Re: Off Topic: open source databases
Date: Sun, 30 May 2010 12:01:12 +0200
Message-ID: <86erbbFuufU1_at_mid.individual.net>
On 28.05.2010 00:25, Tim X wrote:
> galen_boyer_at_yahoo.com writes:
>
>> Mladen Gogala<gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Wed, 26 May 2010 10:14:40 -0700, Steve Howard wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> It's replacement in the world? I would guess MySQL, based on Oracle
>>>> Corp.'s ownership if nothing else.
>>>
>>> Hmmm, that doesn't compute, from my point of view. That is precisely why
>>> I opened this topic. Why would a huge corporation suddenly abandon its
>>> main cash cow in favor of a freebie? Slowly killing the freebie seems
>>> more likely to me, now that Oracle Corp. owns it. I am not sure as to why
>>> people are not trying to run away from MySQL, but they obviously are not.
>>
>> I don't think Oracle owns it. Nobody can "own" open source. They
>> bought off the main braintrust and set up agreements so those guys
>> wouldn't start up again.
>>
>> But, the way I understand it, anybody could continue development on MySql.
>
> Yep, they could take a fork from it and do what they want. I suspect
> Oracle won't even try to kill it off. Mor likely, they just won't do
> anyting with it and it willl slowly wither from bitrot (or be replaced
> by a forked version). I'm not sure Oracle even really cares. It was
> something they just got with the Sun bundle. It probably wasn't even
> included as a line item in the purchase process.
If I was Oracle this is not what I'd do. If I was Oracle I'd invest as much effort as needed to keep MySQL alive (because it has such a large user base) - meaning: fixing bugs, adding minor features but not in a way to make it competition for Oracle DB - plus invest in making the migration from MySQL to Oracle as smooth as possible (at least on sales slides). It's a fact that the volume of data to be processed is ever increasing. With that trend many MySQL installations will hit a scalability wall sooner or later (see Mladen's example with Cacti) and this is exactly the point where the nice sales guy from Oracle corp. can offer a "smooth migration" to the real thing - maybe even with a "initial migration bonus".
Mladen, I believe people are not running from MySQL because the user base is so large that Oracle cannot simply kill it off. Many MySQL users will also work with Oracle DB and if they offend those on the MySQL side this can have negative effects on the Oracle side as well.
If I personally would be looking for a replacement for an Oracle instance I would not turn to MySQL. Instead, I would go to PostgreSQL which - from what I am reading - has a better track record of scalability. It also has a similar locking model as Oracle where reads are not blocked by updates. And while the plug in architecture of MySQL is cool and allows for some nice things to be done (MySQL basically is then a SQL parsing and processing engine) it does not feel right for a heavy duty database. I know, this is purely subjective.
Kind regards
robert
-- remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/Received on Sun May 30 2010 - 05:01:12 CDT