Oracle Lines Up Unbreakable MySQL

munchola writes "MySQL CEO, Marten Mickos, has revealed to CBRonline that Oracle has threatened to provide support for MySQL and is already distributing the open source database. "They have hinted to us that they will," said Mickos, indicating that the database giant is planning to repeat its October 2006 Unbreakable Linux plan, which saw it undercut Red Hat with enterprise Linux support. Despite the competitive threat, Mickos is unmoved. "I hope they do that," he said, noting that it would be seen as an endorsement of the open source database.""

Mikos is right.

[SatanicPuppy]

I find it hard to believe that a company with the amount of overhead that Oracle has will be able to provide mySQL support for the same rates that mySQL can; the primary benefit for Oracle is that they'll be able to offer bundled support with people who already have Oracle support and want the convenience of dealing with one company for all their support needs.

Definitely a win-win situation for mySQL, because they get press and legitimacy without losing too much business. The "unbreakable linux" deal probably hurt RedHat a hell of a lot more than this will hurt mySQL.

I hope they do it for PostgreSQL, too.

[khasim]

Same reasons. The more publicity, the better. If Oracle believes in it enough to offer support, everyone else can feel a little bit easier about using it.

Re:I hope they do it for PostgreSQL, too.

[Zonk (troll)]

I doubt they'd support PostgreSQL. MySQL is basically a non-competitor. While PostgreSQL still isn't, it's much closer. Postgres is fully ACID compliant, is very strict about it's data, has mature support for just about everything (still lacks in clustering and replication, though...), is very fast, scales well, etc.

When you hit the limitations with MySQL, need a feature it doesn't support, etc, Oracle can point you to a sales rep. There are far less limitations with PostgreSQL. It wouldn't make as much business sense to encourage it's use.

Re:I hope they do it for PostgreSQL, too.

[Electrum]

Postgres is fully ACID compliant

As is MySQL [mysql.com].

has mature support for just about everything

It lacks anlaytic functions [oracle.com].

Re:

[mogrify]

Um, yes. MySQL's InnoDB and Berkeley DB engines are ACID compliant.

Re:

[TheSunborn]

The database engines may be ACID compliant, but I still have not managed to make mysql itself support ACID.

Example:

create table t(id int not null unique) engine="innodb";
begin;
insert into t values (23);
insert into t values (23);
commit;
select * from t;
Now this SHOULD return an empty set, but it return
+----+
| id |
+----+
| 23 |
+----+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

(This might in itself be a stupid example, but this(That mysql will commit, even if the transaction contains error) is a real problem, when doing developing u

Re:

[Electrum]

(This might in itself be a stupid example, but this(That mysql will commit, even if the transaction contains error) is a real problem, when doing developing using java/php))

This behavior is perfectly valid. Oracle does the same thing. This is a feature: you, the user, can choose to ROLLBACK or continue on error. Would you want a typo to abort a transaction during interactive use?

SQL> CREATE TABLE t (id int NOT NULL UNIQUE);
Table created.

SQL> SET AUTOCOMMIT OFF

SQL> INSERT INTO t

Re:

[TheSunborn]

The problem is that it also happens under non-interactive use such as from php/java and there it's a real problem..

Re:

[Electrum]

The problem is that it also happens under non-interactive use such as from php/java and there it's a real problem..

Is there some reason you can't check the return value / catch the exception and decide how to handle the failure?

Re:

[ATMD]

Heh, you're new, right?

Just hang around here for a while and (if you can bear it) participate in the discussions.

Soon enough you'll see the little drop-down boxes under every post and the "moderate" button right at the bottom of the page. (It took me *ages* to figure out how to submit my moderation when I first got points). In the meantime, you can find out about it HERE [slashdot.org].

Hey, someone's gotta take care of the newbies :)

Re:

[domc]

Said the 986401 to the 989034. lol

Re:

[ATMD]

Haha, fair point - but I don't see you doing it!

Re:I hope they do it for PostgreSQL, too.

[ortholattice]

Same reasons. The more publicity, the better. If Oracle believes in it enough to offer support, everyone else can feel a little bit easier about using it.

I doubt it. Unlike MySQL, PostgreSQL is much more of a direct competitor to Oracle. In fact, I've converted PG databases to Oracle with ease. (Why did I do this? The client wanted Oracle, so I ported our PG product to it.) The translation of some rather intensive PL/pgSQL to PL/SQL was almost trivial, with a translator script I wrote in a day. The resemblance is so close that if I didn't know better (and maybe I don't), I would almost say PG "borrowed" some of its syntax from Oracle. Going back would be a little harder if some of the more obscure Oracle PL/SQL features were used, but probably not rocket science for most applications. There are other interesting resemblances - you can see very meticulous, almost obsessive Oracle emulation in the behavior of date/time stuff (search the PG source code for "Oracle" - beautifully commented stuff is in there).

