Locating the Real MySQL 335
An anonymous reader writes "In a blog post, Patrick Galbraith, an ex-core engineer on the MySQL Server team, raises the question: "What is the official branch of MySQL?" With Monty Widenius having left Sun and forked off MySQL for MariaDB, and Brian Aker running the Drizzle fork inside of Sun, where is the official MySQL tree? Sun may own the trademark, but it looks like there is doubt as to whether they are still the maintainers of the actual codebase after their $1B acquisition of the code a year ago. Smugmug's Don MacAskhill, who is the keynote at the upcoming MySQL Conference, has commented that he is now using the Percona version of MySQL, and is no longer relying on Sun's."
PostgreSQL (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.postgresql.org/ [postgresql.org]
Just saying.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, maybe people have a reason to use MySQL - a product that only supports that db, or developers who aren't particularly familiar with what relational databases are supposed to be like.
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Hey, maybe people have a reason to use MySQL - a product that only supports that db, or developers who aren't particularly familiar with what relational databases are supposed to be like.
I don't know why this is marked as Funny... there are far too many programs or even webapps (PHP ones in particular) that only work with MySQL.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why this is marked as Funny... there are far too many programs or even webapps (PHP ones in particular) that only work with MySQL.
The problem is that the Funny mod can't differentiate between when someone is laughing with you or at you.
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I'm also curious as to what exactly is more difficult about Postgres compared with MySQL to install? Maybe I've done it so many times I know what I'm doing, but there seems little difference.
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ubiquitous, well-documented and free... Why would I choose use anything else
Because it's of higher quality?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Why would I choose use anything else? ... Because a lot of people thinks that foreign key constraints are the best and most important way (after primary keys) to secure the consistency of the application's data.
Of course, that people probably never wrote a dozen of lines of code, so they never realized that the programmer has one thousand of more powerful ways to corrupt all the application data (sadly, databases are not immune to code bugs despite any imaginative constraints.)
BTW, that same people nev
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Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck finding it. MySQL has horrible documentation [mysql.com]. The whole structure of it is a mess.
Plus, when you say "and if there is a problem, it is documented". Yeah, that is great, but most of the "well-documented" problems are long-standing bugs for insanely stupid shit.
It does make me laugh though, because honestly, I agree that mysql is well documented. Every random question [google.com] I google for usually has a hit. And funny enough, the top listing is usually a page here [mysql.com]--failing that, at least on the first page of results [google.com].
Because you know better.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:4, Interesting)
It really is a very good database. I just hope more projects start using it. And that more hosting companies will as well.
I am pretty sure that that MySQL still has better client slave replication "Like Slashdot uses" than Postgres. But I could be wrong.
Enough already! (Score:5, Informative)
Enough with the knee-jerk elitism. MySQL is just fine for quite a lot of tasks, and the article isn't about the religious battle between DB packages.
-B
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a religious battle, it's about using the best tool for the job. MySQL may be very easy to setup, but just fyi, PostgreSQL is a snap to set up now on Windows or Linux.
Looking for reasons to use PostgreSQL?
Much better index support.
Kerberos or LDAP access controls.
Better native Unicode support.
If you're hog-tied to MySQL because of your software, well so be it. But if you have a choice, the winner should be fairly obvious.
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the subject is how your data is supposed to be used.
MySQL users see the database as a program persistance layer. I am not sure WHY they are using something that pretends to be a relational database, but they are. It is the single-app approach (one app, one database).
The PostgreSQL crowd sees data and application as being separate issues. The data in theory should be able to be managed in any of a hundred different applications, all hitting the same database, without causing the nightmares in QA that this sort of thing creates in MySQL.
So is the program what is important? Or is the data there to be used by many programs?
MySQL works OK for one-app databases and many people think that is all that is needed. It breaks down outside that area, however.
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Interesting)
You forgot to broaden your scope. Otherwise, you are correct.
Your database is almost literally your company. It should reflect your way of doing business--any moderately skilled developer should be able to walk into an orginization they know nothing about and using only the database schema, infer pretty much what the company does, and how it does it.
You can always fix flawed software design, but it is almost impossible to fix a flawed database design. Do your database wrong, the growth of your company will be hindered. Do it right, and your company will flourish. No joke.
The sociology of MySQL is interesting. (Score:4, Insightful)
You know something is wrong when a discussion of MySQL is dominated by comments about PostgreSQL.
Re:The sociology of MySQL is interesting. (Score:4, Funny)
You know something is wrong when a discussion of MySQL is dominated by comments about PostgreSQL.
