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How Real Is The Open Source Database Fever?
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:33 PM
from the something-to-sell-you dept.
from the something-to-sell-you dept.
J. Misael G. points out a NewsForge article on recent moves by some database vendors to loudly release (some of) their products as open source, asking the vital question "How much open source beer are these newcomers bringing to the database bash, or are they simply coming in and asking where the cups are?" (Slashdot and NewsForge are both part of OSTG.)
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I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Shimp, get a clue... we're simply not going to buy your pitch without looking at other decent (free!) alternatives.
Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's not pretend that orphanware is something that it's not. Nonetheless, there are still reasons to be pleased to see it.
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? There's still some more source code added to the big pot marked OSS. Someone, somewhere may be able to take it and do something else imaginative with it.
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can something like MySQL do the same? Well, I honestly don't know. However if you are in a position where there will be extreme losses from an outage, you don't want to be the one to test and maybe find out that no, indeed it can't.
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Can something like MySQL do the same? Well, I honestly don't know. However if you are in a position where there will be extreme losses from an outage, you don't want to be the one to test and maybe find out that no, indeed it can't.
Ora
Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't Oracle bashing btw: i've got MySql installed on my workstation because all the demo apps seem to use it, but i work on Oracle - TOAD is *always* open - and i've always said that if it could cook i'd marry it.
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
oooh, I *so* wish that you were right. But it assumes that managers have more choice over staffing, outsourcing, as well as more knowledge of technology & people.
Nope, I've seen *tons* of idiots in charge of oracle databases. And the odd thing is - Oracle especially is so very unforgiving.
But you can usually spot the idiots a mile away - big circles under their eyes from fixing the things they are constantly breaking, small jobs take 8 hours since they can't write a script - and need to interactively modify 400 database object, etc, etc.
Also keep in mind that many very large companies have site licenses for products like oracle, db2, websphere, etc, etc. So - they use the big product for every application. And this makes sense - it's much easier to manage and develop expertise for just Oracle than for a frankenstein collection of a half-dozen databases.
And the less important ones should (theoretically) be where your junior dbas learn the ropes. But it all breaks down with bureacracy...
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I'm a MySQL hater and wouldn't recommend it in any circumstance. Postgresql on the other hand is fantastic and should get a lot more love than it does. It still can't compare to Oracle in the huge installations, but it can certainly replace Oracle in all sorts of common usage.
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re: your sig - I can't resist (Score:5, Funny)
"nazi" should be lower-case, since you're using it as a generic noun and not a proper noun. (Spelling or grammar Nazis would be german-language, anyway.)
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
And they have good documentation and support...but their installation software is a piece of shit. The only people I ever knew to really get Oracle up and running smoothly were admins with years of Oracle experience.
Oracle v MySQL not fair (Score:5, Interesting)
THese include:
0000-00-00 is a valid date in MySQL
NUMERIC types are agregated as floats which can lead to round-off errors.
Numbers are truncated if too large to be stored
(Strings are also truncated in violation of SQL standards, but this is not as severe as numbers for obvious accounting reasons).
If MySQL is unable to create an Innodb table, it may create a myisam one instead without raising an error. This creates a situation where you cannot be sure that your transactions are really being rolled back everywhere the application thinks they are rolling them back........
Now, PostgreSQL has no data integrity issues that I am aware of, and the few areas where it handles things in non-standard ways are clearly documented, and the core developers place a huge amount of thought into how to do things right. The level of professionalism in this project is truly amazing.
Firebird is nice too, but PostgreSQL has fewer limitations. These two databases are building the track record you speak of and they will continue to do so. Now with Slony-I, PostgreSQL has a decent, robust, and open source replication solution, I will expect continued interest in this area.
Oracle still has a few enterprise features that most of the open source databases lack-- table partitioning, grid computing (but investigate backplane if this interests you), and a few other options. However, on the down side:
VARCHAR's store NULL's as empty strings (which are not the same thing)(!!!)
PostgreSQL has much more flexibility in development due to the larger number of supported languages for stored procedures.
$$$
Licensing headaches....
Disclaimer: My company (http://www.metatrontech.com) provides solutions for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Firebird. We will work with Oracle and SQL Server but it is not as much our things since we have an open source focus. We have been running PostgreSQL extensively and have only had problems due to hardware failure.
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Re:Oracle v MySQL not fair (Score:4, Informative)
There are also several other tools which have been discussed on the PostgreSQL lists.... Personally, I find my imagination to be better than any such tools I have ever used (including VS.Net on Windows), but I understand why people want them. Many of the other tools are not open source, however.
Another possibility is to use PgAccess. This is not quite as powerful as the full diagram is not directly tied to the database, but it can work pretty well for visual modeling purposes.
