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Open Source Databases "50% Cheaper"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the when-forrester-speaks dept.

pete314 writes, "Open source databases can cut the total cost of ownership of a database by up to 60% compared to the cost of running proprietary databases from Oracle, Microsoft or IBM. According to data collected by Forrester Research, the savings average about 50%. Open source databases however still struggle to reach mission-critical enterprise applications because enterprises perceive them to be less secure and stable."

39 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. enterprises also want by rubycodez · · Score: 5, Insightful

    enterprises also want paralleling clusters and failover clusters. The open source databases are getting there, give it few more years.

    1. Re:enterprises also want by wiggles · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The one place that the Open Source products have a long way to go is support. Companies don't think mysql and postgres are unreliable, they're just not backed enough. The company I work for could give a rat's hindquarters about TCO -- they just want to outsource their risk so that if something breaks, the CIO/CEO/Chairman has someone to argue with. The Chairman can play golf with Larry Ellison as he tries to get more concessions out of Oracle, but he can't play WOW with the 19 year old kid who added some bit of code to mysql.

      And before you say it, MySQL AG is still small potatoes compared to Oracle, Microsoft, or IBM.

    2. Re:enterprises also want by dingDaShan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's true. Any person who is in an IT job does not want to risk going to an open source database (even if it saves the company money) because:
      1. He does not want to risk his job if there are problems... if there is an Oracle database, he can just use the Oracle support and tell the boss that they are using the best 2. There is no monetary incentive for the IT professional to switch. If the IT professional would see a benefit to himself that would outweigh the possible problems, there might be a switch, but until then what is the benefit? 3. Some companies just want it to work because they want to do business. Most managers don't want to get involved in database technical issues. They just want results and are willing to pay for it.

    3. Re:enterprises also want by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
      The Chairman can play golf with Larry Ellison as he tries to get more concessions out of Oracle, but he can't play WOW with the 19 year old kid who added some bit of code to mysql.

      Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that perhaps I have the skills that many chairmen lack, which might make me unusually competitive and well-suited for the position?

    4. Re:enterprises also want by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 2

      I would hazard to guess that MySQL AB would rebuild their entire company for you based around a contract 1/10th the amount that say Oracle would charge a large client to participate in their existing generic support infrastructure.

      With the kind of dollars big DB companies charge, if you're a big fish and able to solve your business problems with Open Source instead, you could pretty much steer the course of the industry for a fraction of the cost to buy from a big vendor.

      With the kind of money being tossed around, you have to wonder why some of these big IT spenders don't just start a subsidary company based around an open source project. It wouldn't have to have making money as it's primary mandate, but rather supporting its owners IT needs first and trying to generate return on investment as an incidental second.

      Heh, Postgres is ripe for something like this. Instead of paying a bunch of money to an existing player, if a major corporate IT spender like a bank were to throw down a bunch of money and create a corporate and licensing structure similar to what MySQL AB has done using Postgres' code base, they could probably own their DB vendor for less than it costs to negotiating with the one they have now. The "Who cares if it makes money as long as it saves money" approach.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    5. Re:enterprises also want by MouseR · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Disclaimer: I work for Oracle, though not in any DB department (but rather native Mac applications).

      One issue with comparing Oracle with Open Source solutions is the lack of feature parity. And By that, I'm not saying OSS isn't good. PostGres and MySQL are pretty good but they currently lack load-balancing and data replication across multiple data centers. Oracle also has PL/SQLwhich is currently (AFAIK) has no (or short) equivalents in OSS DBs. (PostGRE hasPL/pgSQL but apparently is not feature parity.

      When a big corporation already relied on these features, it's hard for them to justify making a move to another DB system. Even another that might have similar features.

    6. Re:enterprises also want by ThreeE · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People that berate managers for making decisions based on financial statements are naive. Let's see how fast you make a decision when it means a zero vs. non-zero on your paystub...

    7. Re:enterprises also want by plumby · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The one place that the Open Source products have a long way to go is support. Companies don't think mysql and postgres are unreliable, they're just not backed enough. The company I work for could give a rat's hindquarters about TCO -- they just want to outsource their risk so that if something breaks, the CIO/CEO/Chairman has someone to argue with.
      That's less about support and more about image.

      The quality of the support (such as likelihood of getting someone to be able to fix your DB when it's fallen over at 3am etc) and therefore the level/cost of risk that this incurs is something that should already be right there in your TCO.