With MySQL on the other hand, even without getting into an ACID problems discussion (some of which have been improved in recent releases), has a very poor feature overlap with Oracle, not a minor one being not having anything like PL/SQL.

I guess the thing that bothers me personally about this is that it is publicity for MySQL, subconsciously encouraging more people to adopt it over the (IMHO) much better PostgreSQL. I think that it will poison your mind to learn DB theory from MySQL. :) But that is just my personal view and I encourage alternate viewpoints.

Re:

[EugeneK]

The translation of some rather intensive PL/pgSQL to PL/SQL was almost trivial, with a translator script I wrote in a day.

any chance you'd release that script as Free Software?

Re:

[ortholattice]

any chance you'd release that script as Free Software?

There were several quick-and-dirty, throwaway scripts that were tailored for this conversion project. Essentially, we first converted by hand a sample stored procedure that had most of the features used, and got it to work. The script processed the other stored procedures according to the things that had to be changed. Finally, the results were manually adjusted (mainly to fix things Oracle complained about).

I just searched for these scripts and u

Re:

[ortholattice]

I have emailed a complete "before" and "after" stored procedure example to the grandparent that illustrates pretty much all cases involved in the translation. I am the owner of that code and declare that it is released to public domain, if the grandparent wishes to distribute it. While it is hard to back up this statement since I want to remain anonymous, all I can vouch for is my reputation on slashdot, which will have to be taken at face value.

Re:

[newt0311]

PG does take a lot from oracle. Some of their features like large objects are spitting images of blobs in oracle and like you pointed out, similarities in the date/time stuff.

Re:

[RoloDMonkey]

I think that it will poison your mind to learn DB theory from MySQL. :) But that is just my personal view and I encourage alternate viewpoints.

I don't think starting with MySQL "will poison your mind". However, I think starting with Access, Excel, or FileMaker will.

You apparently are a DBA, however a "many hats" developer, such as myself, often works on things much smaller and less complicated than what you do every day. I think a good developer should know how a relational database works, and under

Re:

[DrXym]

Same reasons.

The same reasons being most likely that by "supporting" MySQL or PostgreSQL they are effectively suffocating the companies who continue to develop of those databases and probably poaching a few sales too. Eventually those other companies might go down the tubes or at least suffer financially and Oracle can turn around and claim "see you can't trust open source, buy Oracle".

I wonder why MS doesn't try the same thing - push out Microsoft Linux, complete with a free Vista / Windows runtime i

Confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that MySQL and Oracle are on complete opposite ends of the scale with regard to their uses, what benefit does Oracle have in killing what is essentially a non-competitor?

Knowledgeable IT people presumably already know when to use Oracle and when to use something smaller like MS-Access. IT morons who think that single-user databases with less than a thousand records need to be in Oracle have already drank the kool-aid and will never change to another product. Oracle's only threat would appear to be t

Re:Mikos is right.

[jimbojw]

> the primary benefit for Oracle is that they'll be able to offer bundled support with people who already have Oracle support and want the convenience of dealing with one company for all their support needs

This is not a trivial point.

Brand recognition goes a long way when a company is shopping for support. Companies that already pay for Oracle support might be very willing to tack-on MySQL support from them, rather than to establish a new relationship with MySQL.

Also, since Oracle will be distributing the MySQL database themselves, the unsuspecting middle-manager might think that "MySQL" is just another Oracle offering, or component of their architecture. It's the old "bundled with" implies "created by" heuristic.

Re:Mikos isn't right.

[mpapet]

Oracle has one kind of customer, MySQL has another kind of customer.

Just a guess, but I'll go out on a limb and state that any hopes MySQL had in wooing really pricey billable hour customers is evaporating. Even if I'm wrong, the mood at MySQL has probably been a little less happy when they figured out Oracle was going after the top of the consulting/support dollars.

There's still *so* much they have to offer for businesses willing to pay. They just need to keep at it and understand that Oracle won't be th

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

considering that mysql is a cheap sonofabitch database without primary keys, and would not even remotely threaten OracleSQL for banks and their customers altogether, i can only supose that this move is done to field out postgress which may pose a serious security threat in the next decade.

