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Computer Associates Sells Ingres DB Tech

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the mergers-and-aquisitions dept.

Christopher B. Brown writes to tell us Network World is reporting that Computer Associates is selling their Ingres database technology to a private equity firm called Garnett & Helfrich Capital. From the article: "CA released Ingres last year as an open source project, reviving interest in the dormant software. Still, databases have never been a core part of CA's portfolio. CA CEO John Swainson cast the Ingres sale as part of CA's larger effort to streamline the vast collection of applications it amassed through a decade of heavy acquisitions in the 1990s. Ingres came to CA through its 1994 buyout of ASK/Ingres"

6 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why bother? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Informative

    Indeed. It's not like we don't have SQL Databases pouring out of our ears. Today you can chose from PostGreSQL, MySQL, McKoi, Firebird, Derby, HSQL, Daffodil One$DB, SAP DB (the less said about that twisted codebase, the better), and a metric kilotonne more that I haven't even mentioned. What do we need *another* DB for, especially when it's out of date?

    I'm far more pleased with the focus on Java databases like Derby and HSQL, plus the work going into XML Databases like Apache Xindice. All that work is extremely useful for portable applications, and has far more uses than Yet Another Crufty Codebase (TM).

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. Re:Why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    PostgreSQL is not the successor to Ingres, it is a branch of the source code from the early eighties. The commercial Ingres product was maintained and improved by a large team of full time engineers for 20+ years since the branch. It is arguable the superior branch.

  3. Re:Postgres vs Ingres? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Because Ingres has many paying customers in fortune 500 companies, who have mission critical software running on Ingres and those people are willing to pay more for better support. Postgres is just a branch of Ingres from the early 80s, at this point the two systems have almost nothing in common.

  4. Re:PostgreSQL Lineage by Wugger · · Score: 5, Informative
    The lineage of PostgreSQL and Ingres is pretty clear. They are descendents of separate research projects of Prof. Michael Stonebreaker at UC Berkeley. Ingres descends from the an earlier project, which was a proving ground for pure relational technology.

    PostgreSQL (note the play on words, "post" gres comes after "in" gres) descends from the follow-up project which extended relational concepts into an early "object-relational" system. Stonebreaker lays out his goals for the Postgres project in this 1986 paper.

    So, Ingres is based on an older design that PostgreSQL. It has also spent 20 years in the corporate world being changed, upgraded, and improved, so evaluating it based on its lineage is like evaluating Oracle 10g based on your knowledge of Oracle 1.0. Interesting historical note: one of Oracle's first substantial competitors (and an early market leader) was a company called "Relational Technologies" that sold a cutting edge relational database named... Ingres.

  5. How many posters have actually used Ingres ? by RobWalker · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can tell you, I've used both Ingres and many other database (including MS-SQL, MySQL, DB2, etc. etc.).

    Despite it being considered "old" it, Ingres is a fast and stable database - certain comparable and up to the performance levels and features of many current databases, MS-SQL and MySQL included.

    And several cite how much better MySQL is an open source database - to which I'd say:

    - read the Ingres and MySQL licenses and tell me which is more open source, and less restrictive? To my eye (and IANAL) the Ingres one poses fewer constraints on use of Ingres as an open source product within commercial products

    - ask one of the many big Sun sites who still run very large, very stable applications on Ingres whether they'd like to swap for MySQL?

    I have no axe to grind here, but Ingres is a decent database and a proper open source contribution. Just because it has CA's name associated with it, doesn't make it bad

    1. Re:How many posters have actually used Ingres ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      As I work for CA, let me try to shed some light here. By spinning it off we can have a company who can dedicate the $$$ needed to further evolve the product in the Open Source community, and at the same time, provide support for the product. You'll note that CA still has a stake in the product, and it isn't going away. It also isn't going back to a close-source model. What it is doing is putting the focus of an organiation completely on Ingres, where we could not do that. This is good for Ingres, and good for the Open Source community.