I don't know at the moment whether Rekall has this capacity. It is more of a MS-Access clone..... Writing a plugin to do this visual modelling might not be too hard though....
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Re:Oracle v MySQL not fair (Score:3, Insightful)
i write software for a business of web-based telephony that has half a million users. they make payments online, make calls (that generate call records), handle customer support and they have to make periodic settlements with the call minutes provider.
Ok. It can be done, but it is more dangerous than it is with something like PostgreSQL.
when we began building the software, we all though that oracle was what we required. i spent two days on oracle site trying to figure out which oracle i need to buy.
Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the areas Oracle shines is the developer support. While not free as in speech, they already make their product free as in beer for the folks doing development work. Granted, you pay the piper when you move to production land, but one of the strong points for the OSS offerings is not having to hork about with licensing on the dev side. I know I have used Tomcat and Jboss on the dev side while a customer noodles through the decision to get BEA or IBM kit.
I'd say Oracle might be in a world of hurt on the lower end database solutions. Light weight stuff that might have required a 100k license in production land and needed the sophistication of a ten column MS Access database is numbered. Many of the OSS solutions are 'good enough' for department scale use. An interesting move on IBM's side was donating Cloudscape (now Apache Derby). They salted the field for the lower end stuff, but were clever in they used DB2's JDBC connector. Build a simple app, find out it grows into the enterprise, and you have the option to pay the same mad cash as Oracle for the full featured solution....
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Re:I'm sure Oracle's nice and all, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Go to "technet.oracle.com". Look around for the free downloads. Oracle will absolutely laugh at you if you tell them that you actually followed these requirements (I'm serious, the Oracle Rep laughed at us).
As a general rule, Oracle doesn't get too bent out of shape until they are on a push to generate revenue. As far as I can tell, no one at Oracle can tell yo
Slick salesmen are a lot more expensive than that. (Score:3)
Of course he would say that--but the typical consumer interested in F/OSS databases are definitely not the handful of big companies that Oracle sends a team of slick salesmen to do 4 months of PowerPoint just to get one > $100,000 sale. Of what use is the "Oracle model" to the rest of us?
$100,000 is chump change. Entry-level real estate agents, fresh from passing the licensing exam, turn up their noses at those gigs.
A team of slick salesmen and 4 months of PowerPoint start at around $10,000,000, alt
Why the disclaimer? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's called being a good editor (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:It's called being a good editor (Score:2)
Re:It's called being a good editor (Score:5, Funny)
Removing the stupid pyramid scheme from your sig would be a good start.
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Re:It's called being a good editor (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why the disclaimer? (Score:2)
If MSFT's Get the facts campagn came right out andsaid all studies funded by MSFT, and all computers that ran windows were supplied by MSFT would you have a bit more respect for them?
just a bit more.
disclosure (Score:5, Informative)
It's not good enough. People are increasing our acceptance of this conflict of interest the more we see it, rather than rejecting it more as it grows more pervasive and therefore more dangerous. Actual competitive conflicts are necessary to get critical interpretations, not just acknowledgement that interpretations might be selfserving propaganda. At least Slashdot has these discussions of stories, in which dissent can be communicated. My favorite system was the P2P "Third Voice", a browser plugin which let the user attach popup sticky notes to any web page, stored in a DB the plugin checked against the "background" page's URL. That way, P2P commentary could effortlessly appear right in the context being presented, without requiring cooperation from the provider of the target content. The project folded, but I welcome its return. Only the flexibility, complexity and scale of the public is enough to compensate for the advantages that centralized corporate media has in lying to us.
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Re:disclosure (Score:3, Interesting)
In that case, you might be interested in the opine-it [mozilla.org] extension for Firefox.
As I said on newsforge (Score:5, Insightful)
codekeg (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sexy (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see how it is going to pan out in the long term for some of these companies, though.
Jerry http://www.syslog.org/ [syslog.org]
but dont you just love IT managers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:but dont you just love IT managers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:but dont you just love IT managers (Score:4, Interesting)
What if you were hired as an employee of sed company for a month long contract and sed company wanted you to install MySQL for some of their open source apps already running, say a company intranet website running some kind of open messageboard. Then, after sed contract runs out, you sell them your software package for use with their existing MySQL server. Do you need a license then?
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F/OSS Databases (Score:5, Informative)
Ingres was originally intended to compete with the likes of Oracle and MS SQL Server, but never had the power or client base. OpenSourcing Ingres looks like CA's attempt to beef up both in one shot. It's not a GPL license, just a chance to peek at the source and maybe help out. The interface that ships is very much like Oracle's.
