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Drizzle's Future Moving To Rackspace?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the free-range-coders dept.

abartels writes "It seems like there's been nothing but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there's good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn't with Oracle, but with the Rackspace Cloud."

41 comments

  1. Fo' Shizzle! by spammeister · · Score: 1, Funny

    --Insert Snoop Dogg line here--

    --
    I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
  2. Better Headline by geekoid · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Drizzles hizzle, fo' shizzle

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    1. Re:Better Headline by geekoid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      off topic? it is specific to this article.

      Apparently the mods are very white today.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  3. Who is the Drizzle? by Kyn · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Only Master Shake knows for sure.

    1. Re:Who is the Drizzle? by Pojut · · Score: 2, Funny

      Shake: Drizzle here.
      Meatwad: Hello, yes Drizzle. Violent criminals have put...Fat Albert, what, what it's...
      Frylock: No, no, it's Prince Albert.
      Meatwad: Oh, have put...Fat Albert in a can, in your can.
      Shake: I'll need precise coordinates, ma'am.
      Meatwad: Oh okay, it's...it's in your butt, boy! It's in your butt! Did you hear me? It's in your butt!

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    2. Re:Who is the Drizzle? by the_fat_kid · · Score: 1

      no Shake, Drizzle!

      --
      -- Sig under construction...
    3. Re:Who is the Drizzle? by Pojut · · Score: 1

      Frylock: Here's what your internet search turned up...
      Shake: Sex with animals? But there's no time, man!

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    4. Re:Who is The Drizzle? by Pojut · · Score: 1

      When I get pissed, you get mist...

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    5. Re:Who is the Drizzle? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't care if this is Offtopic. It's funny as hell. I think an ATHF reference is totally appropriate.

    6. Re:Who is the Drizzle? by Conchobair · · Score: 1

      You can expect a forecast of vengeance in the near future.

  4. Who is The Drizzle? by silmarilwest · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A dark band. Dark like the cloud of justice. A band with the power to control the weather... and has laser feet. That's cool, right?

  5. This won't help get the word out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't say much about Rackspace's programmers...but if they host drizzle.org on the same infrastructure as the rest of Rackspace's managed clients, there won't be many people finding out about it...

  6. It's still basically MySQL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure, the Drizzle crew has made some minor changes, but Drizzle is essentially still MySQL. That means it still has many of MySQL's many, many flaws and thousands of unfixed bugs.

    Their work is interesting and innovative, but they should have built it off of PostgreSQL or even SQLite, rather than MySQL. I'm well aware of the developer connections with MySQL, but that's no reason to continue using what should be a dead project due to its lack of quality.

    1. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by mmsimanga · · Score: 2, Insightful

      but that's no reason to continue using what should be a dead project due to its lack of quality.

      Maybe the user base of millions upon millions of web sites is enough motivation to continue developing developing the "low quality" project.

    2. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blogs with cached content that make a DB query every 10 minutes aren't a real test of quality.

    3. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are billions upon billions of people living in squalor in India and China. That doesn't mean we should all live that way.

      These "millions and millions" of web sites have made a mistake, plain and simple. Any use of MySQL is an error these days. PostgreSQL and Firebird are better of higher-end uses, while SQLite is better for low-end situations. MySQL has been squeezed out by much better offerings from other developers.

      The best thing for those web sites and their operators isn't to feed them more MySQL, even if you call it "Drizzle". Rather, they need help migrating to one of the more mature, higher-quality alternatives.

    4. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by krow · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hi!

      Drizzle is transactional by default.

      Bad data? We don't insert it, we toss an error (and if we don't in some cases, it is a bug).

      We purposely went after the issues in the MySQL gotchas list when we began (http://sql-info.de/mysql/).

      Our DDL? Soon will be transactional. Our data dictionary is federated out to engines, so unlike MySQL in our system the engine owns the definition so you can't end up in a situation where the engine is off from the definition.

      I wouldn't make the assumption that because we have a similar ancestor that we are the same at all. It would be like assuming Postgres and Ingres are the same (which they are most certainly not).

      When I first started doing the rewrite I considered Postgres (and spoke to a number of the developers of it at the time). In the first year I went back and forth in my head on that decision. There would have been a lot of things that would have made PG a better starting point. By the time we reached 5.1 the MySQL codebase was junk. Postgres would have made for a good decision but there were three drawbacks.

      1) Postgres is C and not C++. I find that I can write code in C++ nowadays much faster then I can in C (and it comes out just as fast, the C++ "is slow" is an archaic view).

      2) Postgres is not designed to use threads. I prefer to work with threads over processes (and there is a lot of good and bad with both concepts).