      What you're talking about is how it will look to your boss (and who you can blame) if things do go wrong. Oracle's support could (theoretically) be 10 times as costly and half as good as some local MySQL support company but if Oracle screw up, it's seen as Oracle's fault not the person that chose them.

      Deciding against a supplier because the level of support/liability is not acceptable to you is a good reason to make that choice. Deciding against it simply because you'd look like an idiot if it did go wrong is not a good reason (but it's the one most people seem to take).
  2. 0% savings for me by Crudely_Indecent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For those of us who can't afford to run a commercial database package, and have been running open source databases from the beginning, this isn't news. MySQL and Postgres are your friends.

    --


    "Lame" - Galaxar
    1. Re:0% savings for me by leamanc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Which brings up a good point. How many "enterprises" need an Oracle or DB2? MySQL and Postgre, despite their obscure limitations that really only matter to ubergeeks, can work just fine for non-Fortune 500 companies. Heck, they would (and do) work fine for some of the big companies. Most of the small businesses have limited in-house IT, but usually have a guy or two that can learn PHP and tie into an open source SQL with that.

      The big boys are the only ones who need the big DB vendors, and even in that case, it's more so they can write off the cost of purchasing the licensing and paying the implementation team. Better to give the money to other big businesses than to Uncle Sam. (Obviously written from a USA-based perspective.)

      --
      :q!
    2. Re:0% savings for me by GuidoW · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't think this holds true for database systems.

      As far as I can see, the big databases like Oracle or Sybase are targeted at big corporations that don't have any second thoughts about hiring a full-time DBA - and as a consequence you will need one to use these products. Okay, maybe not a fulltime DBA, but at least a trained professional (trained for that particular application) to invest quite some time to even get stuff going.

      For Postgres, OTOH, you'll just need someone smart with general knowledge of SQL and of the platform it's going to be running on - he needn't even have used Postgres before.

      --
      If it's so secret, then how come I've never heard of it?
    3. Re:0% savings for me by glwtta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Open Source Databases are only free if you don't value your time.

      Dude, have you actually used both Postgres and Oracle? There is not an entity on this earth less respectful of my time than Oracle (well, maybe ClearCase) - the thing is an absolute nightmare to administer. Sure, it needs the complexity because of its advanced scaling capabilities; but most of us are not amazon.com, and never will be.

      On the other hand, the administrative overhead of running Postgres is damn near 0% (MySQL is a different story entirely of course).

      Sure we are a small company, and only have under a TB of data in our databases, but there are a lot of companies in the same position who shell out ridiculous amounts of money for Oracle (only for the name-brand, nothing else), and then someone ends up stabbing themselves in the eye in frustration (might be a slight exaggeration). Or else pay for a full time DBA; I've worked for a company with 3 developers and 1 full time Oracle DBA - that's just nuts.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    4. Re:0% savings for me by Vancorps · · Score: 2, Informative

      Per Processor for the enterprise edition of SQL 2005 vs what you get with the Standard edition from Oracle which didn't require us to go per processor. With Oracle we could have a small number of named users and have access to all the 64bit addressing and processors we can shake a stick at. Plus we can cluster them which was the big fault for MS SQL. We caught Oracle at a good time, they came down a lot over the initial price quote they gave us.

      The only expensive part was paying for access to the metabase. Part of me thinks I could get by with just my experts-exchange account but that support is really nice when you need it.

  3. SQL Server = Almost Free by blaster151 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just don't get it. TCO and tool support are tightly linked. Most open source database products, including MySQL, seem to require quite a bit of digging and cobbling together to set up and maintain. Microsoft SQL Server has fantastic tool support, no command line experimentation required. An experienced DBA can set up a new installation in a couple of minutes. And there's even a free Express Edition available for entry-level dabbling. The cost of a database license is pretty minimal over the long haul (referring to SQL Server, not the abominable Oracle). The real cost is in the time spent compensating for whatever your database platform's tool support shortcomings are. I love Microsoft SQL Server for this reason: I rarely have to reinvent anything.

    1. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by sstern · · Score: 2, Insightful

      An experienced DBA can set up a new installation in a couple of minutes.

      An experienced DBA can set up MySQL with many useful tools in a matter of minutes, too. And you can pay him more because you're not paying Microsoft.

      The important question is whether you've bought an application that requires a specific database. As I look at various enterprise apps, they don't come stand-alone, but come in versions tailored for specific databases. If more people said "Do you support MySQL?" we'd see greater use. Chickens and eggs, but you have to start somewhere.

      --
      --Steve
    2. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by profplump · · Score: 3, Insightful

      First, if you're afraid of command-line work, you aren't running Oracle, or anything else in that class.

