this... Oracle currently have great benefits from being acknowledged as OSS company at this time, but what will happen when Oracle gain a larger share of the OSS market? Then they might try to distinguish their proprietary systems vs. their open counterpart. This could lead to a long term disadvantage for OSS.

A worse posibility - what if the buyout of InnoDB and the cooperation with Zend in reality is meant to soften MySQL so Oracle later may aquire MySQL? They have a dual license too, and may as well be bought as InnoDB. MySQL have gotten lots of unnecessary bad remarks recently for restoring the support for using the database on SCO servers. We all do mistakes, but MySQL have definitively contributed a lot more to Open Source than most, and would thus be a longer term good OSS partner than Oracle.

I hope MySQL manages to find a way to stay strong in the OSS world as well as in the economic one!

Imagine the possibile consequences of MySQL selling out to Oracle...

My Verdict!

[TarrySingh]

Oracle will eventually take over MySQL. Larry Ellison has to stop playing coy. It will be of little added value to Oracle. I suspect that MySQL will meet it's death. Although there might be an Alternative Version* of Oracle which will sell MySQL as an *Oracle Product for Small and Middle Scale Companies.

So what?

[Omega Blue]

So Oracle bought Innobase. How will this effect MySQL?

For starters, MySQL AB still has a commercial license to distribute InnoDB. That means they can do it until the license expires. Then, there is this GPL thing. Even if Oracle kills InnoDB after the license has expired, MySQL can still continue to distribute GPL'ed version of it.

A big player such as IBM just may decide to buy MySQL AB tomorrow. MySQL is a nice database engine in widespread use and IBM definitely has sufficient DB expertise to polish it further. It can be used to chip away at Oracle's user base from below, while IBM's DB2 competes from the high end.

Re:So what?

[MemoryDragon]

Why should IBM do that, all they could gain is the MySQL AB brand? Fact is, MySQL is merely a parser and a rather basic repository on top of added semi fitting third party repos... Ibm just donated a full featured entry level embeddable db to the opensource community, I see no reason for that move. If IBM wanted something stable they probably would be better off to make an entry level version of DB2 or fork away postgresql or firebird, which are less hodj podj systems but DB systems grown from ground up with no external core contributions,

This could be an attack on MS SQL Server...

[Anonymous Coward]

Given LE's antipathy towards Microsoft, there could be an alternative plan to undermining MySQL. Release a version of MySQL with tools to transfer from MS SQL to MySQL for low end servers and provide tools to move from MySQL to Oracle for higher end users, meanwhile take the revenue for the commercial licenses of InnoDB from MySQL.

MySQL would then become part of Oracles business plan rather than a threat, with InnoDB being used to control the size and power of a MySQL database.

The Oracle company

[smallfeet]

My only concern is with the Oracle company itself. The last time I had to deal with them I found them to be a bunch of sleaze-balls. Every bit as bad as MS. Like the DB, but don't trust the company.

Re:The Oracle company

[doon]

Considering the fact that I just "met" my oracle rep, AKA License Police, yesterday. I already tend to agree with you. We have no need to switch all of our DB's to Oracle as our existing DB's work just fine. The only reason we need Oracle is because 2 Applications that we have to Run "require it". We spent the better part of a day working with an SE, to figure out the cheapest way to license it, got his blessing, then our "rep" shows up out of the blue. We explain to her what we need it for (Managing a 60+ node DWDM / SONET network), and she goes off on a rant about how we we aren't going to be liscense correctly since it sounds like internet, that they (oracle) would really like to see us in a per proc license spec. Of course you would as the price is $32K more then the amount of named users that we need. The she starts babbling about we need to move to grid computing. Sometimes it feels good to tell someone off:) The other part is that she was both arrogant and stupid. If you are going to be arrogant you at least need to have some sort of skillz to back it up. (her) "I would be a million dollars you are licensed wrong, and I have never been wrong" (Us) "You SE said we are licensed correctly". Priceless...

Re:The Oracle company

[TheLink]

Did you get your million dollars?

Anyway, can those apps work with Postgresql? There are some tools and howtos to port some stuff from Oracle to Postgresql.

Not everything can be ported easily though.

Re:The Oracle company

[TarrySingh]

Agree there,. know lot'sa folks (and friends) who left Redwood Shores as it sucked big time. They're happy running their own shops. DB is neat but everything else sux for sure.

Re:The Oracle company

[doon]

They might very well be able to ported to Postgres (We use postgres a lot, and I love it). But the problem is these apps are closed source, and are all supported on Sun/Oracle platform. In fact it is only supported on a specific versions of Solaris/Oracle. One of the apps is supported on mysql, but only in dealing with X amount of nodes in the management domain, and we are currently at almost x*2 nodes, so that configuration is only supported on oracle. All of this seems to be based on the fact that all telecom's have oracle and sun deployed as the apps we are deploying are for the management of SONET and DWDM gear.

Great for open source!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to Oracle we can all get rid of that festering pile and switch to a proper database.

a less cynical view ...

[Anonymous Coward]

geez you're a cynical bunch!

As one of those "expensive" (oracle) DBA's I see Oracle doing a lot in the Linux area - OCFS (cluster file system) , RAC (real application cluster), and even a free VMWare image for running Oracle10g on RH/Suse.

I'd imagine Oracle is doing this to pick up the MySQL support crumbs, and the biggger cookie downstream - upgrades to Oracle RDBMS, AppServer, Discoverer, Applications ... keeping potential entry-level customers off windoze/MS as much as possible! Oracle's version of MS-Access..?

InnoDB, MySQL, and Oracle

[andy.astor]

(This note tries to put some perspective on the InnoDB acquisition...Full disclosure, I'm CEO of EnterpriseDB, a competitive database product, based on PostgreSQL.)