Re:

[Zontar The Mindless]

There are things that we don't support, sure, but claiming that we don't support primary keys is ridiculous.

I suggest that the parent is ignorant and/or trolling.

Re:

[head_dunce]

It worked for Red Hat, now they have big money invested in their systems
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070129/20070129005032.html ?.v=1 [yahoo.com]

"Threatening" to support a product?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds great! Maybe GM will "threaten" to buy fuel for my car, or Amazon will "threaten" to return my library books for me so I don't have to.

Re:Isn't Oracle's database supposed to be unbreaka

[Rorschach1]

They're not aimed at the same markets. I haven't followed this too closely, but I assume the reason Oracle is interested in MySQL at all is that they're somewhat complimentary products. MySQL is great if you want a lightweight, fast database that doesn't need to be terribly robust.

I doubt MySQL is ever going to have the sort of PL/SQL support Oracle does, and you're not likely to see things like enterprise-class clustering, data partitioning, replication, and so forth. If you added all that to MySQL, it'd wind up just like Oracle - big, complex, and expensive. They occupy opposite ends of the spectrum.

And for what it's worth, I've got an Oracle database on a modest single-processor AMD server with a single hard drive handling about 20 inserts per second with R-tree spatial indexing and it keeps up just fine, with a bit of tuning. Given a real server with multiple drives I'd be able to optimize things much better, but it's just a testbed.

Comparing MySQL to Oracle is a little like comparing a high-performance motorcycle to an M1A2 tank. They'll both get you from point A to point B, but with different levels of cost and safety.

Re:Isn't Oracle's database supposed to be unbreaka

[Billosaur]

I doubt MySQL is ever going to have the sort of PL/SQL support Oracle does, and you're not likely to see things like enterprise-class clustering, data partitioning, replication, and so forth. If you added all that to MySQL, it'd wind up just like Oracle - big, complex, and expensive. They occupy opposite ends of the spectrum.

And that heaven for that! Look, most of us want a database system we can use for our own limited but still important purposes. We don't need a lot of enterprise-level crud bogging us down. I'd never think of using MySQL on the large scale, but then that's what I have Oracle for. Oracle is over-muscled for a lot of simple stuff; MySQL is better for a medium-weight application.

And as an aside, the reason that Oracle is doing this is to get their name in the small-to-middle size market. Oracle's been dominating larger firms for years now, but that means there's little room for growth. If they can try to reach smaller markets and spread their name around, when some of these smaller companies outgrow their MySQL set-ups, Oracle will be ready to step in with their enterprise apps.

Re:

[tcopeland]

> Look, most of us want a database system we can use for our
> own limited but still important purposes. We don't need a
> lot of enterprise-level crud bogging us down.

So true. I'm running a small database (only 20 million records) [blogs.com], and PostgreSQL [postgresql.org] is more than sufficient. We use it in production, too [getindi.com], and it's quite solid.

Maybe someday when we get up to 100 TB or so we'll think about something else, but by then PostgreSQL will probably be capable of handling that load as well...

Re:

[fabs64]

The ability to handle large loads isn't the only feature people are looking for when they choose Oracle.

I've had very little experience with PostgreSQL but I have heard lots of good things, but the fact is when a large company chooses Oracle over it it's not a comparison of the databases that's the reason, it's names, support contracts, insurance, guarantees, someone to sue.

Re:

[tcopeland]

> it's not a comparison of the databases that's the
> reason, it's names, support contracts, insurance,
> guarantees, someone to sue.

Yup, I bet you're right. Gives folks a warm fuzzy... even though the chances of actually winning a lawsuit against Oracle over some sort of database problem are approximately nil.

Re:

[TheLink]

Winning against a vendor or even getting things fixed is not the point in most companies.

Think of it as you spending your company's/organization's money to help keep your job.

In most companies that's a viable strategy. When stuff happens, instead of the bosses replacing you (and also potentially risking their own butts), they just sue/replace the consultant or vendor.

Re:

[martenmickos]

Rorschach1,

Indeed we view MySQL competing in different markets from the legacy closed source databases. We have focused on new applications, often web-based systems, ecommerce, reporting, analysis and so on, rather than traditional ERP applications. There are many features that DB2 and Oracle have of which they are very proud. And we are also proud *not* to have all of the complexity of those features. Our focus is not on features, but on reliability, ease of use and performance.

Charles Phillips of Orac

Re:

[mcrbids]

MySQL is great if you want a lightweight, fast database that doesn't need to be terribly robust.

That isn't quite right. Let me fix that for you...