      Second, unless you're doing something out of the ordinary, simply installing mysql or postgres in the same way you usually install programs (be that apt-get, rpm, MS Installer, etc). is all you need to get the database up and running. The same is true of the GUI tools to manage the database -- the Windows installer for postgres includes PgAdminIII in the same package as the database itself.

      I'm not bashing MS SQL Server, but let's not pretend it has some magical ease-of-use that doesn't exist in other packages.

    3. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by kpharmer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I actually found sql server to be quite expensive - from licensing (which was running > $80k for a 4-way on enterprise edition) to labor.

      The lack of command-line features meant that many operational activities that could be automated required a dba to manually do the job via the gui. And lets not even talk about how you had to completely recreate DTS packages when promoting them from dev to test to prod...

      So, there are labor savings that you can get on sql server vs oracle, db2, postgresql, etc - but the lack of a command line interface wasn't a driver in my experience.

    4. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by blaster151 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, we are running Oracle--we're a software shop and we have to support both MS-SQL and Oracle installations. Oracle just sucks, in the opinions of myself and my colleagues. Sucks in terms of the amount of workarounds to do things that MS-SQL just does automatically. I'm not afraid of command-line work, but I am afraid of wasting time. That spells death for our company and threatens what we're trying to accomplish. After years of MS-SQL use, and about one year or so of trying to mirror the same tasks on Oracle, I've come to hate the product . . .

    5. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by Nkwe · · Score: 2, Informative
      The lack of command-line features meant that many operational activities that could be automated required a dba to manually do the job via the gui.

      Um what do you mean about the lack of command-line features? SQL Server has only one interface and that interface is SQL text sent to it from a client. The only thing that all the GUI tools do is write SQL statements for you and send them to the SQL engine. Anything that the GUI tools can do, you can do as well from the command line (ISQL / OSQL / Query Analyzer / Any software you write that can issue SQL requests.)

      In fact part of the very definition of a relational database requires that all communication with that server is via the standard query interface and that there are no special "tools" that directly access the underlying data store and bypass they query engine.

    6. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by Itninja · · Score: 2, Informative
      I'm sorry to say it -- it may be slower, but every time I want to create a database I'm going to be wanting to right click on something and select the 'create database' or 'attach database' option... not try to remember if the command is 'create database [databasename] [physcial file] [log file]' or 'create database name=[databasename] file=[physical file] log=[logfile] set recovery=full'
      Let me introduce you to a friend of mine: phpmyadmin (cost: $0)
      Then you even be sitting on your tractor out in the cornfield and still use your laptop to create and administer the db. And if you don't like the few extra seconds it take for the screen to refresh, use phpflashmyadmin (cost:$ 0)....
      --
      I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
    7. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by ednopantz · · Score: 2, Funny

      yeah but why let ignorance get in the way of MS bashing?

    8. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by kpharmer · · Score: 3, Informative

      > Which version are you using?

      SQL Server 7 & 2000

      > SQL Server 2005 is MUCH cheaper than $80k for a 4 way server,

      No, that depends on which version you need to use: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx

      So, if you've got an internet-accessible search engine running sql server (wasn't my decision) then you can easily blow over $80k to license a four-way server. In fact the original estimates we got were over $100k.

    9. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Umm, you do know that sql server has it's own scheduler for running scripts and stuff? SQLAgent? Obv. I guess not.

      --
      DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
    10. Re:SQL Server = Almost Free by WarwickRyan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've had experiece with MySQL, Informix and MS SQL Server as both DBA and developer. Recently I've dabbled a little with the free version of Ingres.

      Of those, SQL Server's the easiest to use. Followed by MySQL (with phpMyAdmin), Informix (with gui) and Ingres. SQL Server and MySQL are simple enough that even someone who's not too familiar with databases (they'd still need to understand the relational model, mind) can use them.

      If you're using your database as a simple datastore, with all of the logic being in a connected application then go with MySQL. It's a days work to install and learn all most people'll need to know. Which is massively cheaper than licencing of the other databases.

      Overall, SQL server the most cost effective option when you require functionality over normal SQL, but under that provided by say building a java application. All thanks to the functionality provided by Transact-SQL. It's not perfect though, I'm of the opinion that Microsoft should move closer to VB/VBA here (C# would be nice, but too difficult for some MS DBAs).

      An example would be DB warehousing: you can easily script everything you'd need to do to clean/import data from disparate sources in TSQL, without the expense of building an application and abstraction layer etc etc.

