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Oracle Lines Up Unbreakable MySQL
munchola writes "MySQL CEO, Marten Mickos, has revealed to CBRonline that Oracle has threatened to provide support for MySQL and is already distributing the open source database. "They have hinted to us that they will," said Mickos, indicating that the database giant is planning to repeat its October 2006 Unbreakable Linux plan, which saw it undercut Red Hat with enterprise Linux support. Despite the competitive threat, Mickos is unmoved. "I hope they do that," he said, noting that it would be seen as an endorsement of the open source database.""
I find it hard to believe that a company with the amount of overhead that Oracle has will be able to provide mySQL support for the same rates that mySQL can; the primary benefit for Oracle is that they'll be able to offer bundled support with people who already have Oracle support and want the convenience of dealing with one company for all their support needs.
Definitely a win-win situation for mySQL, because they get press and legitimacy without losing too much business. The "unbreakable linux" deal probably hurt RedHat a hell of a lot more than this will hurt mySQL.
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The rest of us can push MySQL saying "this is what Oracle recommends, just free".
(*) I just pulled that number from clear air.
Same reasons. The more publicity, the better. If Oracle believes in it enough to offer support, everyone else can feel a little bit easier about using it.
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And that heaven for that! Look, most of us want a database system we can use for our own limited but still important purposes. We don't need a lot of enterprise-level crud bogging us down. I'd never think of using MySQL on the large scale, but then that's what I have Oracle for. Oracle is over-muscled for a lot of simple stuff; MySQL is better for a medium-weight application.
And as an aside, the reason that Oracle is doing this is to get their name in the small-to-middle size market. Oracle's been dominating larger firms for years now, but that means there's little room for growth. If they can try to reach smaller markets and spread their name around, when some of these smaller companies outgrow their MySQL set-ups, Oracle will be ready to step in with their enterprise apps.
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I am sure this is just an effort on Oracle's part to capture as much of the low end database market as they can, then offer a seemless, supported upgrade to Oracle's DBMS for those who reach the limits of mysql or who start needing requirements that mysql can't support. This lets them continue to bombard customers with reasons to upgrade, while still getting support contract money from them. If the mysql community benefits from this, I am sure its just an accidental byproduct of a marketing and sales effort and nothing more.
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I doubt they'd support PostgreSQL. MySQL is basically a non-competitor. While PostgreSQL still isn't, it's much closer. Postgres is fully ACID compliant, is very strict about it's data, has mature support for just about everything (still lacks in clustering and replication, though...), is very fast, scales well, etc.
When you hit the limitations with MySQL, need a feature it doesn't support, etc, Oracle can point you to a sales rep. There are far less limitations with PostgreSQL. It wouldn't make as much business sense to encourage it's use.
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I doubt very much that most DBAs that have a support contract with Oracle and move to MySQL will say "OK, now we don't need that contract anymore". They will keep it as insurance for who knows if MySQL will work as expected? They feel they may need to move back to Oracle in the future. After all, if they had felt at ease with MySQL to begin with, they wouldn't need Oracle to tell them how good it is.
I doubt it. Unlike MySQL, PostgreSQL is much more of a direct competitor to Oracle. In fact, I've converted PG databases to Oracle with ease. (Why did I do this? The client wanted Oracle, so I ported our PG product to it.) The translation of some rather intensive PL/pgSQL to PL/SQL was almost trivial, with a translator script I wrote in a day. The resemblance is so close that if I didn't know better (and maybe I don't), I would almost say PG "borrowed" some of its syntax from Oracle. Going back would be a little harder if some of the more obscure Oracle PL/SQL features were used, but probably not rocket science for most applications. There are other interesting resemblances - you can see very meticulous, almost obsessive Oracle emulation in the behavior of date/time stuff (search the PG source code for "Oracle" - beautifully commented stuff is in there).
With MySQL on the other hand, even without getting into an ACID problems discussion (some of which have been improved in recent releases), has a very poor feature overlap with Oracle, not a minor one being not having anything like PL/SQL.
I guess the thing that bothers me personally about this is that it is publicity for MySQL, subconsciously encouraging more people to adopt it over the (IMHO) much better PostgreSQL. I think that it will poison your mind to learn DB theory from MySQL. :) But
that is just my personal view and I encourage alternate viewpoints.
Two things are very important for Oracle:
- For its platform to be the only one with real, honest-to-goodness atomic commits.
- For its platform to be the only one that's unbreakable ("can't break it; can't break in").
MySQL has not, and will not be a threat to Oracle on the first point, (Postgres, the only other threat on the first point, was nullified with Oracle's acquisition of the only backend to it with atomic commits), and the second point bears very close scrutiny. What does "unbreakable" mean? For one thing, it means 100% uptime. For another, it means that you the admin, can't easily break it either. Anything can be rolled back, or you can just stop using the (unbroken) database.Now when we hear "unbreakable MySQL" we have to ask ourselves: what does Oracle mean by unbreakable, and is it an offer to give MySQL all of the features that traditionally correspond with Oracle's image ("can't break it, can't break in")? No, they do not.
By "unbreakable MySQL" they mean one thing and one thing only: MySQL frozen solid.
Oracle's idea of unbreakable MySQL is a three-pronged approach:
- Transactions. A single transaction should be like a TCP/IP handshake. High overhead, high error tolerance and correction, high processing needs. MySQL now is like UDP. Oracle is like your EIDE bus. The transactions Oracle wants MySQL to use are the exact ones you couldn't imagine going on inside your computer, on any fast bus. When you realize there are database engines that handle a hundred million concurrent connections you'll realize how significant this is.
- Fault tolerance. Oracle's idea of fault tolerance for MySQL is RAID-1. Neither more, nor less. (Look at the specs.)
- Journaling. Oracle's idea of journaled MySQL is distributed MySQL, with each node being further out of sync than the last. This is hard to believe, but it's true.
That's about it. Beware the wolf who wants to guard your sheep, people!You're obviously using the wrong channels. I've never had any trouble obtaining Oracle licenses. The streamlined acquisition process goes like this:
1. Government agency your company works for pays $90 million for Oracle licenses
2. Larry Ellison gives your congressman a nice campaign contribution
3. Government agency happily hands over license certificates by the wheelbarrow load to show that they were needed in the first place
Never once had to deal with a sales rep.