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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.
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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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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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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.
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).
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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 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.
Thanks everyone for the interesting comments. It's a good discussion and I think there have been some good points made. I see Oracle and MySQL serving two distinct markets, so in most cases we are not competitors.
One point of clarification: I never said that Oracle has threatened MySQL. (I think this may have been the writer's editorial comment.) Instead, I view it as a positive thing that Oracle distributes MySQL. I have often suggested that Oracle should distribute MySQL and I've made the same suggestion to Microsoft. Perhaps Oracle, Microsoft or IBM will provide support for MySQL and that could be good for open source in general. (And note that Red Hat, HP and others already do so.)
If people want to buy support for MySQL from Oracle, that's great. And of course, if they want to buy it from us, we are fine with that also.
-Marten Mickos, MySQL AB
>"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.
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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.
Postgres is fully ACID compliant
As is MySQL.
has mature support for just about everything
It lacks anlaytic functions.