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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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]

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]. "

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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...

[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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

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.

[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...

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?

[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.

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.

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?

[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.

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: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.

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.