sorted by: recent | see : popular

Content Tagged with relational + MySQL

The relational DBMS industry is filled with startups. In some way or other, most of them are based on or make use of the open source project PostgreSQL. (Not all, of course; exceptions include DATAllegro and Infobright, which are based on Ingres and MySQL respectively.) But how they use PostgreSQL varies greatly.

EnterpriseDB is at one extreme. It hired a number of the top PostgreSQL developers, and is widely credited in the industry for major enhancements in PostgreSQL 8.3. Look in the future for EnterpriseDB to be less “The Oracle-compatible database company” and more “The PostgreSQL company that offers great features, including Oracle compatibility.”

Vertica is at the other pole. I still have the impression that Vertica emulates PostgreSQL to gain various tool compatibility benefits. But upon checking I learned, to my surprise, that Vertica uses no actual PostgreSQL code whatsoever.

Greenplum is somewhere in between. Greenplum started from PostgreSQL, and said it was supporting something open source called Bizgres. But Seth Grimes calls Greenplum’s commitment to Bizgres into serious question. But then, given how silent Greenplum has been recently (some PR around an investment round excepted), I’m not sure what to think of anything I previously heard from the company.

Please subscribe to our feed!

More from me soon, but first here is a survey of what other people are saying about Sun’s billion-dollar deal to acquire MySQL:

• Jeremy Cole, evidently a very experienced high-end MySQL user, itemizes some serious problems with MySQL — optimizer, memory management, replication, and so on. (Uh, Jeremy — what part of the product do you like?) He also echoes a theme I’ve seen elsewhere, and to some extent noticed myself; MySQL has had a lot of management issues as a company.
• Jeffrey McManus calls out Sun’s promise to continue to support non-Java programming languages in MySQL. Kaj Arnö of MySQL makes the point emphatically, reciting a list of operating systems and development environments/languages MySQL will continue to support.
• Matt Asay quite reasonably interprets Sun’s move as a bid for overall leadership and development of the open source software platform industry. I would add that Sun CEO Jonathon Schwartz came up through the software side of the business. I would further add that Sun has a dismal track record with closed-source software acquisitions, including Forte’, NetDynamics, and the enterprise side of Netscape.
• Matt also has selected quotes from the press conference, including Sun saying the coopetitionally obvious “Yeah, we’ll continue serious support for PostgreSQL and Oracle too.” Brian Aker also supports the PostgreSQL point.
• Zack Urlocker of MySQL implies that Jonathon Schwartz was very involved in the deal personally. That makes all kinds of sense.
• 451 Group has some interesting links, and don’t miss the short comment thread.
• The official MySQL and Sun company lines are summarized in this Zack Urlocker post on Infoworld (as well as some of the links above) and this post from Jonathon Schwartz of Sun.

In the past, when I’ve asked Jeff Jones of IBM for permission to post one of his well-written notes, his response has pretty much been “Of course! Why did you bother asking?” So this time I’m just going ahead and skipping that step. The note is about IBM’s mid-range flavor of DB2, targeted directly at MySQL.

Today, IBM announced that its popular DB2 9 Express-C software is now available with an optional low-cost yearly support subscription. DB2 Express-C has been available without license charges for downloading, application development, deployment and redistribution since January 2006. It remains available without license charges for those that do not require support. Electronic general availability of the new support option is scheduled for June 1, 2007.

The new DB2 Express-C support option provides 24×7 product support, regular fixpacks and upgrade protection. In addition, this option provides support for high availability clustering, offsite disaster recovery, and data replication with remote data servers without additional charge.

Background

– Subscriptions are priced at $2,995 (U.S.) per server per year. This is identical to MySQL Enterprise Gold, but DB2 Express-C includes features not found in MySQL including pureXML support, high availability clustering (MySQL Cluster support costs extra), autonomic features, and no-charge administration and development tools. Unlike the free offerings from Microsoft and Oracle, DB2 Express-C does not place limits on the size or number of databases managed. With up to 4 GB of memory and up to 2 processors, DB2 Express-C can run on more powerful servers, can scale higher and can perform faster than its competitors.

(more…)

MySQL told Computer Business Review they’re thinking strongly of an IPO this year, but also wouldn’t mind waiting. Frankly, I think they shouldn’t come public until they can prove solid acceptance of Version 5, because Version 4 remains in too many ways an embarrassment.

Also, investors need a chance to see whether MySQL’s new enterprise all-you-can-eat pricing scheme is a success, both financially and in terms of service delivery.

Several vendors are offering links to Gartner’s new Magic Quadrant report on data warehouse DBMS. Somewhat atypically for Gartner, there’s a strict hierarchy among most of the vendors, with Teradata > IBM > Oracle > Microsoft > Sybase > Kognitio > MySQL > Sand, in each case on both axes of the matrix. [...]

In a stunningly self-defeating move, my friends at Solid have decided that anything about their already-leaked possible cooperation with MySQL is embargoed. Indeed, they’ve emphasized to me multiple times that they do not wish me to write about it. I shall honor their wishes. I hope they are pleased with the sophistication and insight of the [...]