MySQL is great if you want a lightweight, fast database with lousy data integrity that doesn't need to be terribly robust.

There. Much, much better.

Typical support call

[Sweetshark]

Customer: XYZ doesnt work. Help me!
Oracle: MySQLs XYZ is crap - you better buy a real DBMS. As a support customer we can offer you Oracle 10g Enterprise at a reasonable prize!

Re:

[SatanicPuppy]

If you don't know why you need Oracle, you don't need Oracle.

Oracle makes it's money primarily by selling support and service, not by selling licenses, so while they may try to sell you a license, they're not going to go out of their way to snag an itty-bitty fish that's not going to be able to afford support.

And frankly, if you're big enough to afford support, you probably DO need Oracle...mySQL is a good tool, but I'd be really hesitant about setting up a big accounting system on mySQL.

Re:

[Nasarius]

And frankly, if you're big enough to afford support, you probably DO need Oracle...mySQL is a good tool, but I'd be really hesitant about setting up a big accounting system on mySQL.

That's what PostgreSQL is for.

Re:Typical support call

[stefanlasiewski]

On the other hand, Oracle 10g is overkill for many shops. MySQL is a great solution for many small databases, and Oracle Support now offers some more legitimacy to the product.

I've seen a number of shops with a situation like this:

Customer: "We're a small shop. We need an RDMBS. We can't afford a DBA. The sales rep said the Oracle Installer is easy to use, and I can install Oracle on my own.

But to install the Oracle *client* , I need to download 3 ISOs, install Xwindows on the server, tunnel Xwindows over SSH. While installing the Oracle Server, the installer crashed out halfway through due to some Java bug. When I tried the installer a second time, the installer refuses to proceed and says that this database already exists.

I called your support line urgently for help, and was transferred not once, not twice but SIX times before they threw my case over over to some department called 'Customer Care' because of a problem with my 'entitlement'. This is my first time calling Oracle Support, so forgive me if I don't understand your byzantine phone support.

I opened this case last Thursday. Today is Tuesday, and I only just heard back from the entitlement department--- I called Saturday, but was told I had to call back Monday (I thought I said this was urgent)--- they finally got back to me with the proper license.

Now that I have the license, can someone please help me with the problem I ran into 5 days ago?

While I was waiting for this problem, my friend came over, installed MySQL in 5 minutes, and created a basic data model in 30 minutes. I can do basic data changes with phpMyAdmin. THIS is what I need. Please tell me why I need to spend $10K on some Oracle 10g Support Licenses?"

Re:

[Stone316]

I would love to know if you could install mysql by yourself and not hit any issues? Maybe the problem here isn't the software..?

I know plenty of people who have installed Oracle by themselves, with 10g its pretty simple. I've installed Oracle on many systems and i've never had to do what you've described.

Sounds like you need to spend money on support because your going to need it sooner or later... You may want to be a bit proactive and go buy some support from mysql right now.

Re:

[fabs64]

I once did a "developer usability study" for some uni class, was told to basically get on the net, and set up the computer to be a development environment for developing a small dynamic webpage with a db backend.
Having never done web dev before I went with the biggest target, MySQL backend with apache/php front, literally took me 5 minutes to download and install MySQL with its nice developer tools, and maybe another 10 minutes to have a reasonable understanding of how those tools work.

Now, I've never in

Re:

[ednopantz]

installed MySQL in 5 minutes, and created a basic data model in 30 minutes ...and six months later we realized that none of our data integrity checks had actually been enforced.

Re:

[Electrum]

But to install the Oracle *client* , I need to download 3 ISOs, install Xwindows on the server, tunnel Xwindows over SSH.

Installing the Instant Client [oracle.com] involves merely unzipping a file.

Re:

[stefanlasiewski]

Rock on! I think Oracle is getting the picture with Oracle 10g. I'll have to check out the client.

Oracle also has a simpler version of the database called Oracle 10g Express Edition [oracle.com], which should work for many people. I read that installation is almost as simple as 'apt-get install oracle-xe' for Debian users.

Oracle distributing MySQL?

[dk.r*nger]

..and is already distributing the open source database

Oracle distributing MySQL? Now, there's a sound business decision if I ever saw one. 80%(*) of Oracle's customers are there for buzzwords compliance - now they can get the database they actually need, and Oracle stays synonymous with databases in the enterprise.

The rest of us can push MySQL saying "this is what Oracle recommends, just free".

(*) I just pulled that number from clear air.

Re:Oracle distributing MySQL?

[Rob T Firefly]

(*) I just pulled that number from clear air.