Cloudscape is nice, but not even as powerful as PostgreSQL.
I think there is a huge market still untapped for open source DB's... especially RDBMS, but alas, large companies are (of course) slow to adopt.
No support for PostgreSQL? (Score:5, Informative)
> PostgreSQL has a much richer feature set but
> has scalability problems and doesn't have
> a company behind it providing
> enterprise-level support;
Bah. What about this [postgresql.org]? Lots of companies there, and many of the folks involved are core PostgreSQL developers...
My favorite bit (Score:3, Funny)
They said that MySQL sucks...now they're open-source, just like us, so their products must now suck also!
After all this open source beer, please tell me (Score:3, Funny)
Oracle-Mode DB Fyracle (Score:4, Informative)
Based on old Borland Interbase
There is plenty of beer, there are plenty of cups (Score:5, Interesting)
<Off-topic rant>the editor of Newsforge really needs to have a word with the author of the article, I say. It is really not necessary to write "so-and-so said" in every single sentence, says me. I say that you only need to mention who said the words when the author/speaker changes. I say that it is very annoying to read that article because of the poor way that it is written.</rant>
Database is a commodity now (Score:4, Insightful)
This makes it really easy for open-source databases to step-in since there is no lock-in. Later on if you figure out you need a big honking Oracle/DB2/whatever you can easily change your mind.
Like Java makes the OS and HW a commodity these tools makes the database a commodity and by definition commodities ends up being really cheap. And it's kind of hard to find cheaper than free ;-)
My favorite play is to develop on Hypersonic/McKoi and deploy on PostgreSQL. No sweat.
using OR to hide DBMS isn't always good (Score:3, Insightful)
ODBC was cool, but i think reality has shown that in many cases, changing DB backends just doesn't happen that often. The example you cite, develop in one place and deploy elsewhere, doesn't really seem to have much real world justification, since development SKU's of most DB's are free (
Re:Database is a commodity now (Score:3, Insightful)
> Later on if you figure out you need a big honking Oracle/DB2/whatever you can easily change your mind.
kinda-sorta:
what % of the ANSI-92 standard does your tool support? 80%? 85%? and since it probably doesn't support vendor extentions, you're going to be locked into the slowest and lowest-functionality sql.
and that will make you want to upgrade to a more powerful database (or more hardware).
however - get
Re:Database is a commodity now (Score:3, Interesting)
I've said this before and doubtless I'll say it again it doesn't work like that in the real world.
Tell me how your app handles concurrency, if you've thought about it. An application optimized for performance with Sybase style locking will be crippled on Oracle and vice versa. Want to be completely generic? OK, accept that your performance will suck everywhere, and that your end users won't get a fraction
Perspective from an Oracle professional (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely believe that the open-source database choices out there today (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sleepycat) are more than adequate for 90% of all development being done, especially the small- and medium-scale stuff. I'm glad that we've moved away from flat-file systems for small-time web work. It has forced developers to understand their data structures, which is a huge step forward for everyone. Developers today have a far greater understanding of their data, and databases in general, than they did 10 years ago. They understand relational models better, they understand abstraction better. That said: there are two things everyone should understand about the way Oracle thinks about databases (and its customers):
1) Oracle exists solely to serve the top end of the market. They're not really interested in anything else.
2) If you can afford it, it pays to start with Oracle first. For small installations, it's not as expensive as you think, especially if you forego the support. Why do this? Because if you find out later that you needed a serious database solution and need to make a back-end change from something like MySQL, you are in for a world of pain.
This is Oracle's bread and butter. I don't expect to be hurting for work for a VERY long time.
Re:That's why you should NOT use oracle (Score:3, Interesting)
> product in a way the conversion is extremely painful and expensive. conversion from MySQL to
> MS-SQL or a similar SQL complient database is really pretty simple. Oracle is the mongrel out
> there and should be put to a very public open sourced death.
Funny, I don't have major problems on a typical migration between oracle/sqlserver/db2/postgresql. Oh sure, there are sometimes issues - differenc
Re:That's why you should NOT use oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
Not very likely. And not a very good idea either. Until you show me something in the open-source world that can do 1000+ transactions per second, with complete atomicity, and ability to pull the plug on that system and then seamlessly roll it back to the exact moment in time that it was at when it died... Well, you're not replacing Oracle with anything less in the enterprise space.
By the way -- the "painful" part of converting from an OSS database to Oracle isn't the data conversion, export import, etc. That part is dead easy. The hard part comes when you start customizing your solution to take advantage of some of the huge performance-gaining features that Oracle provides. You have to start figuing out what parts of your application-layer code can be moved to your database, and making those changes at the second and third tier accordingly. You can create massively fast, very complex database systems with Oracle, but it's a very specialized area.
