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

You haven't included Sybase ASE version 11.0.3.3 for Linux. This is free for production use and can be downloaded from http://linux.sybase.com/ .

Rob Verschoor

Certified Sybase Professional DBA for ASE 12.5/12.0/11.5/11.0

mailto:rob_at_sypron.nl
http://www.sypron.nl
Sypron B.V., P.O.Box 10695, 2501HR Den Haag, The Netherlands

"Peter Gulutzan" <pgulutzan_at_yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:bc8f8132.0208091525.65da3ef6_at_posting.google.com...
> Free SQL DBMSs: a survey as of August 2002
>
> 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, 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.
>
> Beagle SQL () This one seems to be moribund, I can find no current
> download site.
>
> CQL (http://www.cql.com/) Written with Visual C++.
>
> DBMaker (http://www.dbmaker.com/linux/) Sorry, the free-distribution
> license program was cancelled in February.
>
> Firebird (http://www.ibphoenix.com) Forked from InterBase 6.0.
>
> Gadfly (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gadfly/) For Python fans. I
> have seen a debian.org announcement saying this project is "orphaned"
> but it's still there.
>
> GNU SQL (http://www.ispras.ru/~kml/gss/) The web page hasn't been
> updated in a long time, and there may be some issues -- see the
> comments by Jens Glaser at http://www.jens.de/gsql/.
>
> hsql (http://hsqldb.sourceforge.net/) 100% Java. Superseding
> Hypersonic SQL.
>
> 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.
>
> Mckoi (http://mckoi.com/database/) 100% Java. Probably will be out of
> beta soon.
>
> mSQL (http://www.hughes.com.au/) Version 3.0 just arrived on July 31
> 2002. But apparently there's no "free" version now.
>
> 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.
>
> Ocelot (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ocelot) I work for the makers,
> but allow me this tiny plug. It's 100% standard. Windows.
>
> 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..
>
> PQL (http://sal.kachinatech.com/H/1/PQL.html) Rather a small subset,
> several years old.
>
> Quadcap (http://www.quadcap.com/home.html). Yet another 100% Java
> implementation.
>
> SAP (http://www.sapdb.org/) Supported by a large company (SAP AG of
> Germany).
>
> SQLite (http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/) Public domain C code.
>
> The most popular items are clearly MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Firebird.
>
> Peter Gulutzan
> Co-Author of SQL Performance Tuning which Addison-Wesley will publish
> on September 20 2002
Received on Tue Aug 13 2002 - 15:57:41 CEST