As a highly-trained professional business analyst at the top of my field, I'll thank you to stop muscling in on my freaking scam.

Re:

[mfh]

As a highly-trained professional business analyst at the top of my field, I'll thank you to stop muscling in on my freaking scam.
Would you like him to stop borrowing from your material? As I understand, you get your data from darker places, while his is allegedly from clean air! :)

Re:Oracle distributing MySQL?

[martenmickos]

Thanks everyone for the interesting comments. It's a good discussion and I think there have been some good points made. I see Oracle and MySQL serving two distinct markets, so in most cases we are not competitors.

One point of clarification: I never said that Oracle has threatened MySQL. (I think this may have been the writer's editorial comment.) Instead, I view it as a positive thing that Oracle distributes MySQL. I have often suggested that Oracle should distribute MySQL and I've made the same suggestion to Microsoft. Perhaps Oracle, Microsoft or IBM will provide support for MySQL and that could be good for open source in general. (And note that Red Hat, HP and others already do so.)

If people want to buy support for MySQL from Oracle, that's great. And of course, if they want to buy it from us, we are fine with that also.

-Marten Mickos, MySQL AB

No, Oracle taking revenue

[kpharmer]

Ah, I don't think Oracle wants to provide MySQL support for any of the following reasons:
- because there is a lot of money to be made
- because they think it is a better product than oracle
- because they want to "endorse" mysql

No, why would Larry Ellison want to provide support for mysql?

Really, just one reason: to further injure MySQL AB.

Look, he already bought InnoDB and Sleepycat out from under MySQL which robs them of important persistence layers (oh sure, bu

Re:

[hauntingthunder]

" I've made the same suggestion to Microsoft. Perhaps Oracle, Microsoft or IBM will provide support for MySQL and that could be good for open source in general."

But very bad for Professional Database development though

Not support!

[TheSpoom]

Oh man, how low can you go? Providing support? How DARE they!

Really though, I think people will see it as an endorsement (and more so, people might think that Oracle is losing faith in its flagship product). It's one thing to provide support for Linux, but MySQL is directly competing with Oracle (to a degree). I really don't know what message they're trying to send here, but if it's that people should buy Oracle, I really don't see how this will help.

Anyway, competition is good. If Oracle thinks it can

interesting

[larry bagina]

postgresql is a more oracle-like (eg, plpgsql) and BSD licensed. Of course, postgres could cannibalize oracle sales; mysql is like sqlite, but with less features.

Re:

[fabs64]

Ah... for a database that sounds like a pretty big fucking advantage.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If SQLLite has stored procedures, triggers, clustering, job scheduling, remote tables, and user-defined partitioning, then you've something to talk about.

Otherwise, STFU.

Thanks.

Oracle

[Scareduck]

Actually buying their products was an out-and-out nightmare, as the rules changed every six months. You never got a consistent sales rep dedicated to your account, and they were always bringing in someone new who couldn't explain what was going on especially well. You had to keep buying new releases, because support for old versions died out, quicker and quicker over time.

As for Oracle support, it was the main thing we looked forward to at first (this was the mid-90's); but it, too, got worse over time. I would not trust Oracle to properly support MySQL, especially since they have no motivation to push it, and they are not the developers (and in fact are in competition with them).

Re:Oracle

[Rorschach1]

You're obviously using the wrong channels. I've never had any trouble obtaining Oracle licenses. The streamlined acquisition process goes like this:

1. Government agency your company works for pays $90 million for Oracle licenses
2. Larry Ellison gives your congressman a nice campaign contribution
3. Government agency happily hands over license certificates by the wheelbarrow load to show that they were needed in the first place

Never once had to deal with a sales rep.

Re:

[Scareduck]

Too bad "only" buying $25,000 worth of licenses every six months doesn't get you good service.

Re:

[CompMD]

Except Oracle doesn't have a product competing with MySQL. There are a few earlier comments detailing this. For a real world comparison, consider this: I use UGS Teamcenter Engineering with an Oracle 9i backend, and run pretty little websites with MySQL backends. Teamcenter has enormous amounts of data going through it all the time, but Oracle (although sometimes slowly) handles everything without fail. On the other hand, MySQL will periodically crash if I get too much web traffic...I'm not saying MySQL

Re:

[rjstanford]

How about 10g Express [oracle.com]? Runs on Linux and Windows, and as long as you're not setting up a cluster or anything it probably gives you everything you need. I think the price is right, too, at $free, although it only handles up to 4GB of data. Of course, for the vast majority of small sites, that's plenty.