I'd be all for complete transparency of database from any application, but when you do that you encourage, no, you force, the least common denominator solution.
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Database Arena is Ripe for Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Database Arena is Ripe for Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think you understand what a high-end database is. Oracle, for example, almost completely abstracts the underlying operating system. Oracle has its own thread scheduling subsystem, for example, with finer-grained quotas and priorities that most Unixes. It's the only way it can offer its
Another Oracle Professional's Opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
Oracle is big, bad, and powerful -- fair enough. It's reputation is well deserved. It's also not a single application, but a conglomeration of applications, all of which need to be pursuaded to work together. Since the various limbs of the beast are developed by different branches of Oracle, they mature and are released at various times. Patches come out on an irregular schedule, and my overwrite previous patches, reintroducing old bugs or new incompatabilites. Trying to verify that version x of component a will play with version y of component b in environment c is enough to make one daffy. Babysitting this monster is time-consuming, and time is money. Trying to maintain more than a trivial deployment without tech support is (intentionally, I believe) a fools game. Draconian licensing terms and restrictions combined with the above factors make Oracle EXTREMELY expensive. The local branch of my company (200 employees) drops a tidy quarter-million into Oracle's coffers every year, and we get huge discounts.
I also maintain a few PostgreSQL databases. They're not quite as capable as the Oracle systems, but they can do at least 90% of what oracle can. They're much easier to configure and maintain, and offer very competitive performance. If we weren't backing oracle to the hilt due to manegerial fiat, they'd do nicely for the vast majority of our systems.
Other companies are leaving Oracle (and other big commercial companies) to lower their operational costs. As the open-source databases improve, a ever-shrinking group of companies are stranded on "big-$-database island" for technical reasons.
Oracle has people to pay and a bottom line to watch. As their market-share begins to shrink, how can they protect revenues? Hint: Look at their business strategy over the past few years. Here's the highlights:
- Try to improve the product. They're trying, but I'm not going to comment on what I think of the most recent efforts.
- Raise prices. Generates more revenue, but it's also fueling a race to jump ship.
- Unbundle products, and create "new" must-have applications, each licensed seperately. This is like going into
/usr/bin and distributing each tool individually, for a few bucks each (maybe with a few added switches to that you can claim "new and improved". No thanks, I'll write my own.
- Control the entire client life-cycle. Oops, I mean facilitate. Oracle has released a plethora of products (designer, developer, OAS etc.) to assist the developer, dba, application manager etc. This is like dealing crack. The apps, individually, aren't too bad (except for OAS, which basically wraps layers of nastiness around Apache to render it impossible to configure/maintain). The real problem is, once you take your first hit, it becomes virtually impossible to use standard tools to deploy, maintain, or version your app. For just a few dollars more, you can acutally use the app you've spent six months developing.
The business model centeres around squeezing more and more money from a shrinking pool of customers. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to recommend Oracle to any of my clients. Smart managers see the trap of vendor-dependance, and insist on open standards. Large database vendors have a vested interest in trying to `extend and extinguish` those standards, as Oracle is doing.I predict that, very soon, pointy-haired-bosses of companies that CAN move to open source will do so 'en masse. The software is stable and mature, all that's missing is corporate mindshare. As that happens, the only recourse the big vendors have is to squeeze huge amounts of cash from the handful of companies who really do depend on the few features not freely available -- an unstable and possibly fatal arrangement for all parties.
So, I'm working with oracle today, but looking for a good opportunity to jump ship.
Re:Expensive DB's Put Companies Out of Profit Zone (Score:3, Insightful)
ok, sure. You throw $2m at mysql and maybe it can provide the performance of $100k of Oracle or DB2: in running large decision-support queries.
And note: before you say that nobody needs these, keep in mind that most robust operational applications today include some business intelligence/DSS. It's mainstream stuff, and the hotting-selling component that Siebel (CRM) sells today. But mysql/postgresq
Re:Expensive DB's Put Companies Out of Profit Zone (Score:3, Informative)
Postgres and mysql both support replication and failover. Neither supports distributed transactions, but if you're just interested in disaster recovery and failover then you're covered.
It'd be stupid to use a DB for live high-value applications that
Re:Orphanware (Score:5, Interesting)
Ingres and Cloudscape are clearly orphanware where CA and IBM clearly saw no need for the database management systems.
I work for CA in Ingres support. I can tell you that that statement is absolutely untrue. Every CA product that requires a repository or database of some kind either already uses Ingres or is in the process of being ported to use it. It's ridiculous to suggest that we'd 'abandon' software that's going to be at the heart of virtually every other product and service we sell.
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