      Oh, and SQL Server also has fantastic documentation out of the box, with two excellent books available that tell you everything you'll ever need to know (and make you an excellent DBA): Inside SQL 2000 and SQL Server 2000 Programming.

  4. How is this a surprise? by jimicus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Unlike a desktop PC, any serious database installation demands a serious database and at least some professional expertise, even if it's just "sysadmin of many hats, one of which happens to be dabbling in the database".

    Therefore personnel costs probably don't vary that greatly. This only leaves two costs: the application and the database itself. Generally speaking, the business will choose the application first and the database second (or they certainly should do), which means the cost (if any) of the application falls under the heading of "we've got to have it so it really doesn't much matter how much it costs, within reason".

    This leaves the backend database, assuming there's a choice in the matter (not all applications support all databases, despite SQL being nominally independent). In such a project, licensing that is about the only really variable item in the list.

  5. Re:This just in! by rossifer · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This just in, 0 is less than 100!

    Seriously did someone really need to do a whole study to determine this and then write an article telling the world?
    If you need clustering, failover, remote backup, separation of indices from data, you make heavy use of materialized views, and you need to retrain your DBA's on a new database, there are a lot of people who still say that it will cost you more to use Postgres than Oracle. Don't even think about MySQL.

    But if you're starting from scratch on a new project and your current projections don't indicate you'll need a lot of those features, now the PHB's will have finally heard that free databases should be considered. We deployed on SQL Server and Oracle after developing on Postgres (because Postgres was about twice as fast when running the test suite). Postgres scaled better than Oracle on any single box configuration, and customer data sets never required more than 100GB databases in the worst case.

    We were forced to deploy on Oracle and SQL Server because none of our customers thought that Postgres was enterprise qualified. Now, some of them might.

    Regards,
    Ross
  6. Depends how you define business (lottery is not?) by foobsr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "German Lotto Company Plays it Safe with MySQL Cluster"

    http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_ 1188.html

    And their application is not critical either, just win or lose.

    CC.

    --
    TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
  7. 60% of.. by homer_s · · Score: 2, Funny

    So what is the cost of commercial databases? Do the math:

    Cost of OSS DB=$0 , which is 50% cheaper than commercial DBs.

    0.5 * X = $0

    X=$0

    So, commercial databases really cost $0. I'm calling Oracle to get my copy.

    (Yeah, yeah, TCO is not $0...)

  8. your mileage may vary by kpharmer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a pretty trivial article which seems driven by ingres.

    Anyhow, a few things that I'd consider:

    1. since as the author mentions the open source databases aren't ideal for mission critical applications (yet), then many organizations will find themselves supporting multiple databases. Say, oracle for financials & crm & the corporate warehouse and postgresql for a variety of smaller projects. Makes sense in many ways - except: oracle is already free for the small databases anyway, and now you need the dbas to support multiple products. This is going to increase your labor costs - not decrease it.

    2. for many large analytical databases (data warehouses, etc) the cost of using open source are actually higher than closed source. This is because db2, oracle, etc are better at using the hardware than the open source alternatives. They've got better optimizers, parallelism, far better partitioning, better better pool management, automatic query rewrite, etc. So, a $100k oracle lisense running on a $100-200k 4-way (i know, assumes discount) will out-perform postgresql (free) on a 16-way ($1m) in many ways.

    3. for some applications mysql could be more expensive than oracle. Ok, not just because you need to do far more testing with mysql to make sure that none of the wacky silent errors are affecting your code. But also because of the odd licensing - that requires its own faq and tips to just license the product if you can't figure it out. Then there's enterprise db - not very familiar with this one, but I doubt that it is free. Meanwhile, at the low-end the big-three database vendors all support free products. So, whether or not you pay more may very well depend on how you use the software.

    Of course, if you're at a company like mine, and get to bypass purchasing and just review the license & install - you probably are saving a vast amount of money after all.

    1. Re:your mileage may vary by quantum+bit · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you're paying a million for a 16-way you're an idiot. Partition your data and cluster cheaper machines. That's what Google does.

  9. product support is over-rated by kpharmer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > People are far more dependable when they're working for money than for charity.

    not when they suck - which they frequently do when working on product support teams.

    yes, I'm glad that I'm working with supported products - but I also avoid calling them like the plague. It is very much a worst-case scenario.