Oracle "Support"

[TechnoLust]

sucks donkey nuts. The only reason we have it is because they won't let us have the source code. Not a problem with MySQL! ;-)

Upgrade Pathing

[Phrogman]

I am sure this is just an effort on Oracle's part to capture as much of the low end database market as they can, then offer a seemless, supported upgrade to Oracle's DBMS for those who reach the limits of mysql or who start needing requirements that mysql can't support. This lets them continue to bombard customers with reasons to upgrade, while still getting support contract money from them. If the mysql community benefits from this, I am sure its just an accidental byproduct of a marketing and sales effort and nothing more.

...lets play nice...

[Grinin]

I just think that all of these big name companies are tired of getting asked about their thoughts on the open source community, so they are all teaming up, partnering with, or simply trying to support open source technologies... Microsoft and Novell, and now Oracle with RedHat and MySQL... I think its just to say "we can play nice with the other guys..."

Whether or not it is good or bad for the community, only time will really tell us that.

How Can Oracle Support MySQL

[aquatone282]

. . . when they can't even support their own products?

Signed,

Another Oracle "Fusion Middleware" (or whatever they're calling that abortion of an application server this week) User.

It will lower their costs

[mangu]

While many people are commenting that Oracle's motivation is to gather sales for their own DB, I can see another motivation here. Oracle maintenance can be a nightmare for unexperienced DBAs. If they can move their lesser customers to MySQL that could mean less support costs for Oracle, while keeping the paying customer.

I doubt very much that most DBAs that have a support contract with Oracle and move to MySQL will say "OK, now we don't need that contract anymore". They will keep it as insurance for who knows if MySQL will work as expected? They feel they may need to move back to Oracle in the future. After all, if they had felt at ease with MySQL to begin with, they wouldn't need Oracle to tell them how good it is.

"Unbreakable" Linux...

[Ant P.]

From the company that censors [argeniss.com] people pointing out how shoddy their in-house software is?

support?

[louzerr]

Yeah, so they'll offer the same mess of convoluted support that they do for their Oracle database. Big Deal.

I can provide Oracle support on a two-headed coin: Side A - you must have a typo somewhere; Side B - you'll need to find a work-around.

And, of course there'll be another user forum of everyone asking for the same help that you are (with very few useful answers).

Welcome MySQL Users!

[aquatone282]

. . . to the Nine Circles of Oracle Support Hell.

From the C_Kode PR Department: V.U.M

[C_Kode]

C_Kode Software is releasing a new version of the MySQL Database. Very Unbreakable MySQL (V.U.M.) MySQL. This will be based of anything that we like and will prove to be better because I said it was. It will be very fast. We like to call it Vroom VUM! Does your app VUM? If not, shell out $50 a year to me and I will allow you to tell anyone your app VUMs.

Re:

[AlmostEarthling]

MySQL apps wouldn't VUM even if you put four million volts through them.

F.

Benefits of combining Oracle and MySql

[managerialslime]

The thread here seems to question (a) the value of Oracle and (b) why this would be good for Oracle's customers. Here are my 0.0002 cents:

My current client is a large insurance company. (More than $7 billion dollars of policies a year underwritten by a staff of more than 1,200 people.)

We have lots of Oracle, SQL/Server, and MS/Access applications all over the place. The Oracle data is generally available to everyone. We have more than 50 analysts who use a combination of Hyperion (formerly Brio) and SAS

Genius way of getting rid of OSS competitors...

[CPE1704TKS]

It never occurred to me, but what an inspired, evil way of killing off open source competitors like MySQL. By offering enterprise-level support for MySQL, it will kill the revenue streams that MySQL would normally get, and over time would starve them of money needed to grow. For a small company like MySQL to flourish, they need to increase the amount of money they get from support and services and the enterprise market is usually their best bet. If Oracle blocks them from this, it really throttles MySQL'

Re:

[maxwell demon]

I wonder if Microsoft could potentially do the same thing. If they offered to give support/services for a brand of Linux, like Debian for example, and give low cost/high quality support for it and just swallow the loss like they swallow the loss for X-box, could this be used to kill Red Hat off in a few years?

s/Debian/Novell/

Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin (yet again)

[Vryl]

From 2005:

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165697&cid =13823400 [slashdot.org]

"Linux has commodotised the OS. MySQL and perhaps PostGRES are commodotising the Database.

All the money is upstream. Larry's customers are asking him why should they use Oracle, when MySQL et al does what they want. Larry want to sell them his other mojo, and that is where the money is. Why support the database when a bunch of other people will do it for you."