Or you're on Slashdot. My guess: when the editors see the MySQL article in the queue, they think, "We haven't had a MySQL/PostgreSQL flamewar in a while. Let's post this!"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not that much of a flame war. At the time of posting, most of the comments I see in favour of PostgreSQL are saying that MySQL is fine but for one reason or another they prefer PostgreSQL. And that's actually my position too. I enjoy designing databases and that is true on any system. I've done some of my best work on MySQL - it's fine for me. But for a few reasons (which I wont repeat again), I find PostgreSQL more impressive. Others may prefer MySQL and that's fine. If a preference is based only on
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Enough with the knee-jerk elitism.
Gee, I remember a time when "Elite" was considered a good thing by educated people.
If I have open heart surgery, I wan an "Elite" doctor.
If I fly on a plane, I want an elite pilot.
If I setup a database, I want an elite database.
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Well, we discovered that "elite" is mostly hubris.
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Well, we discovered that "elite" is mostly hubris.
I have a problem with the anti-intellectualism in the U.S.A. and it is reflected by this notion that, somehow, elite or an "Elite," is a bad thing.
Everyone has the ability to be elite. It takes time, study, passion, and work. You master a discipline, you attain a substantial amount of knowledge and ability.
Instead of that hard work and ability being recognized, people who do not choose to work, simply dismiss it as "Elitism."
In the software community, softwa
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Insightful)
An "Elite" is a person or group that have superlative skills an ability, and are granted enhanced social status on account of this, to wit "I'm good at what I do therefore I should lead/be popular/be recognized." This is probably tolerable.
"Elitism" is a dysfunction where a person or group uses enhanced social status to asserts superlative skill and ability in order to justify their social status and to exclude others. "I'm popular/leading/recognized therefore I am good at what I do therefore I should lead/be popular/be recognized and there ain't no way those dirty punks over there are as good as us, after all they aren't as popular."
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And now pretend that you are, like many thousands of other people, hosted in a place that doesn't offer it.
Well, if it's anything big, it's probably a virtual server, so you can install anything you like on it. Event pgsql.
Enough with the knee-jerk elitism.
So wanting a DB that takes things like referential integrity and error reporting seriously is elitist? Bite me.
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So wanting a DB that takes things like referential integrity and error reporting seriously is elitist?
no, but degrading everyone else that has no interest in using it is. and by the way, how exactly does innodb not take things like referential integrity and error reporting seriously?
Re:Enough already! (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't degrading. When you clean up enough messes left by people who have no business touching a database, it gets fustrating. Especially when things like this are said:
Because InnoDB is only half of MySQL. InnoDB doesn't do fulltext search. If you want fulltext, you gotta go MyISAM. Guess what happens to your cute, cozy referential integrity when half your tables are InnoDB and half are MyISAM? Bye bye! And error reporting? What error reporting? The part where it doesn't tell you "bye bye referential integrity!" and rolls back half your transaction and commits the other half? Or did you mean the part where it automatically adds default values to fields you set not null*? Or were you talking about the part where it thinks invalid dates are valid and doesn't throw an error? Or are those examples only good for Fortune 10(tm) enterprises and not some piddly organization like yours.
No sir, nobody who is a developer that takes their profession seriously would make a claim that MySQL takes anything seriously. They've cleaned up enough MySQL messes, thank you.
[rant]*one of my biggest pet peeves of MySQL... when I say CREATE TABLE(varchar(255) blah NOT NULL) please do not add your own 'DEFAULT ""' to the end--it is considered by some to be rather rude! I can spot MySQL schema's a mile away by this single trait. Anything NOT NULL almost always has a bullshit default value. Got a NOT NULL int--it will have a DEFAULT 0! Got a NOT NULL date, "DEFAULT 0000-00-00", which isn't even a valid date! How is that for taking your data seriously?[/rant]
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Informative)
i asked you a valid question, how does innodb not maintain referential integrity? you bring up myisam. i didn't mention myisam. i know myisam isn't ACID. i asked you how innodb isn't. and as for error reporting, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/error-handling.html [mysql.com]. so again, how does innodb not take referential integrity and error reporting seriously?
Well, how about completely ignoring the "REFERENCES othertable(othercolumn)" syntax for foreign key constraints without as much as a warning in even the strictest mode, leaving you without referential integrity without any way of knowing?
