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Drizzle Hits General Availability
snydeq writes "MySQL fork Drizzle has been released for general availability, giving companies a viable alternative to Oracle-owned MySQL, InfoWorld reports. 'Organizations that have been seeking a less-expensive alternative to Oracle's brand of MySQL — or a variant devoid of feature bloat — now have an option that Drizzle's creators deem ready to package in Linux distributions.'"
Really? Drizzle? That was the best they could do for a name of the new project?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Maybe some high profile OSS guys can help fund or start some kind of OSS naming service.
That's always an option, but you just know that they'll give the organization a terrible name.
I'm just glad they didn't give it some dumb, stilted name like "LibreSQL".
Proverbs 21:19
I seem to remember that many years ago, before Sun bought MySQL AB, the license for the library needed to access the database from your own programs was GPL (not LGPL), and MySQL AB claimed you couldn't use it without open-sourcing your code, unless you paid them for a commercial-use license. Has that changed with Drizzle (i.e., have they written a new API so they can choose a different license)? Their license page says:
Drizzle is licensed under both the GPLv2 and BSD license. The core of Drizzle was forked from MySQL and thus is under GPLv2. Derived work from GPLv2 code will stay GPLv2, as the license states...
which doesn't give any detail about which parts are still GPL and which parts are now BSD.
Thank you for contacting Zerrodong! The suggested names for your project follow...
Please dear merciful God, don't ever use the words Microsoft Access and Database in the same sentence!!!
The terms are mutually exclusive...
Geez...I wish Access had never been created, and wish it would be banned.
The messes I've had to clean up due to it and its misuse.....*sigh*
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Fo' drizzle.
Here's just an interesting comparison between them all, but you can see Postgres supports basically everything MySQL does and then a whole lot more..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systems
Not sure how up to date that is though
As someone who has dealt with both, I can say the reason postgresql isn't as popular is because its more involved in its setup. Mysql is simpler for new people. You install it, download phpmyadmin, login as root and then start creating databases and stuff. postgresql isn't as simple. Creating a new database is a bit more involved and when i first was confronted with it, I wondered why it was so complex.
I don't even know how to take advantage of more complex stuff in postgresql either.
This is coming from someone who is mildly experinced with mysql and set up a postgresql server not knowing anything.
Its like taking a Ubuntu person and sticking them on slackware/gentoo or something. Although its similar its still radically different.
O.o
Take a look at Postgres...it is MUCH more like Oracle in terms of a robust RDBMS. I've heard of projects taking pretty large Oracle installs...and converting over to Postgres with minimal pain.
The main reason MySQL is more popular is that it was smaller and easier to configure...but at the cost of robustness, and initially...data integrity. It was a short cut...much like {gag} MS Access proved often to be.
Postgres takes a bit more planning, and know how to install and use, but then again...so does something like Oracle.
You could probably compare:
MySql == Access
Postgres == Oracle
If you want to make some analogies.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You're telling me! I keep telling my managers "We should be using subversion!" They all think I'm some kind of subversive...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Just out of interest - i've always wondered why Postgres seems to trail in popularity to MySQL. I know the limitations of the latter having used it far too much, does anybody know where Postgres trails MySQL?
In my experience (since the last quarter of the 1990s), PostgreSQL never really trailed MySQL because there was anything wrong with it, it just fell in an awkward spot along the database spectrum. On one end of the spectrum (well, Berkeley DB was at the extreme end, just above flat files, but MySQL was next in line) MySQL fit the needs of the majority of data-driven webapps at the time.
A lot of web developers didn't need a proper database and often didn't recognize when they did need one, and couldn't design a decent schema in any case. MySQL was a good match for this skillset - it was easy for someone to set up and instance, throw together some tables and start coding. Any deficiencies were often just handled by throwing the logic into the code. MySQL was also pretty darned fast, which was important due to the hardware limitations of the time, and it could scale well enough for most needs. That got it a toehold and mindshare. Over the years as the demands of the web grew, Monty and friends made sure it stayed in that sweet spot. On the other end of the spectrum, if you *really* needed a proper database or massive scalability, you were usually doing something enterprise-ish, and that usually meant there was enough money available to pay for Oracle (or MS-SQL) and a Solaris machine. You had DBAs trained to manage the beast and design proper databases. Somewhere in between was PostgreSQL. Not as fast as MySQL (being ACID compliant was harder work), more difficult to setup, more demanding of hardware, not quite as powerful as Oracle, few people were trained to use it. Being free (of charge) didn't matter, because there was generally more to lose if things went wrong than the cost of the database, so Oracle was a safer bet. So, though it was more than good enough, PostgreSQL just didn't end up being as popular as MySQL. Didn't really matter, IMHO, because PostgreSQL did just fine and found a niche of it's own where it is doing quite well. Popularity isn't everything.
Take a look at Postgres...it is MUCH more like Oracle in terms of a robust RDBMS. I've heard of projects taking pretty large Oracle installs...and converting over to Postgres with minimal pain.
The main reason MySQL is more popular is that it was smaller and easier to configure...but at the cost of robustness, and initially...data integrity. It was a short cut...much like {gag} MS Access proved often to be.
Postgres takes a bit more planning, and know how to install and use, but then again...so does something like Oracle.
You could probably compare:
MySql == Access
Postgres == Oracle
If you want to make some analogies.
Thank you for your replies.
I wrote the original comment - apologies, but I forgot to login (I don't login here often, I tend to lurk)
The reason I ask is because i've been suspicious of MySQL because of the dual licensing, and also because the (expensive) cluster version needs the indices to be in memory - which requires serious hardware for our setup as our data is 'long and thin'. However there is little experience of postgres here, so we spend the money.
Therefore i've never bothered with postgres, which is stupid, but I know that as many open source projects use mysql, it is the 'go to' database of choice. When speccing a database i've always asked around and people have pointed out the deficiencies of postgres as being the clustering and backup support.
To be specific - how does the clustering (any method) of postgres compare to standard mysql? What is the best way of doing hot backups? Where does the performance fall down?
I'd love to use postgres, but unfortunately i'm too busy doing other tasks to give it a good, proper test. Has anybody been through this already and do they mind sharing?
Ta,
Sean
They are not quite the same. Drizzle seems to be striving for minimalism, while MariaDB is trying to follow the pre-Oracle development path. Also, MariaDB has the following albatross around its neck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius. His post-Oracle "Save MySQL" campaign was all kinds of annoying.
Mercurial is better anyways ... :-P
Seriously: if I have to sell my mgmt on "git" or "mercurial" (which don't look all that different to me) which one do you think I'm going to talk about?
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
These days, I think MySQL has the same problem. It's squeezed between SQLite and PostgreSQL. If you're doing complex queries, PostgreSQL is faster. If you care about your data, both have better ACID support. If you're doing simple queries without many concurrent updates, SQLite is faster. There aren't many niches left where MySQL is worth considering.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What a waste of /. commenting. I look through the top 50 and the obsession with the fucking name is amazing. How about the fact they don't support stored procedures or triggers.
Fundamentally, stored procedures usually are not the correct architectural decision for applications that need to scale.
WTF? Stored Procs are the basis for enterprise development with a DB backend. It is the whole point of scalability. Hard coding commands is horrible for anything but small apps. I am also not a fan of Oracle, but until a better alternative is presented I will stick with MySql because it is free, and can scale much better then these guys. Sorry Drizzle, its too muddy for my tastes.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter