Sun Buys MySQL 588
Krow alerted me that MySQL has been bought by Sun. Right now there is only a brief announcement but it discusses what the acquisition will mean for the core developers, community etc.
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I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Im a sun employee (Score:3, Interesting)
So now I'm a Sun employee. Interesting. No more BK at MySQL.
What all this means, I'm sure I'll be learning the hard way very soon.
Licenses (Score:5, Interesting)
Great news!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Headline is misleading (Score:-1, Interesting)
What happens now with Oracle and PostgtreSQL? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is a move to sell support to their customers, like asking: "Do you need an Oracle Database?"
- If the answer is "YES", then we will sell you our servers and OS support
- If the answer is "NO", then we will sell you our servers and OS support AND MySQL / PostgreSQL support
There is a very good entry on a Sun blog about the cost of propietary databases and the "commodization" of this market:
http://blogs.sun.com/jkshah/entry/cost_of_proprietary_database [sun.com]
So why would SUN buy MYSQL - discussion! (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought SUN was currently bundling postgresql guess that wasn't good enough...
So up for discussion why buy mysql?
* Well you can't buy postgresql.....(Who to buy?)
* Wanting to hurt redhat
* You get ownership of the code (Since mysql has)
The "hurting redhat" is more for journalists "lets find a conflict thinking"
What else are the reasons?
Re:Sun? (Score:4, Interesting)
sun hires older workers (disc: I work at sun). when I interviewed at google, though, I was the oldest 'grey hair' in the whole cafeteria
then, see the brian reid story to confirm all this evilness about google.
please think twice about parotting the 'google is not evil' mantra, because I assure you - if you are over mid 30's, they will either not hire you OR fire you before you are about to vest. quite evil.
so I'm glad its not going into the hands of google. they have enough power and are corrupt enough, already.
(really, go search on brian reid - it may turn your view around about 'the beloved google'). sad to say, but it is true.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Homo homini lupus
Re:Not a rash move (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Great news (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not a rash move (Score:5, Interesting)
But I think most people thought Sun might push PostgreSQL [sun.com] which is a nice database. Not sure why Sun would purchase MySQL, seems like an expensive PR move. I for one have seen Sun's product support deteriorate over the years, and hope they keep support for MySQL independent of the main line support. Or maybe this plays into Oracle as Oracle had or has an alliance with Sun. Is this alliance strained?
Re:Sun? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Here is the PR (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps Sun will be playing around with open sourcing some more of their hardware as a pseudo way of moving away from hardware, without actually losing all their hardware aquisitions.
But it is interesting to see how open source as a business model is evolving by allowing competitors to leverage off each other and still compete. Maybe what we are looking at is the "horizontalisation" of the market, I note that with speculation about an open sourcing of DB2 and Oracle databases, Microsoft's position in the market looks more and more isolated every day.
Dificult to say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sun owns Java. Sun will soon own MySQL. If you have a Tomcat/J2EE environment running open source, you will soon be having to deal with a single vendor with control over your environment, because most systems only give lip service to PostgreSQL but fully support MySQL. Expect the support bills to go up.
On to RedHat and IBM, I think it is time for them to start funding the PostgreSQL project for real. Setup a more corporate entity to guide it and REALLY compensate the guys like Tom, Bruce, et. al. for so much hard work, which IMHO is above and beyond a standard pay check.
Oracle in Java (Score:5, Interesting)
what about postgres (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sun? (Score:2, Interesting)
its not about not being hired - its about their hiring CRITERIA and retention methods. seriously, this has surfaced a few times and its not exactly a secret anymore.
I feel I dodged a bullet by not going there. who wants to work like a slave and then be fired right BEFORE you vest. evil!
Re:Licenses (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent insightful, please!
I recall reading that MySQL AB really didn't stand a chance to force the GPL (and therefore, move to their proprietary license) on programs that connected to the database because that was "dynamically linking". Dude, WTF? Using protocols to communicate to a program or service is NOT linking! I got so angry when I read the news on the License change, that I wanted to tag the story "greedybastards".
But if MySQL AB told the truth, then nobody would buy their ultra-expensive license.
On the other hand, Sun and their promotion of Open Office (and open formats) is a proper example of Free software.
Let's hope things change for the good (for example, re-releasing the MySQL client software to LGPL or GPL+linking exception).
A surprising move (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. A spreadsheet is effectively just a less structured database, and given that you're talking about freeform data... and in any case those kind of lists aren't going to have enough data that a spreadsheet becomes inappropriate.
And to be honest, does it really matter what method they're using to make their lists? I'd rather be sent a CSV than a SQL file, and despite being a proponent of open standards, I can still open up an Excel file no problem. Yeah, I'd prefer to see just sharing out a page on Google Docs or just being handed a sheet of paper, but that's life.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, fast forward a year. People from 3 other departments need access to an always updated copy of this list. One of them is off-site on a different network. Some people aren't supposed to see parts of the list. Others can see all of the list but they are only supposed to be able to change parts of it.
Now, as you can see, what this has evolved into is essentially a multi-user database app. A very basic one, but still more than a spreadsheet can handle (because a spreadsheet is meant for calculating, not data storage). If they had just come to us in the beginning we could have gotten something working setup from the start, rather than having to worry about going back and recreating it and importing data.
That's my problem with the whole "a spreadsheet is fine" outlook. You can hammer in a nail with a crescent wrench too, but if you do so with a hammer sitting right there in the toolbox I'm gonna consider you an idiot
Re:Dificult to say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sun? (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't Slashdot use MySQL on the backend? Doesn't Google use it for some stuff?
Might it have been more fair to say "PostgreSQL scales better then MySQL" then "MySQL doesn't scale well"?
Re:Here is the PR (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It would make MySQL easier to deploy... (Score:4, Interesting)
A good CTO or engineer can research and understand the risks and benefits of using specific technology. A better CTO puts in place risk mitigation, i.e. grow internal talent to handle the new technology.
Having been in the CTO position, and basically following my own advice, I saved my DotCom startup almost $1M dollars on license fees and support contracts. Yes, we went out of business because the business model was flawed, but our technology was on target, did much more than it was expected to, and worked fantastically and because of these steps, we had an extra year that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
This is why small companies are the most innovative.
Sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the columns (a,b) and the value (a = X, b is null). If (a,b) is part of the primary key, the value (X,NULL) cannot occur in a table. But the idea of "uniqueness" is not as well defined in relational theory. Can the values (X,NULL) occur if (a,b) is constrained to be unique? Well, probably. Can it occur more than once? Now that turns out to be a very interesting question.
Let's consider a single column (s), where s is defined to be unique, but is allowed to be null. (s) cannot be part of the primary key of course, but can null occur more than once in the table? The answer is, yes, for both practical and theoretical reasons. The practical reason is that this turns out to be a quite useful behavior. Suppose s represents a social security number on a person record. In some cases that person has declined to provide is SSN, in which case we must put a null in that column. So two or more people can provide null for their social security number, thus many rows can have null there; but if two people provide the SAME SSN, that's an error.
The theoretical justification for nulls behavior in unique constraints comes from that fact that the expression (null == null) should evaluate to false. The expression (s = null) is ALWAYS false, even if the column s happens to contain null. That is because null as a value has special meanings; it can mean "doesn't apply" or "don't know". If s is the SSN, and record a and record b both have null in them, then how do we interpret the expression (a.s = b.s)? If it means do the records for a and b have the same value in column s, you'd want it to be true. If it means does person a have the same ssn as person b, you'd want it to be an error. If it means is person a known to have the same ssn as person b, you'd want the answer to be no. Each of these interpretations has its justifications, but the last one is the one that is ultimately the most practical. If we want to test whether a column is null, we must use the "is" operator, not the equality operator.
So, the apparently minor distinction between key candidacy and uniqueness is quite large if any of the columns involved are allowed to contain nulls.
Now, for the practical consequences of getting this wrong. If you use Access' GUI tools to build queries against tables in an external database, Access when running that query does not allow the external database to optimize the query. You need to do a pass through for that. Instead, Access attempts to optimize the query itself, particularly I/O over the database link, which is presumably expensive.
So lets say table p is people and table r is region, and both tables are held on an Oracle database. I want to do a query which joins person to region to make a table of names and the regions they live in. Now it happens that Alice (person #25) and Bob (person #82) live in the same region, "North". The query correctly spits out ("Alice","North"), then continues on to Bob's record. Now it turns out that both Alice and Bob have refused to supply the SSN, so they both have null in column s.
What happens next is pretty mysterious, but I think we can infer two things. First, Access gets the issue of (null = null) wrong; at least some parts of Access do some of the time. Second, Access may be attempting to reduce external I/O, but it somehow tracks by what it thinks is the primary key. Whatever the cause, one often gets the sequence:
("Alice","North")
("Alice","North")
instead of:
("Alice","North")
("Bob","North")
which would be the correct one.
Oops.
I'd give you more information on reproducing this, but I don't use Access much. Like I said, I have talked to other da
ENTERPRISE (Score:1, Interesting)
MySQL 6 is in the forge, but what's in for MySQL 7? Java for MySQL? Having to cope with half of the Java enterprise bloat and twelve paragraphs of business-speak nonsense just to get it working?
They did this for two reasons:
1. Oracle's pricing per core is hurting Sun, as they have processors with many cores and Oracle licenses cost a fortune to Sun's customers ($150000 for a Niagara processor). MySQL prices per server.
2. To break LAMP and try to attract as many gullible fools as possible to Java. PHP, Python and Ruby are going up and Java is going down in popularity. The problem is they can't buy "LAMP" out. So they buy what they can and try to screw it up. The smarter people will replace the "M", but some may attempt to replace the "P". While on it, maybe they can get the "L" replaced too.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, as long as we are on the subject, how about the overuse of SQL databases for non-relational information? MySQL is no beast, but in my company, there is a SQL Server on almost every box and many of them are storing stuff that is non-relational and could be accessed more quickly in a direct access file.
Spreadsheet/Database (Score:5, Interesting)
Normalization has practical limitations (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, but excessive normalization can also be a pain in the arse. Theoretically speaking, complete normalization throughout would obviate any need for NULL. Practically speaking, this is unreasonable, given the resulting complexity and increased time required for queries and other operations -- which is why databases still use NULL. As the GP noted, allowing NULL values "turns out to be a quite useful behavior."
Cheers,
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
Will they try and make it more Solaris-oriented, or what? It's not like they had to buy MySQL to improve its ability to run on Solaris.
How will this affect MySQL's upcoming Falcon engine? How is this going to impact Oracle?
They used to be all about PostgreSQL, putting it in Solaris by default if memory serves. PostgreSQL's BSD license would have let them fork and develop it as they pleased, so why would they want to spend all that money to get the same control over MySQL that they had over PostgreSQL by default?
Re:SQLite Gui_ (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is Yes. But of course the answer depends on what you mean by "effectively". My mom uses access effectively for her needs. She can start a database with one of the wizards and then modify it a bit using the GUI. She has a *very very* small knowledge of keys and tables and overal database structure (which I taught her). Overall, she knows whatever is necessary to know to acomplish her tasks.
The idea of a GUI is to make it easy and intuitive to execute certain tasks. Access does that quite well, even if the
Re:I wonder (Score:1, Interesting)
IT weren't involved until the not-put-out-to-tender contractor told us it was finished, can we have our money please and - fuck me - this thing is a mess. Assumes that everyone here runs as an administrator (tries to both write to program files and HKLM). Uses "encrypted" config files for "security", and no the IT staff aren't allowed to have the decryption algorithm, that would ruin the security (why the fuck does a fucking config file that lists a grand total of four directories need to be encrypted?). Configs don't support environment variables so we're expected to roll out a user-specific config file for each of our 2000 users (setting it at install isn't a viable option because the dirs are suspect to change, and since all the configs are encrypted we can't script a system-wide change to those either). Widgets are designed not to respond to "enter", "tab" and "space bar" intentionally to "avoid mistakes from people who don't use keyboard shortcuts" (and this is software INTENDED to be used by secretaries and PA's). Widget anchors were all wrong so that if you resized the app half the buttons would vanish and you'd have no idea why. Every change we asked to make was stonewalled as "not part of the original spec", until we found out there was no original spec - some bright spark just told them to write an app that does some shit and we'll give you some money, giving them no indication of what our IT setup was like - the first they saw of our company was a week or two before the project was due to ship (about 3 months ago). The person who started this project has since left the company. Quelle fucking suprise.