Re:Oracle Sucks

[nuzak]

> If you came up with a ratio of $spent/$productivity, Oracle would probably throw a divide by zero error.

Whereas MySQL would silently insert a default value.

Re:

[zaguar]

Haha Brilliant. What would PgSQL do?

Re:

[VGPowerlord]

Haha Brilliant. What would PgSQL do?

Divide by zero error, but only because it tries to emulate Oracle as closely as possible. :P

Re:

[TheLink]

Unless you use savepoints, postgresql will rollback the entire transaction if there is an error anywhere.

Re:Oracle Sucks

[MyLongNickName]

Serious question: What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server? I asked that to an Oracle DBA once, and he just got red in the face and stammered about having more options to configure things the way he wanted. I asked what exactly he configured, and basically got a lecture on Microsoft being evil. I then asked if he thought Larry Ellison was a saint, and the conversation just continued to devolve.

Serious question: why is Oracle considered so much better that SQL Server?

Re:

[TheSpoom]

I've taken two Oracle classes (could have gotten certified, but I really didn't care that much). Basically, unless you're running into the tens of thousands of users, there's not much difference. Now, as a DBA, there are some things I would prefer to do in Oracle rather than SQL Server (though I'd much rather do them in an open source DB like MySQL or PostgreSQL), but I don't think it's worth the (massively) added cost unless you really are running it in an enterprise situation.

Re:

[powerlord]

What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server?

Primarily, I would imagine that the advantage is that you don't have to run your DB on Windows, which has not had such a "rock solid" reputation in the past (compared to the Unix derivatives).

Re:

[helixcode123]

What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server?

I'm rather fond of their Analytic Functions [orafaq.com], which allow for convenient queries against other table rows. For example, given a table of time-stamped log entries you can write a query to "Show me the time intervals between successive log entries."

I'm hoping these will show up in Postgresql soon.

Re:

[MyLongNickName]

Interesting reading, for sure. I know I have spent a lot of time writing "complex" SQL queries to accomplish the same thing. Interesting having a built in functions that will help accomplish the same thing.

Question: Performance-wise, is this the equivalent of using SQL subqueries? Or is there some type of database optimization that gives it a performance advantage?

Re:

[ohearn]

>"Serious question: What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server? I asked that to >an Oracle DBA once, and he just got red in the face and stammered about having more options >to configure things the way he wanted. I asked what exactly he configured, and basically >got a lecture on Microsoft being evil. I then asked if he thought Larry Ellison was a >saint, and the conversation just continued to devolve.

>Serious question: why is Oracle considered so much better that SQL Server?"

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true. I supported a large customer (a national, no nationwide, building society in the UK), that has several million customers in the DB, and a couple of thousand users directly logged onto it, and several thousand remote users. (this is SQL Server BTW), and its fine, fast and responsive.

Now, the things we had to do to make this work are basically: use stored procedures.

Now I work with a large breakdown company that uses Oracle, and we've seen barely a difference. Oracle is just as performant, and

Re:

[krinkelkrok]

I think SQL Server 2005 is better from an administrators perspective. To be able to script anything from the GUI, makes it easier to perform tasks without spending too much time on figuring out how to write everything from scratch. Allthough you have excellent tools like Toad for Oracle, the GUI in the current version of SQL Server saves me a lot of time. I've tested Oracle on my most used application (100+ concurrent users. I know, it's not big), and SQL Server performs just as good as Oracle here.

And you still don't have much of an answer

[Evets]

Oracle performs better in enterprise environments, hands down. Oracle Clustering is more intelligently implemented than SQL Clustering. PL/SQL scripts are easier to debug than those in MS SQL.

OTOH, SQL Server is extremely simple to install and administer for low volume environments. DTS Provides a nice simple transport mechanism. Enterprise manager, while kludgy, is relatively intuitive.

For fine tuning, Oracle provides finer control - but that's not to say that SQL doesn't provide a lot of control over DB Tuning features.

Then there are the little things that crop up over experienced usage - like the first time you try to take a MS SQL backup from one machine to another and end up perplexed for an hour. Or when you're 6 gig backup file won't copy from one machine to another without 3rd party software (really a windows issue, not SQL Specific). Or when you discover that you can't replicate certain tables or columns, can't copy blobs using sql scripts, etc. Things like that.

A lot of applications treat the database as a storage engine and leave platform specific performance enhancements by the wayside in favor of database-agnostity. Because of this, MySQL is much closer to being a legitimate competitor than you would think. People talk about "ACID Compliance", but really most applications don't need ACID Compliance and just because you can't do something one particular way doesn't mean it can't be done.

