MySQL Founder Starts Open Database Alliance, Plans Refactoring

Gary Pendergast writes "Monty Widenius, the 'father' of MySQL, has created the the Open Database Alliance, with the aim of becoming the industry hub for the MySQL open source database. He wants to unify all MySQL-related development and services, providing a potential solution to the fragmentation and uncertainty facing the communities, businesses and technical experts involved with MySQL, following the news of the Oracle acquisition of Sun." Related to this, an anonymous reader writes that "MySQL has announced a project to refactor MySQL to be a more Drizzle-like database." Update: 05/14 20:50 GMT by T : Original headline implied that this was a project of Sun, but (thanks to the open source nature of MySQL) it's actually Monty Widenius — no longer with Sun — leading this effort.

Comments

PostgreSQL

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bite the bullet and port to it. In the process, you may have to learn a bit about how databases are actually supposed to work, but that's probably good for you.

why?

[Lord Ender]

For apps that need basic SQL functionality and aren't particularly-high load, I use SQLite. For app that need advanced SQL or high load, I use Postgres. I can't imagine a scenario when I would chose to use MySQL (or MS SQL, for that matter).

Re:why?

[Lord Ender]

WHY use MySQL? Gee, because it's well documented,

That's certainly a good thing, i'll give you that.

it plays nicely with Perl and PHP,

I just threw up. As my keyboard shorted in its vomit bath, it outputted a random string of characters and symbols, which just happen to execute without warnings when piped to perl.

Re:why?

[Lord Ender]

MySQL works for many of us.

I didn't ask if it worked. I asked in what scenario it would be a superior option (to the well-informed application architect, of course). The only real reason you gave is that you don't know much about Postgres. That means you're not really qualified to answer the question.

Does it scale better? Does it have better security? Is it easier to manage in some way? Is there a killer feature its two closest competitors lack? Those might be actual answers to the question. "I don't know much about it" is not an answer.

It's certainly commonly perceived that Postgres will scale better, and that it has a rather complete featureset. If this is indeed the case, I can't see a reason to select MySQL for a new project. Why limit yourself?

Re:why?

[rho]

MySQL is well documented so that all the bugs are turned into features:

Mein Broder: So, in MySQL, when you exceed the maximum size of a TEXT column, does it throw an exception, or does it just truncate the data to fit?

Me: Well, it being MySQL, it will probably do something differently on Tuesdays than it does on the vernal equinox... but it probably will throw an exception and bitch about how you suck at data planning. Which is the proper thing to do, because who would want their database silently truncating data?

Mein Broder: In this case, I'd actually prefer it, 'cause otherwise I'd have to programmatically truncate it myself. These data aren't really that important, and truncating would be acceptable. It would be nice if I could be a lazy programmer.

Me: I think you're out of luck. But let's take a look:

MySQL Manual -- If you assign a value to a BLOB or TEXT column that exceeds the column type's maximum length, the value is truncated to fit.

Me: Astounding. Your desire to be a lazy, shiftless programmer has been facilitated by other lazy, shiftless programmers who have built the world's most rickety database management system.

Re:why?

[Eponymous Coward]

MySQL is better because I know how to use it and it works well enough. If I were to switch to Postgres, then I would have to spend time learning it.

My manager would rather me move some other feature forward rather than replace database A with database B.

When we hire somebody new, it is easier to find candidates who already know MySQL. That matters too.

-ec

Re:why?

[drinkypoo]

I just threw up. As my keyboard shorted in its vomit bath, it outputted a random string of characters and symbols, which just happen to execute without warnings when piped to perl.

Is the new slashcode out already?

Re:why?

[asdf7890]

For instance if you never delete from a table there's no need to bother trying to vacuum it.

Not quite. Because of the way postgres operates (MVCC) UPDATEs will result in space appearing in table structures too. With an MVCC based DB nothing is updated in-place (actually, in any good DB nothing is updated in-place, but with MVCC this is more obviously implied by any good description of how things work with multiple distinct transactions present). When a row is updated new version is added and the old version is removed when the transaction is complete and no other transactions might refer to the old copy. This has significant advantages for some use cases and loads, and some disadvantages in other

The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiversion_concurrency_control) isn't a great description though there is a bit more relevant information in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapshot_isolation.

I've not used postgres much in anger, so I'm no expert, but personally I thought that being able to manually schedule cleanup was a good idea performance wise.

Re:why?

[Splab]

People like you are undermining the industry. You straddle around claiming to be a database developer with x years under the belt, but you are in fact putting your clients data in grave danger and when shit finally hits the fan on your mysql installation you are going to wish you listened to the people who knew better.

Re:Yes, but....

[Ilgaz]

I don't get why they treat Oracle like AOL acquiring Netscape. It is a database development company which has no solution to fill MySQL'es place if I haven't mistaken.

I think after these incidents, large companies will think 1 billion times when they got the idea of acquiring an open source project. They treat Oracle like AOL for God's sake.

Who?

[fm6]

HEADLINE: MySQL Creates Open Database Alliance, Plans Refactoring

MySQL the database application? It created a new alliance? It plans to refactor itself? Astonishing, if true.

MySQL the software company? Uh, not, because Monty no longer has any connection with them.

You mean Monty did these things. Not "MySQL". His identification with MySQL is pretty strong, but I don't think they'll merge any time soon!

Re:YAY!!!!

[Ilgaz]

If they don't come up with a pure technical reason, a proof for forking the project rather than "big company hate" or conspiracy theories, they are already taking this decision politically.

If they think Oracle purchased Sun just to kill their project for 7.2 billion dollars in such state of Global economy, they are bordering megalomania.

MySQL AB ver. 2?

[Stan Vassilev]

It was during MySQL AB's time that MySQL began a stange play with the community by first dropping official community binary builds, and then severely delaying source code releases as well (while supplying commercial clients with more stable and up to date releases).

It was again during MySQL AB's time when the announcement came that MySQL's source code base will start to "close down", by releasing many new features only commercially, and with no open source code. When Sun bought MySQL AB, they reversed those policies and stood behind MySQL being open, without exceptions.

Now Mr. Monty Widenius has taken the money Sun paid for MySQL AB, and used it to open a new company and an "Open" alliance which is "designed to become the industry hub for the MySQL open source database, including MySQL and derivative code, binaries, training, support, and other".

If even Mr. Widenius has noble intentions regarding MySQL, his past in MySQL AB and his current interaction with Sun/Oracle seem to leave another impression.

facebook uses it

[Toreo asesino]

...I saw in one presentation their chief architect did. They had no complaints about it; apparently it scales brilliantly as long as the db schema is very simple.

For heavy-weight databases though, I gather it's not so good.

Monty Widenius

[StikyPad]

*Opens the envelope*

What do you call a game show host in a goatse pose?

Re:Yes, but....

[Dragonslicer]

I thought Oracle was a database? Is it different enough from MySQL to bother keeping both?

If you have to ask that question, just believe us when we answer "Yes."