Or from the manual: "By default, the binary log is not synchronized to disk at each write. So if the operating system or machine (not only the MySQL server) crashes there is a chance that the last statements of the binary log are lost. To prevent this, you can make the binary log be synchronized to disk after every Nth binary log write, with the sync_binlog global variable (1 being the safest value, but also the slowest)."
So InnoDB still defaults to non-ACID behaviour, but it doesn't stop there yet:
More from the manual: Even with [sync_binlog] set to 1, there is still the chance of an inconsistency between the tables content and the binary log content in case of crash. [...] This problem can be solved with the --innodb-safe-binlog option (available starting from MySQL 4.1.3), which adds consistency between the content of InnoDB tables and the binary log. For this option to really bring safety to you, the MySQL server should also be configured to synchronize to disk, at every transaction, the binary log (sync_binlog=1) and (which is true by default) the InnoDB logs.
Another option if you want ACID. Oh wait, there's a 3rd, since binlog defaults to off so you need to enable that too. Three options have to be changed from their defaults to get durability after each and every single commit (when we're talking databases, that's kind of what I expect. If you don't, that's fine, but we're not talking about the same thing then)
, are you referring to companies like google, yahoo, or alcatel-lucent? need i really go on?
Stick to apples-apples comparisons. None of those companies are using MySQL as a relational database (say, doing their accounting in it or trusting their business on it), sure Google uses it as a memory-only non-transactional clustered datastore with an SQL query interface, after having put in a lot of patches to make that work, but so what? Yes, use it for that, sure use MyISAM for your blog, but when we're talking about a proper relational database where "commit" means the data is stored, where a foreign key means a foreign key and where you would run your core business on it then stick to those cases where it's actually used as such. A better example for that is Skype, which runs its entire operations from buddylists to billing on Postgresql.
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Insightful)
So you want the column to be NOT NULL, and yet you can't be bothered to tell the db your desired default value for that column. What EXACTLY do you expect the database to do ?
What kind of weird argument is that? Yes I want the column to be not NULL, but why on earth would you just assume that therefore there must be some default value that's acceptable? What if it's also a unique column?
when you say "NOT NULL" as such, PostgreSQL makes it "NOT NULL DEFAULT NULL" which means that yes, it's going to not allow you to INSERT anything that is NULL and you MUST specify some valid value. That certainly does not imply that a sane default exists, and IF it did, I would have just specified it myself in the first place.
Now a "proper" db might just moan at table creation time that you're trying to do something silly, whereas MySQL assumes you are silly and inserts it's own suggested default.
There is nothing silly about having a NOT NULL column with no default (i.e. default is NULL so not allowed). It is a FEATURE of the database to stop me when I have some bug in my code trying to insert a NULL there, just like it is to stop me from inserting a duplicate value, or violate any other constraint I have set.
Inserting its own suggested default is completely braindead, when I say NOT NULL DEFAULT NULL I want the database to enforce that, and to force me to provide proper data. Period. Putting 0 or '' or 0000-00-00 there is retarded, and it's a complete MySQL-ism.
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(and indeed then have to check that my INSERT actually worked and check for possible returned errors, coding exceptions etc).
So you're one of those "programmers" who doesn't check for errors? So what happens when the disc is full and the insert fails, or someone turned the database server off, or any of the myriad other things that can go wrong goes wrong?
Man, I hate you guys.
-- sincerely, systems admin
My personal favourite at the moment is "retrieving list of products failed: query timed out ... pages of more junk ... crawl succeeded!" Yeah, except the search now returns no results at all. Nice error handling.
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When I write NOT NULL in a column, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to enforce that I MUST supply a value during any INSERT (and indeed then have to check that my INSERT actually worked and check for possible returned errors, coding exceptions etc). Therefore I always supply a DEFAULT value, that the DB can safely insert in that column, IF I haven't specified anything different during the INSERT.
Create a table representing customers. I'd specify the column for the customer's name as NOT NULL, so that the database moans when I try to INSERT a row with a NULL name, in the same way that it would moan when I try to INSERT a row that duplicates a PRIMARY KEY. I'd probably even put in a trigger to moan when the app tries to set the column's value to an empty string or any other string without an alphanumeric character. What would you specify as the default value for the customer's name?
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*Cough* (Score:3, Interesting)
I ran into that little nugget when I migrated webapp database from MySQL to PostgreSQL.
As with any webapp, the software would let you create an account on the website. Can't have duplicate users, so the code would check to see if the username existed.
