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.""

Comments

Mikos is right.

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:Mikos is right.

[jimbojw]

> 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

This is not a trivial point.

Brand recognition goes a long way when a company is shopping for support. Companies that already pay for Oracle support might be very willing to tack-on MySQL support from them, rather than to establish a new relationship with MySQL.

Also, since Oracle will be distributing the MySQL database themselves, the unsuspecting middle-manager might think that "MySQL" is just another Oracle offering, or component of their architecture. It's the old "bundled with" implies "created by" heuristic.

Re:Oracle Sucks

[nuzak]

> 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.

I hope they do it for PostgreSQL, too.

[khasim]

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.

Re:Oracle distributing MySQL?

[Rob T Firefly]

(*) I just pulled that number from clear air.

As a highly-trained professional business analyst at the top of my field, I'll thank you to stop muscling in on my freaking scam.

Oracle

[Scareduck]

Actually buying their products was an out-and-out nightmare, as the rules changed every six months. You never got a consistent sales rep dedicated to your account, and they were always bringing in someone new who couldn't explain what was going on especially well. You had to keep buying new releases, because support for old versions died out, quicker and quicker over time.

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).

Re:Oracle

[Rorschach1]

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.

Re:I hope they do it for PostgreSQL, too.

[Zonk (troll)]

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.

Re:I hope they do it for PostgreSQL, too.

[ortholattice]

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.

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.

Re:Oracle distributing MySQL?

[martenmickos]

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

Re:Typical support call

[stefanlasiewski]

On the other hand, Oracle 10g is overkill for many shops. MySQL is a great solution for many small databases, and Oracle Support now offers some more legitimacy to the product.

I've seen a number of shops with a situation like this:

Customer: "We're a small shop. We need an RDMBS. We can't afford a DBA. The sales rep said the Oracle Installer is easy to use, and I can install Oracle on my own.

But to install the Oracle *client* , I need to download 3 ISOs, install Xwindows on the server, tunnel Xwindows over SSH. While installing the Oracle Server, the installer crashed out halfway through due to some Java bug. When I tried the installer a second time, the installer refuses to proceed and says that this database already exists.

I called your support line urgently for help, and was transferred not once, not twice but SIX times before they threw my case over over to some department called 'Customer Care' because of a problem with my 'entitlement'. This is my first time calling Oracle Support, so forgive me if I don't understand your byzantine phone support.

I opened this case last Thursday. Today is Tuesday, and I only just heard back from the entitlement department--- I called Saturday, but was told I had to call back Monday (I thought I said this was urgent)--- they finally got back to me with the proper license.

Now that I have the license, can someone please help me with the problem I ran into 5 days ago?

While I was waiting for this problem, my friend came over, installed MySQL in 5 minutes, and created a basic data model in 30 minutes. I can do basic data changes with phpMyAdmin. THIS is what I need. Please tell me why I need to spend $10K on some Oracle 10g Support Licenses?"