Oracle To Offer A Free Database

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet News reports that Oracle is likely to announce a free version of its Oracle 10g Database. Oracle Database 10g Express Edition will be free for development and production use, and could even be distributed with other products. What does this mean for the future of MySQL and PostgreSQL?" From the article: "By introducing a free entry-level product, Oracle intends to get more developers and students familiar with its namesake database, Mendelsohn said. Those customers, Oracle hopes, will eventually upgrade to a higher-end version."

Comments

Re:First Post

[$cullyshouse]

At the risk of starting a flame war....

... Oracle is a rubbish dinosaur that hasnt aged all that well. DB/400 (and its ancestors) is older but better why? coz IBM said if it dont do what you want, work round to it. Oracle said, ok we'll patch it. MySQL is excellent for what it is, a website database server so i dont think they have to worry too much I cant see many php developers going to the trouble of using oracle.

Re:Move along, move along ...

[Eivind Eklund]

MySQL does not provide the feature of "When I insert data into the database the same data comes back" (due to various "helping" features of the frontend.)

Due to a combination of the number of bugs and misdesign, MySQL does not (to any reasonable degree) provide the feature "When I do an update to the database and do not get an error, that update is guaranteed to be there". It happens regularly that it isn't there.

These are really core features for the kind of developer I want to be. I'm really, really sad to be working with MySQL day to day - it makes me feel dirty.

Eivind.