      3) Sun wouldn't have paid for it ;)

      I wouldn't consider SQLite. It is neither type safe, not concurrent. It is a great database, but it doesn't solve any of my needs. I did think about Firebird for a bit, but while I know the MySQL and Postgres codebase, I don't know the Firebird code at all.

      Cheers,
            -Brian

      --
      You can't grep a dead tree.
    5. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by TheSunborn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I am pretty sure that PostgreSQL uses thread from version 8.0. Was that not one of the changes they made to improve the quality of their windows implementation?

      But more interesting: Have Drizzle fixed the problem with views and the query optimizer. Each time I try to use views in mysql, i end up with such slow queries(Something like 100 times slower) that i have to replace the view with the query that created the view. The problem seems to be that if I select from a view and then also filter the result from an other value (Something like select * from MyView where MyFieldInTheVIewWithAnIndex=42) then mysql will always use the index used to create the view, instead of the index on the field MyFieldInTheViewWithAnIndex.

    6. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by krow · · Score: 1

      Hi!

      I am not sure about the Windows version, but I know the Unix version is still process based. In my opinion, one of the principle advantages in this is that they can use functions which can leak/die/etc and not have to worry about it taking out the server. This is what allowed Apache to handle so many unstable languages/modules.

      The problem with Views in MySQL is that they frequently materialized, aka in many queries the database chooses to generate a full table of the data and do the JOIN (and in some queries there is no way to get around that). Many other databases have had views for longer and can avoid materialization in a lot of cases.

      Currently I haven't brought VIEWs back in at a user level. The closest thing we have in Drizzle we use table functions for our data dictionary (aka... information_schema) and we do not materialize there. MySQL does materialization when you look at those tables.

      My goal is to bring back VIEW, but for the first generation of them avoid queries which would cause/require materialization.

      Cheers,
            -Brian

      --
      You can't grep a dead tree.
    7. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by nconway · · Score: 1

      I am pretty sure that PostgreSQL uses thread from version 8.0.

      That is not true. There is an auxiliary thread used for signal handling on Windows (which is somewhat hacky), but the basic model of one process per client connection is unchanged, and applies to Postgres on both Windows and Unix.

    8. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by Antony+T+Curtis · · Score: 1

      I did think about Firebird for a bit, but while I know the MySQL and Postgres codebase, I don't know the Firebird code at all.

      You could have asked Jim for a personal hands-on tour of the Firebird codebase... And the Falcon storage engine looks kinda like a C++ version of the Firebird C internals. :-)

      --
      No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
    9. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by PCM2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sure, but as a practical matter, until that $7/month hosting provider offers PostgreSQL as an option instead of MySQL, and then Wordpress will install with a couple clicks and set up its own tables on PostgreSQL... until that happens, Joe Sixpack who just wants to host his own blog isn't going to be interested in PostgreSQL. And if Joe Sixpack isn't interested, and he's the customer, why should a hosting provider push him toward PostgreSQL?

      Furthermore, is Wordpress so terrible, running as it does on countless sites, that we must save it from MySQL? As another AC poster said, "Blogs with cached content that make a DB query every 10 minutes aren't a real test of quality." OK fine, but that argument sounds pretty much like saying, "MySQL does absolutely everything a trivial Wordpress site needs to do, and flawlessly, and MySQL is available for free everywhere, therefore we must pull out all the MySQL code from Wordpress and replace it with PostgreSQL." It doesn't hold water.

      A programmer who tries to use MySQL for things it isn't suited for is going to end up feeling dumb. A non-techy customer who tries to use MySQL for things it's very well-suited for will end up feeling like he's master of his own destiny. Let's not confuse the two.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    10. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When speaking about MySQL please remember that, in all cases of '$NUMBER', NUMBER=1,000,000,000. Not "millions upon millions". It's the (My)SQL93 standard. Thanks for tuning in.

    11. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      damn, think of all that hot chinese pussy just waiting for a low wage slob slashdork to rescue it from the squalor and poverty. Living in a basement with a smelly fat social loser is a step up.

    12. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by TheSunborn · · Score: 1

      But mysql don't really support materialized views.

      Have they really implemented their non materialized using materialized ???

      But the thing i really don't understand about implementing views is: Why not just implement them with something similary to string substitute, so each time a query references a view, the view is substituted with the select that generated the view.

      That way select * from MyView where ViewField=42 would be translated to something like
      select * from (select * from TableWhichMyViewUsed where ViewCondition=123).

      When I found our performance problem with views, what I did was simple to replace each view with the query that generated the view, and all problems went away. Is there a reason that views are not simply implemented this way in select queries?

    13. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by krow · · Score: 1

      Hi!

      MySQL "materializes" a view, but yes it does not have "Materialized Views".

