Re: Free SQL DBMSs: a survey as of August 2002

pgulutzan_at_yahoo.ca (Peter Gulutzan) wrote:

> Free SQL DBMSs: a survey as of August 2002

What you really mean is Open Source (R)DBMS's, isn't it?  

> I'm posting what I think is a reasonably complete survey of SQL DBMSs
> that are useful for commercial purposes without any charge.
 

> I have excluded DBMSs which are free as beta versions (e.g. ThinkSQL
> at thinksql.com), free for education only (e.g. Yard SQL at
> www.yard.de), or royalty-free after an initial payment (e.g. CodeBase
> at codebase.com or Microsoft's MSDE). It turns out that almost all
> products on the list are open source,

Certainly not Micros$0ft's? 8-)

> but I'll note that a
> royalty-free package can be cheaper than an open-source package under
> some circumstances: for example if you want to incorporate a GPL'd
> DBMS in your commercially distributed application you may have to make
> terms with the DBMS maker which involve per-copy payments under a
> non-GPL license.

This is true of MySQL and SAP DB. (However, SAP DB only insists on payment if you use it with SAP's ERM/CRM system - otherwise it's completely free). With MySQL you have to pay for any commercial usage.  

> Firebird (http://www.ibphoenix.com) Forked from InterBase 6.0.

A great DB with, hopefully, a great future ahead of it.

> InterBase (http://www.borland.com/interbase/) Borland appears to be
> moving away from open-source in their current version, but these
> people change policy often.

I don't think they'll be changing policy soon!

Borland tried to hop on the Open Source wagon in about 1999 - 2000 when people were getting funny money for setting up companies based on Open Sourced stuff - it was believed that if they set up a company and sold it off, they could raise lot's of cash.

They went some way to doing this, but when it actually came to signing stuff, Borland baulked, and decided that it wasn't going to work out after all - these were the days of the start of the collapse of the ".com/Open Source = loads of money" bubble.

They then reigned back in the source and now are developing it on a closed source model, from which they retain a modest but significant revenue stream. There was a lot of bitterness about this in the months following, and those who were to set up the new Open Source company (some of whom were the original developers of Interbase) and Borland people flamed each other and stuff.

So, those who were to take over the Open Source company forked the code and created FireBird, which is now slowly diverging from Interbase. They are still fairly close and the architecture is still the same, but they will end up being different. FireBird is being converted to C++, whereas AFAIK, InterBase is going to remain a C product (however, this won't affect end-users unduly - or shouldn't).

> MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/) Popular and powerful. Often accused of
> missing standard features but they're building fast, I'd expect the
> main objections to disappear when version 4.1 is stable.

AFAIK, you have to pay for transaction support and referential integrity support, even if your app is non-free.  

> Ocelot (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ocelot) I work for the makers,
> but allow me this tiny plug. It's 100% standard. Windows.

You are allowed plug, if you acknowledge that you are working for the company - what are the pros and cons of Ocelot?  

> PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/) Very popular on Linux but not
> on Windows. All the big-league features are there and the product has
> been around for a long time..

Has one disadvantage in that it doesn't work very well on Windows (of course, you might say that nothing works well on Windows! 8-) ), but it is the biggie in the Open Source market.  

> SAP (http://www.sapdb.org/) Supported by a large company (SAP AG of
> Germany).

SAP is an interesting story. In a move similar, but not identical to, Borland's, they decided to Open Source their DB offering. The difference was (AFAIK) that they didn't sell it independently anyway.

They properly Open Sourced it, *_AND_* still have a large team with good support who maintain the code and support users, paid for by SAP. I believe that they gain some revenue from installations of SAP where it is the main DB.

Top marks to SAP - they made a decision and ran with it!  

> The most popular items are clearly MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Firebird.

My own personal preference is for Firebird - I mean where else can you get a fully functional RDBMS in a 3 MB download (if you really penny pinch, you can get an app installed on a floppy!!!!), however in terms of long-term future, I think that SAP might move into the Open Source RDBMS niche as a leader.

It fully supports Windoze, is backed up by a big company and appears to offer everything that the others offer in terms of RDBMS functionality. The only RDBMS that I can see that is ahead of it, is Oracle (if you want to exchange your house for the price of a few licences...).

Paul...  

> Peter Gulutzan

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