SELECT count(uid) FROM users WHERE username='coryking';
Got "0"? Well, the user is okay... well, at least on MySQL. In MySQL, "coryking", "CorYKING", and "CORYKing" are all the same. As I would soon discover, that assumption is *not* true on PostgreSQL.
Resu
It isn't fud (Score:3, Interesting)
It is a bit of lore. It is a difference between the two products that you might not have considered before migrating that you better take into account. I didn't even think about it, and I almost got into a huge jam as a result.
Except that breaks unicode. Characters aren't byte[]'s, they are characters.
The proper answer is to use the correct collation. The only thing is PostgreSQL doesn't really do that kind of thing yet.
My solution was to cre
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...or if the application you're dealing with assumes or in some way depends on the case insensitive behavior of MySQL. That alone could make switching pretty rough.
To be fair to MySQL, the case-insensitive behavior is following the SQL standard. Not to say that I like the idea, but it is in the standard.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do you like it so much? Is it faster with large datasets? Does it support backups/replication/some other great to have feature?
I'm pretty familiar with MySQL, but I've been thinking about branching out to PostgreSQL lately as I've seen a few jobs that prefer it. I'd just like some real reasons why I should prefer it, as well as any "gotchas" that might be important for a MySQL user to know. I've never had a problem with MySQL, but most of the projects I've used it on have been fairly small.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:4, Insightful)
ACID :).
I prefer postgresql because of the stored procedures, triggers, rules, plpgsql, etc.
MySQL 5 sort of has some of that now, but when I las t used it (MySQL 4), I ended up trying to half-ass implement that stuff client side. Postgresql makes it easier to do it right.
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When was that? PostgreSQL has been using MVCC [wikipedia.org] for as long as I can remember (as least since 6.0+, probably earlier), which is the same type of concurrency control used by Oracle. The implementation is a little different, but the effect is the same. Much more efficient than the locking method used by MySQL and MSSQL until fairly recently (SQL Server 2005 and InnoDB use MVCC).
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Here [lmgtfy.com] are some sites that might help.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the reasons I like PostgreSQL is it is more like Oracle.
If you're doing a migration from Oracle, especially one that has a lot of pl/sql functions. Here's some good advice for converting pl/sql to pl/pgsql [redhat.com].
Also, going from PostgreSQL to Oracle seems easier as well. With PostgreSQL you can use more Oracle like features so if you need to move to Oracle, you can take advantage of some of it's advanced features instead of migrating simple tables and sql statements.
Sun was actively involved with PostgreSQL before they bought MySQL. I was really dissapointed with their decision, especially at the price.
My guess is they weren't really buying MySQL for the technology, they were buying it for the community. Overnight, a ton of MySQL users and developers were part of Sun's open source community. Building communities takes time and Sun was having a hard time doing it with some of their projects.
All it seems they did though is fund MySQL forks. Kinda messed up for the MySQL developers to do that but we don't know all the details.
$1 billion dollars could have funded a lot of improvements to PostgreSQL better clustering, replication, visual tools, and more. A better PostgreSQL could hurt Oracle more than buying MySQL. After Ellison announced he'd be moving his developers from Solaris workstations to Linux workstations, it could have been a nice comeback.
It also seems that the switch form solaris to linux might not have been developer driven [intel.com]. Even MS knows you have to keep your developers, developers, developers happy.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Informative)
The Oracle pl/SQL -> PostgreSQL pl/pgSQL link you suggested was from PostgreSQL 7.1, pretty ancient at this point. PostgreSQL 8.3 Porting from Oracle [postgresql.org] is a current resource.
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Thanks, I just grabbed the fist one from Google that looked familiar. Google must be slipping. :)
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Informative)
Today, the big difference is PostgreSQL is considered better on higher-end hardware with concurrent I/O support and better multi-core support. MySQL is considered better on clusters of lower-end hardware. There is a Wiki comparing the two [wikivs.com] in much better detail.
Personally, I work with both in large production systems and can fill a few pages on likes and gripes. I'm on MySQL 4.1, so concurrency is a concern, and PostgreSQL's replication is a pain. Unless you're trying to solve a problem MySQL can't satisfy, I wouldn't switch for the sake of change. Your time is probably better spent upgrading to MySQL 5.1.
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And others know any (Wiki) article, online, is equally suspect.
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why should he modify his language in support of idiots who mis-use terms, especially when the site name (wikivs.com) is right next to the link?
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:4, Informative)
Why do you like [PostgreSQL] so much?