      For some views you can do a simple substitution, but not in all cases (for instance, SELECT * FROM A GROUP BY()). In that case you need the end result before you can execute the query.

      I had little to do with the VIEW implementation, so I can't really say much about how it was designed. I am not crazy about how it works either.

      Cheers,
            -Brian

      --
      You can't grep a dead tree.
    14. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by Abcd1234 · · Score: 1

      1) Postgres is C and not C++. I find that I can write code in C++ nowadays much faster then I can in C (and it comes out just as fast, the C++ "is slow" is an archaic view).

      Buh? Since when has anybody said that? Ugly, yes. Byzantine, yes. Convoluted, hell yes. But slow? No, of course not.

    15. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Compile a C program with g++ instead of gcc. Benchmark it. Certain optimizations can't happen because of the way C++ works. It's a fact. Just test it. Don't believe me.

    16. Re:It's still basically MySQL. by stub667 · · Score: 1

      So your saying people should continue to develop MySQL because it already does everything it needs to? If you want a better MySQL you can get it today. MySQL development has nowhere to move as there are better options in every direction. It can sit right where it is though running millions of Wordpress sites quite happily for quite some time due to inertia and apathy. I wouldn't be banking on any commercial customers though.

  7. did it ever have a future with Oracle? by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My understanding was that Drizzle was created partly to get it out from under Sun and other corporations. Seems like saying it doesn't have a future with Oracle is like saying that postgres doesn't have a future with Oracle.

    It will be too bad if Drizzle's the only place where exciting development takes place on the MySQL base. Say what you will about MySQL, there are a lot of shops that rely on it and would love to see it come closer to parity with other database programs.

  8. PostreSQL by aztracker1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Queue the mass migration... Then again there's Firebird, or all the document (Couch, Mongo, Divan) and object NoSQL databases too.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  9. Moving from a user to a major contributor of FOSS by rjamestaylor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since the mid 90's I've been a user of FOSS projects and products for business use - contributing where and when I can - and I've been a long time customer of Rackspace since 2001 and an employee since Jan 2007... I must say I'm thrilled by the moves my company has been making to not only be a major consumer of Open Source products but also now a major contributor to such projects. From open Cloud architecture APIs and API specifications (enabling anyone to build their own Cloud hosting systems) to big-data focused projects like Cassandra and, of course, Drizzle.

    Sorry to gush here...it's just that so many companies tend to nominally use Open Source to gain market share and free development help initially and then begin to restrict documentation, support and even access to new features in a dual licensing scheme. The list of names of those that "SCO-ify" their Open Source strategy is too long and sad to mention. So, please cut me some slack as I revel in the direction we're heading at Rackspace -- I hope more companies will jump on this trend to raise the sea level for us all.

    To the Drizzle team: welcome! Very happy to have you onboard and look forward to your continued contributions to the community.

    Note: my comments and gushing are my own!

    --
    -- @rjamestaylor on Ello
  10. Re:Moving from a user to a major contributor of FO by cdhgold · · Score: 1

    As a racker since 2006 I also 2nd the sentiments above. This is part of what makes Rackspace and great place for a linux geek to be

  11. Drizzle by rossdee · · Score: 1

    Yeah the weater is like that here too...

    At least its in the high 30's and the snow it melting fast. (Not so good for people downstream though)

  12. Drizzle = what devs felt MySQL should have been by dfdashh · · Score: 3, Informative
    Background reading: one of the Drizzle guys who is moving over to Rackspace has a pretty good blog post on the move.

    Although Drizzle is a really stripped down version of MySQL at the moment, it seems like the developers are trying to make it into what they thought MySQL should have been in the first place: a simple, modular database for web applications. From their FAQ:

    What is the goal?
    A micro-kernel that we then extend to add what we need. All additions come through interfaces that can be compiled/loaded in as needed. The target for the project is web infrastructure backend and cloud components.

    Rackspace sounds like a perfect environment for them to fine tune their project under real world loads. Good on 'em.

    --
    df -h /my/head
  13. Re:What the fuck is drizzle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    potty mouth

  14. Help me Mr. Wizard by redneckHippe · · Score: 1

    Drizzle, drazzle, dradle, drone Time for this one to come home. http://www.tvparty.com/lostkids4.html>

    --
    It'll quit hurtin' once the pain stops.
  15. If this'll make Monty STFU... by rzei · · Score: 1

    If this'll make Monty STFU and end his grief, then I'm all for it.

    I just don't understand why not PostgreSQL, could someone explain why is mysql better when you provide simple hosting plans? PostgreSQL does seem to have an edge as a RDBMS, so are mysql databases more manageable per user or what's the reason?