And, I might add, the developers did practically NONE of the debugging work. None. All me. Because debugging work to make it work with our system wasn't in the contract - they told me we should just make everyone a power user and there'd be no more problems. I had to analyse the executables looking for the bit where he tried to open the key in read/write as opposed to read only [for those none of you out there debugging shitty VBA apps, drop the second parameter from opensubkey()] because they *didn't know how* - although since this company's core competency seems to be pimping out PowerPoint docs I'm not terribly surprised. Turnaround time on a bugfix that we supply them (like the aforementioned opensubkey() change - removing 5 characters and a recompile) took a minimum of 48hrs to the extent that end user testing was impossible and we had to test the whole suite internally (otherwise users get bored of the stop/start testing cycle - if it doesn't go "It's broke!"; "Here, try this"; "OK, that works!" within a day you're hosed in getting valid tests).
And now my boss is being criticised because the project is coming in over-budget and late - apparently it's all IT's fault that we weren't good enough to get the app into a usuable state in time. My boss (in fact, multiple bosses going up to the head of IT) is having none of it and as soon as the "lessons learnt" meeting comes up heads are going to roll - this was a project that should have been an IT dept. thing from the start, mainly due to us being able to implement the (retardedly simple) functionality of this piece of shit for a hundredeth of the cost in-house. This is why said company fucking HAS an IT department. It's pissed of everyone it's come into contact with.
Best bit of it all? Said app won't work with Vista or Office 2007, both of which are tentatively in the tech refresh plans in 18 months time. Not in the contract.
Seriously, you couldn't make this shit up. But it feels good to let off steam.
Posting AC so as to protect the innocent
Re:Yes they all work like slaves (Score:3, Interesting)
Working unpaid overtime is agreed in the contract at the start, at least here in the UK - whether legal or not in EU laws, you accept it. Some jobs I've accepted that as I've enjoyed the job enough to choose to do overtime for my enjoyment, knowing that the project wouldn't even get off the ground if it weren't for more-time-invested-than-is-money-in-the-pot. This type of work especially applies to advertising where the client doesn't have the funds but you want to produce, regardless of their funds, something really fantastic for your own pleasure/portfolio/learning. Some jobs I've refused unless overtime is paid in full - it depends on the nature of the work but it doesn't make you a chump to spend more time on a product than you're paid because you know career wise (CV, portfolio work) it will pay dividends.
If you feel so strongly about unpaid overtime, don't sign a contract saying that you'll do it for free.
As a manager of a coding team I have always made it extremely clear to project managers that they are getting no overtime out of my team unless the team consent to it or the accounts team agree overtime pay. I'm all for defending teams and readily do so and discourage overtime by quoting realistic deadlines, so this way if they choose to work overtime, they're not 'chumps', they're just keen on the work.
It's also worth noting that in the past I have worked overtime because someone
It's amazing how some people on Slashdot seem to have a cube mentality which suggests that work is a sterile, non-interactive environment. It really isn't in my experience.
What is Sun up to? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sun has been going open source lately. To make money in F/OSS you sell services, not products. Sun has also announced that sun will be outsourcing their data centers. I think Sun means to expand their data centers a lot, and wants to save money.
A lot of major companies already contract with Sun to run database apps on Sun servers. Those servers are located in Sun's buildings. Sun then contracts with EDS to do the hands-on administration of servers. EDS often contracts with other companies, including a lot of off-shore companies. The datacenters do not have to be offshore, just the people who monitor the systems, and do all the admin work that does not have to be hands-on.
I think Sun may be targeting smaller company, not just banks and the like.
So let's say I want to start a SaaS company to offer hotel management software. Since I don't have a lot money, and I don't want to pay for a lot of computer resources, to get started, I decide to use PHP and MySQL to develop my product. Since this is a commercial offering, I will need to have a commercial version of MySQL, this is where Sun will have me covered. Sun itself will do very little, Sun will contract with other companies to provide back-end support. Sun will hold the licenses to the OS, and the database, and maybe the language - if you decide to use Java. Sun will be the middle-man, the deal maker. Sun will change it's focus from selling hw/sw, to contracting for sevices, and those services will be provided by others.
Or something along those lines, is what I'm guessing.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)