The reason we use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL at work is mainly because the JDBC drivers for MySQL are GPL licensed, while Postgres' isn't.
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:4, Informative)
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Why do you like it so much? Is it faster with large datasets? Does it support backups/replication/some other great to have feature?
Yes.
Here's one: On a large table, on a live site, create or drop an index. MySQL locks up until its finished, PostgreSQL keeps working.
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Why do you like it so much?
It works by default.
MySQL has, in my experience, a tendency to weirdness. Examples abound:
Re:PostgreSQL (Score:5, Informative)
Early on, PostgreSQL focused on complete implementation and correct behavior over speed, then worried about adding speed later. MySQL focused on speed, and worried over correctness and completeness later. Since then, PostgreSQL has sped up a lot, and MySQL has shaped up in implementation completeness. But it won't surprise me if PostgreSQL still has a few extra features.
This comparison of PostgreSQL vs MySQL [postgresql.org] is on PostgreSQL's wiki but it seems very fair.
The most interesting bit is this:
The forking of MySQL is going to split resources and creating that replacement for InnoDB may take longer.
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Well, not natively. But there are a bunch of 3rd party replication/clustering products that do that for you. The original thought was that a replication engine should be pluggable as everyone has different requirements, so it shouldn't be in the main database. However, they've relaxed that stance a little - there was an announcement of an effort to build a native replication engine being in for 8.4, but it looks like it won't make it until 8.5 or so. But they are working on it (and they recognise something
MariaDB link is incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
The MariaDB link should be http://askmonty.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page [askmonty.org]
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Sounds like the MySQL devs need a distributed version control system...
Re:MariaDB link is incorrect (Score:5, Funny)
If they can't find the real MySQL, sounds like they need a unique identifier with an index...
Selling an open-source software business? (Score:5, Interesting)
This calls into question whether it's viable to sell a business based on open-source software.
What did Sun buy exactly? Sales and support?
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I was under the impression they got the trademark AND the copyrights, meaning they can release a closed source version.
Don't MySQL developers assign their copyrights to Sun?
Re:Selling an open-source software business? (Score:5, Funny)
What did Sun buy exactly? Sales and support?
A bridge!
Hello Mr Sun CEO, I have a bridge here to sell you! Best deal you'll ever make. Pinky swear.
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This calls into question whether it's viable to sell a business based on open-source software.
I was under the impression that MySQL operated with a full-featured, proprietary, licensed, commercial version getting immediate upgrades and support, plus a less-featured open source version with releases of code (ported?) from the full-featured branch that ran some months behind the for-pay version.
If that's right, I'd say Sun bought the whole shebang, including the code and customer bases for the licensed deluxe
Re:Selling an open-source software business? (Score:5, Informative)
For the database server itself, there is no difference between MySQL Community Edition and MySQL Enterprise Edition besides the release schedule. The community edition (aka the regular one everyone uses) has been pared down to 4 releases a year, which are cherry picked from the enterprise releases.
However, the source is completely available for the enterprise releases, and you are able to compile and install them yourself. This is what Percona is doing, for instance (plus some other patches).
With that said, MySQL has other software that comes along with the enterprise edition that is not open sourced to my knowledge. A query analyzer, monitoring, and other goodies. Personally I prefer to find their equivalents in the open source world, but I'm sure some people buy and use these packages.
Don't forget the COPYRIGHT! (Score:2)
Oh, yes. The Copyright!
With that, Sun can:
- License the code (non-exclusively) to customers under OTHER licenses than the open source license under which it was released.
- Sue others for infringement when THEY use it in ways not included in the open source license.
- Make derived works that they don't release under the open source license.
These are all things that Sun can now do and no others can (presuming Sun continues MySQL's tradition of keeping the main codebase clean of outsid
Re:Selling an open-source software business? (Score:5, Funny)
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Okay.... what he said.
Anyway, I guess Sun's history is plagued with poor business decisions so this MySQL disaster shouldn't surprise anyone.
What Sun bought -- (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what Sun was trying to buy was a little more respect from the open source community.
(At least, that's what I would prefer to think. There is a distinct possibility that that purchase price was heavily subsidized by a certain large company who is quite aware that the best way to kill a technical project is to feed it huge amounts of money.)
Yeah, they went way too far overboard, of course, to actually get that respect.
But, "'e's not dead yet."
Setting aside the brainless rumors of Sun being bought, if I found myself in charge of making the purchase meaningful, I'd be looking at spinning MySQL back out into an independent company and bringing back as many of the guys who built it as they can. Add a couple of developers with other, non-MySQL, database experience to the team, of course, but give control back to the original developers.