  10. Re:DUH! by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The news is that someone has quantified how much cheaper the open source solutions are. Obviously, a free database costs 0% of a commercial database when you just look at buying/licensing the software, but that's not the only cost you have. This study factors in other costs of running a database, and then concludes that "open source databases" are 50% "cheaper". (Scare quotes, because I haven't RTFA, so I don't know what they are comparing with what)

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  11. Re:This just in! by newt0311 · · Score: 2, Informative
    "I miss summary management (materialized views, dimensions, query rewrite), various ETL features, streams, data guard, updatable views, multi-table inserts, log miner, flashback, database links, packages, automatic workload repository, OEM, and the several months of my life I spent working around PostgreSQL's lack of anything comparable to these features."

    PostgreSQL has query rewrite and updatable view thanks to its rules system. the others are missing (to my knowledge).

  12. Smells like utopia by Caesar+Tjalbo · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'd so love to choose the db. But noooo.
    "Here's the COBOL manual." "Whut?" "We don't have a license for Fortran anymore. Oh, and we're behind on the documentation because we were going to migrate to ."
    So OK, that was the worst example. Where ever I go, I always encounter legacy databases that have to be worked with. That and an Access 'thing' lovingly setup and maintained by dr. Clueless which managed to wurm itself into the production process.

    --
    "I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
  13. Re:phpmyadmin is great by Bloater · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'd recommend pgadmin3.

  14. Where are the test results? by msobkow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do you seriously think any CIO with a functioning brain cell is going to go with free unsupported software when they can't even find a single reference to such databases from any certified performance evaluation companies or organizations?

    The downtime cost of one single failure in a five year period for a mission critical system can easily run 100 times the cost of a commercial product with support. Only bean counting fools risk their entire business without properly assessed risks and disaster recovery plans.

    Not having someone to source the recovery of the smouldering crater that was your data center is a huge issue.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  15. Free versions from the "big guys" by davidbrit2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    If the cost difference we're talking about here is simply the licensing/upgrading cost, it's worth noting that several of the popular "mega expensive" database platforms offer free (as in $0) versions - albeit with certain functionality removed.

    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
    Only supports databases up to 4GB, and is lacking the built-in task scheduler, and most of the high-availability and business intelligence features, but is perfectly usable for small-to-mid-sized applications/web sites. Plus you can upgrade later to one of the fancier versions if necessary.

    Oracle 10g Express Edition
    I haven't had a chance to play with this yet, but it looks similar to SQL Server Express in terms of features and limitations.

    IBM DB2 Express-C
    I don't really know anything about this one. I just now found it in a fit of "I wonder..." The product comparison pages don't really say much about it, but they'll send it to you free on a DVD, so that's pretty neat.

    Sybase ASE Express
    Never used this one either. It seems to be only for Linux.

    Though honestly, from what I've seen of Postgre, I'd almost think that one would be worth looking into more so than these for small systems. One of these days I'll get around to experimenting with it. The advantage with the Express Editions is, however, that you don't have such a nasty learning curve if you can just jump right in with a database platform you're familiar with from at work. Why else would I do something insane like running php + MS SQL Server? :)

  16. Re:PostgreSQL support rocks too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A number of companies like CommandPrompt, EnterpriseDB, and even Sun Microsystems offer support contract for Postgres. The latter two even offer 24x7 enterprise class support. All three companies seem to be working hard with the community to advance and grow the postgres community. It rocks! The MySQL stuff seems to be a lot more closed. Yeah there are a lot more ISVs but I like the mailing lists, community and the environment around postgres. Also the comment about really low admin is spot on with the right contrib stuff it is way easier than both Oracle and MySQL.

  17. Re:I think it's fair to say by Cederic · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Except that if you chat to MySQL (the company) they'll tell you that they do have high performance scalability, fail-over clustering and all the other things. However, they're also keen to charge you a licence fee for that stuff, and support costs at the level you'd expect for qualified professional support staff.

    So TCO pretty rapidly does become an issue.

    Oracle lost a sale to us because despite having a product that would give us far better performance the TCO argument didn't work out. Frankly we'd rather just chuck another CPU and a few gig of RAM at the problem than give the money to Oracle.

    I like Oracle, I want to use Oracle, but if they're 40% more expensive than the alternative (taking into account licencing, support costs, hardware, training, recruitment, maintenance overhead, etc) then I'm not doing my job properly if I recommend we pay that premium ahead of an alternative open source database that still meets our technical requirements.

    Of course, the same applies the other way. I wouldn't recommend we use Postgres because we have no skillsets in-house, and recruitment would hurt, and it just doesn't give us anything our existing DBMS lack.

    If TCO wasn't a concern we'd all get a pay rise...