Re:

[mksql]

Then there are the little things that crop up over experienced usage - like the first time you try to take a MS SQL backup from one machine to another and end up perplexed for an hour. Or when you're 6 gig backup file won't copy from one machine to another without 3rd party software (really a windows issue, not SQL Specific).

Experienced usage is the key term here. Every platform/environment has it's 'gotchas' - this is why there are still paid admin positions. The two examples above are easily avoided, if you know the proper procedures (and this concept is not a synonym for RTFM).

Re:

[MobyDisk]

I don't have enough MS SQL 2005 experience, but MS SQL 2000 didn't scale very well. The implementation of "shared locks" and "lock escalation" in MSSQL meant that many readers + one big writer = near total database deadlock. The readers would be locked-out every time the writer touched a page they were reading. Oracle, PostGreSQL, and SQL 2005 support a system where readers never interfere with writers.

I know that there are big database features in Oracle that are way over my head and I can't go into. S

Re:

[database-watcher]

nice comparison found at wisdomforce . SQL Servers does catch up pretty well comparing to what they had in SQL Server 2000

writers don't block readers, nor readers writers

[emil]

Microsoft SQL Server (which is Sybase in diguise) has an in-memory lock structure; if your transaction acquires too many row locks, your locks are escalated (to page locks or table locks). While these rows are locked, readers are blocked.

Because of this, your are encouraged to keep your SQL Server transactions as short as possible. By default, isql DML commits after every statement, and you must use a BEGIN TRANSACTION/COMMIT if this is not what you want.

Oracle does not use a memory structure for row lo

Re:writers don't block readers, nor readers writer

[Anonymous Coward]

Informative? How ironic :-(

Microsoft SQL Server (which is Sybase in diguise)

How many times do we have to repeat it? This was true for old versions, there's not much left in from Sybase nowadays in SQL Server. Please get yourself informed instead of perpetuating wrong informations: http://blogs.msdn.com/euanga/archive/2006/01/19/51 4479.aspx [msdn.com]

has an in-memory lock structure;

I have no clue why you point out that the lock structures are in-memory, which is btw good from a performance standpoint, but it doesn't imply anything in how the locking model works.

if your transaction acquires too many row locks, your locks are escalated (to page locks or table locks). While these rows are locked, readers are blocked.

First of all I must point

Re:

[Gorshkov]

What is important, though, is that this is a perfectly valid model which is very useful in many scenarios

He never said it *wasn't* a valid model. He said (effectivly) it wasn't anywhere near as *efficient* a model when you have many queries touching the same records, when at least one of them is a writer.

And he's absolutely correct.

Re:

[VGPowerlord]

To be honest, if said person only knew one DBMS and not the other, they're not qualified to answer those questions anyway.

Re:

[heinousjay]

Who are these Windows fanatics, outside of Microsoft? I notice a lot of Linux fanatics, and a lot of Mac fanatics, and a cute little group of BSD fanatics, but I only ever see marketing material from Microsoft, no real zealotry. I think you're setting up paper enemies to have a quick win.

Oracle acquired what?

[wieck]

Postgres, the only other threat on the first point, was nullified with Oracle's acquisition of the only backend to it with atomic commits

What Postgres backend did Oracle acquire?

Jan

Re:

[nuzak]

Uh, perhaps you missed the typo in the OP. Postgres has never used InnoDB or any other kind of "pluggable backend".

Re:

[zrq]

Postgres ... was nullified with Oracle's acquisition of the only backend to it with atomic commits

Did I miss something, what part of Postgres did Oracle buy ?

A quick Google(tm) for 'oracle aquisition postgres' and all I found was this http://www.postgresqlfr.org/files/oracle.html [postgresqlfr.org] which probably isn't what you meant :-)

Oracle aquired the MySQL backend not PostGresql

[Marcus Green]

"Postgres, the only other threat on the first point, was nullified with Oracle's acquisition of the only backend to it with atomic commits"

No, it was the innodb for MySQL that Oracle acquired, this has nothing to do with PostGresQL. Unlike MySQL PostgresQL has always had attomic commits.

Re:

[Gorshkov]

For its platform to be the only one with real, honest-to-goodness atomic commits.

and

(Postgres, the only other threat on the first point, was nullified with Oracle's acquisition of the only backend to it with atomic commits)

What the bloody hell are you talking about?

Re:

[quahaug]

Blazzing Saddles (I think)