Re: Oracle Innobase Purchase Impacts MySQL.

Frank van Bortel <frank.van.bortel_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> > What about NTFS? I know that Linux -> NTFS is read only.

> That is mainly because *any* software, ported from Linux/GNu
> domains to Microsoft, have some remark like "due to the instability
> of the OS you want to run this software on, we cannot guarantee the
> normal levels of operation and performance"

FAT is read/write no problem. It is with NTFS that there is a problem, in that most (all?) Linux distros will guarantee reads but not writes.  

> You can have NTFS read/write from Linux (Knoppix will do that out of
> the box), but no warranties...

Well, no warranties is the same as saying "Go run Oracle on OpenBSD" - it is known to work but will not be supported in any shape or form.

> > There are systems out there with 32 MB of RAM on the first Pentium
> > processors which are working systems. I doubt if one could do anything
> > with a current version of Oracle with such a machine.
 

> Right... let's see how version 10 of Interbase/Firebird behaves,
> then,

Interbase/Firebird has been around for approximately as long as Oracle, particularly if you consider its heritage from DEC Rdb projects from the same original architect. However, unlike Oracle, it has always been designed to be self-tuning and to need very little DBA/user intervention.

> OK? And please, do install all options Oracle has standard.

Unfair! I am merely saying that Firebird consumes vastly fewer CPU cycles than Oracle - I made no reference to the gazillion features of Oracle which do not exist in FB (or many other resource hungry db systems).

I have tried to stress before and will continue to try and emphasise that the two systems are different, but both are RDBMS's. Oracle is a kitchen-sink implementation and pays the price for that in terms of machine load, admin overhead and hardware requirements.

Interbase/Firebird (and particularly Firebird, since we can actually see where the raw code is going - the move to C++ combined with an (sometimes painfully fussy - even "overdemocratic") Open Source model ) is a very small, neat, effective and even elegant RDMS solution for *_A LOT_* of people's needs.

I am *_NOT_* saying that it has all of the capabilities of Oracle, that would be ridiculous, however I am saying that given its small overhead and its suitability for a (growing) number of database projects, I think that there is something that is to be learnt from the FB model. The whole install is 32 MB (with examples and samples). The server itself is 1.493 MB. It will run on a server with 32 MB of RAM. Personally, I find that the fact that one can do *_an awful lot_* of what one can do with Oracle with such a small *_elegant_* system to be telling somewhat of what might be seen as feature bloat with Oracle. I have used it to programme systems and it is perfect - no overhead, no DBA, no loss of necessary speed and perfect data consisitency over years of in production use on modest machines.

I'm sick to the back teeth of Oracle "people" talking about other RDBMS's as "toy databases". That's like the users of a Ferrari or a Lamborghini talking about the VW Beatle (or Bug or Cocinelle or whatever it was called where you happen to live) as a "toy" car. It may not have had the speed or facile aesthetics of an F/L, but it gets the job done and doesn't need a specialist team of mechanics working on it night and day to get the damn thing to work, constantly reparing it, and needing to know off the top of their heads 3 million db parameters for it to work at all in the first place.

I will finish this rant with the words of Antoine de St. Exupéry, "True beauty is not achieved when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to be taken away".

Paul...

-- 

plinehan __at__ yahoo __dot__ __com__

XP Pro, SP 2, 

Oracle, 9.2.0.1.0 (Enterprise Ed.)
Interbase 6.0.1.0;

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