All relational database management systems (RDBMSs) have essentially two components: a SQL layer and a storage engine. The SQL layer is a language that is used to query the database and to manipulate data. The storage engine translates SQL commands in order to store and to manipulate data in underlying, raw disk files. While MySQL supports several storage engines, InnoDB is acknowledged to be the most popular for transactional applications. In other words, InnoDB is used for most MySQL applications that matter. InnoDB is now owned by Oracle.

Naturally, MySQL has put the best face possible on the situation, going so far as to issue a press release titled "MySQL AB Welcomes Oracle's Endorsement of Open Source Database Technology." And it is certainly true that Oracle's move demonstrates its recognition that the open source revolution is real. But MySQL's "welcome" is like chickens welcoming a fox to the coop. In a nutshell, Oracle now controls MySQL's access to the technology that many of its customers would argue is its most important and critical.

InnoDB is licensed under the GNU Public License (the "GPL"), and MySQL therefore can continue to use InnoDB and to distribute it. However, this is true only for the GPL version of MySQL. For paying customers, MySQL uses a traditional commercial license, and Oracle now controls the commercial licensing of InnoDB. With the Innobase purchase, Larry Ellison has shrewdly capitalized on a competitor's strategic blunder, i.e., MySQL's unexplainable failure to buy Innobase themselves and thereby to ensure access to critical technology on favorable terms. For its part, Oracle has stated that it "fully expects to negotiate an extension" to MySQL's InnoDB license. Time will tell how the "negotiations" go between Oracle and MySQL.

Under just about any scenario I can imagine, Oracle's purchase of Innobase is not a good thing for MySQL. In fact, it falls somewhere on the continuum between threatening and disastrous. In a recent interview with Martin LaMonica of CNET News, a former Oracle database marketing executive called the acquisition "a flaw in MySQL's business model." That is an excellent - and understated - way to put it.

Re:No. Bad for dual-licensing in general

[aled]

I'll add 4) MySql development slow downs as they develop an alternative to innodb (commercial or free) gives other FOSS DBs momentum (postgresql, firebird, etc) to catch up MySql in popularity.

Misunderstanding

[einhverfr]

My point was that this makes it hard to merge PostgreSQL code into the MySQL server. It has no effect on the developers of client apps....

yes they could purchase postgresql

[CountBrass]

Uhm actually you are wrong they could buy postgresql. It's "Open Source" not "Public Domain". Someone still owns the copyright and can sell that. Why? That's the only way with open/free software that you can distribute it without having to make the source available etc: you own the copyright so you don't need a licence. Ditto for if you decide to change the licence, say from Apache to GPL or vice-versa.

very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

A very interesting move. Oracle must be noticing a trend of some of their big customers using MySQL or PostgreSQL for their "non-mission-critical" systems.

I recall about a year ago (or maybe less), Larry Elison answered a few questions on MySQL. I *think* it was in a Linux mag.

Anyhow, he basically said, in response to if Oracle was being threatened by MySQL or open source databases:
Not at all. Companies considering MySQL don't have the money for Oracle anyhow.

hmm, what would the oracle say about this?

[v3xt0r]

The Oracle: Do you see her die?

The Architect: Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed, and the Anomaly revealed as both beginning... and end.

MySQL + INNOdb

[ajs]

I use a MySQL database to store 2+GB (~4million records) of new data per day, on which I run various reports. I had some significant problems early on using a very old copy of RH7.3 (which I think had a flakey driver for the RAID array I'm using, so it's not very fair of me to blame MySQL for that), but having switched to a modern release of Linux, it has been smooth sailing. I use MERGE tables to split up data into 1-week chunks, and then query them as one. It works amazingly well.

I'm really drooling over 5.0, but don't want to upgrade until it's out of beta (MySQL's betas are annoyingly long, but given how stable their releases have been, I guess I can't complain).

The only complaint that I have with MySQL at this point, that's not addressed by 5.0 (that I know of) is the limitations on the optimizer. If they improved their optimizer and took slightly better advantage of RAM than they do now, I'd never use anything else.

The world doesn't need another Microsoft!

[Bushido Hacks]

It's bad enough that Oracle took over PeopleSoft last year, now InnoDB. Oracle is NOT for Linux. It takes too much space. It is difficult to install, even if they are RPM binaries. Oracle is also difficult to teach companies and students. A few year ago, I took an SQL class at my school were we were taught how to use Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. Even the instructor had trouble using Oracle ant MSSQL. I was one of the few people in that class to get a B in the class and that was when I started to use MySQL on my computer instead of Oracle or MSSQL. MySQL is easy to learn, primarily because they don't tack on extra nonsense like the big guys. MySQL follows the SQL standard even if it was the latebloomer among SQL software, it is still #1 in my book. Oracle is trying to monopolize databases, just as Microsoft attempted to do with software, just like IBM attempted to do with computers, and just like AT&T tried to do with telecommunications. I believe an investigation as to why Oracle is so eager to monopolize databases. All it takes is one DROP TABLES command and Oracle can manipulate whatever information they want through a backdoor, which from the size of Oracle, they've got plenty of backdoors they can sell to the highest bidder, even to a company's competition or prying eyes. Oracle needs to be split up before it breaks up information in a Microsoft manner. Support MySQL! Boycott Oracle!

donno about the enterprise market...

[no13]

but if they keep it free and don't meddle with the core and shell, I'm happy. MySQL 4.1 looks awesome, and even a JV should lead to things like PL/SQL and inter-database connectivity (PL/SQL rips the proposed procedural extensions to MySQL v5 Beta, at least in my beginner opinion).

As a student programmer, it would gladden my DOS based Turbo Heart++ to see it stay free, and match the international enterprise standards that Oracle now represents.