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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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Sounds great! Maybe GM will "threaten" to buy fuel for my car, or Amazon will "threaten" to return my library books for me so I don't have to.
> If you came up with a ratio of $spent/$productivity, Oracle would probably throw a divide by zero error.
Whereas MySQL would silently insert a default value.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Customer: XYZ doesnt work. Help me!
Oracle: MySQLs XYZ is crap - you better buy a real DBMS. As a support customer we can offer you Oracle 10g Enterprise at a reasonable prize!
Serious question: What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server? I asked that to an Oracle DBA once, and he just got red in the face and stammered about having more options to configure things the way he wanted. I asked what exactly he configured, and basically got a lecture on Microsoft being evil. I then asked if he thought Larry Ellison was a saint, and the conversation just continued to devolve.
Serious question: why is Oracle considered so much better that SQL Server?
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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.
They're not aimed at the same markets. I haven't followed this too closely, but I assume the reason Oracle is interested in MySQL at all is that they're somewhat complimentary products. MySQL is great if you want a lightweight, fast database that doesn't need to be terribly robust.
I doubt MySQL is ever going to have the sort of PL/SQL support Oracle does, and you're not likely to see things like enterprise-class clustering, data partitioning, replication, and so forth. If you added all that to MySQL, it'd wind up just like Oracle - big, complex, and expensive. They occupy opposite ends of the spectrum.
And for what it's worth, I've got an Oracle database on a modest single-processor AMD server with a single hard drive handling about 20 inserts per second with R-tree spatial indexing and it keeps up just fine, with a bit of tuning. Given a real server with multiple drives I'd be able to optimize things much better, but it's just a testbed.
Comparing MySQL to Oracle is a little like comparing a high-performance motorcycle to an M1A2 tank. They'll both get you from point A to point B, but with different levels of cost and safety.
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As for Oracle support, it was the main thing we looked forward to at first (this was the mid-90's); but it, too, got worse over time. I would not trust Oracle to properly support MySQL, especially since they have no motivation to push it, and they are not the developers (and in fact are in competition with them).
Dog is my co-pilot.
Oracle has one kind of customer, MySQL has another kind of customer.
Just a guess, but I'll go out on a limb and state that any hopes MySQL had in wooing really pricey billable hour customers is evaporating. Even if I'm wrong, the mood at MySQL has probably been a little less happy when they figured out Oracle was going after the top of the consulting/support dollars.
There's still *so* much they have to offer for businesses willing to pay. They just need to keep at it and understand that Oracle won't be the first company to do this to them. Microsoft will surely follow with some kind of crazy scheme. They have to at some point as their arrangement with Novell suggests they need to at least appear as if they have something like OSS to offer.
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What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server?
I'm rather fond of their Analytic Functions, which allow for convenient queries against other table rows. For example, given a table of time-stamped log entries you can write a query to "Show me the time intervals between successive log entries."
I'm hoping these will show up in Postgresql soon.
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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.
. . . to the Nine Circles of Oracle Support Hell.
What?
>"Serious question: What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server? I asked that to >an Oracle DBA once, and he just got red in the face and stammered about having more options >to configure things the way he wanted. I asked what exactly he configured, and basically >got a lecture on Microsoft being evil. I then asked if he thought Larry Ellison was a >saint, and the conversation just continued to devolve.
>Serious question: why is Oracle considered so much better that SQL Server?"
If you ever run a LARGE datbase at the enterprise level, you will see the difference very quickly. When you are dealing with thousands or tens of thousands of users are millions of records, Oracle will kill SQL Server on performance and response time.
Also as already noted Oracle doesn't limit you to using a Windows server the way SQL Server does.
Having used various versions of Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and (God help me) even on occasion Access for the database behind various applications in different jobs, the only 2 I would recommend are Oracle and MySQL depending on the size of the database and the budget of the business buying the product. For small businesses that I have worked in before MySQL is great; it's free, and works well unless you are talking about large data sets or large numbers of users at the same time. For enterprise level systems like those used in government or extremely large organizations give me Oracle any day, but then you are dealing with budgets large enough that the cost of Oracle is easily dealt with.
C_Kode Software is releasing a new version of the MySQL Database. Very Unbreakable MySQL (V.U.M.) MySQL. This will be based of anything that we like and will prove to be better because I said it was. It will be very fast. We like to call it Vroom VUM! Does your app VUM? If not, shell out $50 a year to me and I will allow you to tell anyone your app VUMs.
Not quite true. I supported a large customer (a national, no nationwide, building society in the UK), that has several million customers in the DB, and a couple of thousand users directly logged onto it, and several thousand remote users. (this is SQL Server BTW), and its fine, fast and responsive.
:)
Now, the things we had to do to make this work are basically: use stored procedures.
Now I work with a large breakdown company that uses Oracle, and we've seen barely a difference. Oracle is just as performant, and just as scalable. Oracle support wasn't too helpful with a recent 100% CPU issue ("install all patches" they said, then they broke something else and their answer was "upgrade to 10g").
