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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."

13 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.

  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 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
  3. 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
  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  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. 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.
  10. 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? :)