One big difference that you'll notice when working with both is locking. Oracle basically does row-level locking, SQLServer tries to optimise locks and escaltes them to lock pages then tables as you lock more and more rows. If you write your app without taking this into account, you could have problems with SQLServer.
One thing with Oracle - use an application server to limit connections, don't try to write a client-server app on it, each connection hogs too much memory and holds query cache latches for too long.
But of course, these 'issues' aren't problems if you're not just slapping any old code together to run against the DBs. As with everything, they all need some care and attention with how you're working with them.
I have also used Informix and DB/2 on an AS/400. For really, really big DBs - give me DB2 anytime. that really is unbreakable, and IBM will give you a 'free' AS/400 specially optimised to run it on
Rorschach1,
:-) In either case, we get very good gas mileage by comparison!
Indeed we view MySQL competing in different markets from the legacy closed source databases. We have focused on new applications, often web-based systems, ecommerce, reporting, analysis and so on, rather than traditional ERP applications. There are many features that DB2 and Oracle have of which they are very proud. And we are also proud *not* to have all of the complexity of those features. Our focus is not on features, but on reliability, ease of use and performance.
Charles Phillips of Oracle remarked at a conference I was speaking at that Oracle and MySQL are both in the transportation business, but Oracle is the 747 and MySQL is the Toyota. I think that is a very apt analogy. But if you prefer the M1A2 tank, so be it.
-Marten Mickos, MySQL AB
Oracle performs better in enterprise environments, hands down. Oracle Clustering is more intelligently implemented than SQL Clustering. PL/SQL scripts are easier to debug than those in MS SQL.
OTOH, SQL Server is extremely simple to install and administer for low volume environments. DTS Provides a nice simple transport mechanism. Enterprise manager, while kludgy, is relatively intuitive.
For fine tuning, Oracle provides finer control - but that's not to say that SQL doesn't provide a lot of control over DB Tuning features.
Then there are the little things that crop up over experienced usage - like the first time you try to take a MS SQL backup from one machine to another and end up perplexed for an hour. Or when you're 6 gig backup file won't copy from one machine to another without 3rd party software (really a windows issue, not SQL Specific). Or when you discover that you can't replicate certain tables or columns, can't copy blobs using sql scripts, etc. Things like that.
A lot of applications treat the database as a storage engine and leave platform specific performance enhancements by the wayside in favor of database-agnostity. Because of this, MySQL is much closer to being a legitimate competitor than you would think. People talk about "ACID Compliance", but really most applications don't need ACID Compliance and just because you can't do something one particular way doesn't mean it can't be done.
The thread here seems to question (a) the value of Oracle and (b) why this would be good for Oracle's customers. Here are my 0.0002 cents:
My current client is a large insurance company. (More than $7 billion dollars of policies a year underwritten by a staff of more than 1,200 people.)
We have lots of Oracle, SQL/Server, and MS/Access applications all over the place. The Oracle data is generally available to everyone. We have more than 50 analysts who use a combination of Hyperion (formerly Brio) and SAS to model the data.
Oracle's additional configuration options enable our Oracle servers to support phenomenally more people than comparable gear running Access or SQL/Server. In addition, we have really good SAN devices that are backed up every night.
However, the limited number of Oracle DBA's mean that users must wait (sometimes forever) to get their application written in, or ported to, Oracle.
Where the SQL/Plus Oracle code is controlled, documented, and fully SOX compliant, the same is not always true for the Access and SQL/Server code.
As a result, the individual departments are forced to use Access and SQL/Server. Their applications do not talk to each other. The data in those applications are "hidden" from people in other departments.
SOoooo...... users develop "personal" and "departmental" applications in Access and SQL/Server which we in IT find and port to Oracle when we can.
MySQL apps are generally easier to port to Oracle than SQL/Server or Access. (Never mind the application layer. That is a different discussion for a different time.) I would love to provide MySQL to departments across the board on servers that are supportable by corporate IT. Then users could build their apps on-the fly, expect support from my team on an ongoing basis, and faster conversions to Oracle in the long run.
Wouldn't that be sweet.
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Postgres is fully ACID compliant
As is MySQL.
has mature support for just about everything
It lacks anlaytic functions.
"Postgres, the only other threat on the first point, was nullified with Oracle's acquisition of the only backend to it with atomic commits"
No, it was the innodb for MySQL that Oracle acquired, this has nothing to do with PostGresQL. Unlike MySQL PostgresQL has always had attomic commits.
If SQLLite has stored procedures, triggers, clustering, job scheduling, remote tables, and user-defined partitioning, then you've something to talk about.
Otherwise, STFU.
Thanks.
This behavior is perfectly valid. Oracle does the same thing. This is a feature: you, the user, can choose to ROLLBACK or continue on error. Would you want a typo to abort a transaction during interactive use?