Also, don't ask the original developers to give up their independent products.
The MySQL project needed fresh ideas, and this could be one way to bring fresh ideas in. It'd take a long time to get real return on what they invested, but it would be better than blowing away the whole investment.
Anyway, even if the main branch dies, there will likely be some useful development from the forks.
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Why would you call them brainless, do you honestly think there is nothing to them?
Not a good precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have any idea what the politics behind all this is, nor do I have enough interest to look it up, but it seems to me that if a company pays $1B for code, then it forks left and right and they're left with nothing but yet another version, that's not going to exactly be a good advertisement for investing in open source. While this outcome is much better than a closed source application being killed off, it still would have been much better if differences could have been worked out and Sun had something for their money.
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Actually the message it sends is you can not take control just by buying out one piece of the open source world. For the record Sun is going through the same thing with Open Office. Sun really doesn't understand open source.
The official branch is where ever the big distros decide to pull from.
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"The official branch is where ever the big distros decide to pull from."
May I offer a rewrite?
The official branch is where ever the knowledgeable gurus decide to push into.
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What Sun
Allow to say: (Score:5, Informative)
While i am *not sure* of the details, i am pretty sure that SUNs lawyers did not forget to make very definite regulations for maintainers leaving, forking of etc. As far as i undrstood, sun bought the code *and* the rights. As many people dont understand GPLed code still has an owner. Independent of that mysql may still be a trademark.
So the standard (GPL) way is to rename the project and add the staement that you modified it which *somehow* makes it different from the "official" branch (to define that, that is the branch which does not carry the notice that it was modified and which is published under the prior, maybe (tm)ed, name).
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If its GPL then even the non-owners of the code have most of the important rights. I suppose they could have asked employees to sign non-compete clauses, but that would seem pretty silly for a GPL product. Besides which, why would employees of MySQL want to agree to what SUN's lawyers want, unless they were getting paid off for it?
Will the real MySQL (Score:5, Funny)
please stand up?
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow postgreSQL flows much more lyrically than MySQL.
Re:Will the real MySQL (Score:5, Funny)
The real MySQL has learned the first lesson of not being seen: not to stand up.
Re:Will the real MySQL (Score:5, Funny)
Hi, my name is
What, my name is
Who, my name is
My Sequel.
The real MySQL is... (Score:5, Insightful)
...whatever is at www.mysql.com. Look, I'm not trying to be flippant, but when I'm trying to sell the boss on FOSS solutions, I need to send him a link to a site that will give him the warm-fuzzies that demonstrates that a. the tech is solid (typically mention Wikipedia for that one) and b. it's not some fly-by-night operation that will suddenly up and disappear.
I'm not trying to put the other projects down, and I can appreciate why they exist, but this is the exact reason I'm always being laughed out of meetings where they decide to buy an Oracle license, or a Microsoft OS, those guys have the message down (i.e. marketing).
I'm trying to be the in-house cheerleader for what can be done in the free/open-source communities and mixed messages just don't fly to a boss who barely skims the executive summary of whatever glossy lands on his desk any given day.
mysql.com (Score:2)
The pages that come up for "mysql.com" are what I consider to be the "official" version of MySQL.
I didn't even realize the other pages were out there until this article was posted and I started reading the comments.
Not that it matters much -- I'm an http://www.postgresql.org/ [postgresql.org] fan myself.
Re:The real MySQL is... (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has extensive hands-on use of Oracle eBusiness, I can say it's a steaming turd with some authority. Having a vertical CRM/order management/invoicing/everything stack is an easy sell to managers, but what they don't realize is it requires significant effort to align it with your business model.
In short, Oracle is designed to sell and it does work, but only well if you're prepared to spend a fortune implementing it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, but those steaming turds are just the ticket for a consultant looking to warm his hands.
I'm a consultant, and I love steaming turds!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
turds work for the big iron companies too. Like IBM's enterprise solution for anything: sell the client a bunch of overcomplicated rube goldberg contraptions that require a ton of customization and services, big turds for the money sewer.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
big turds for the money sewer.
And that's why, as a consultant, I'm always "flush" with cash!
Enterprise DB (Score:2)
There are a lot of "Oracle required" situations that can be serviced by http://www.enterprisedb.com/ [enterprisedb.com]
They provide an implementation of PL/SQL for PostgreSQL with commercial support.
Re: (Score:2)
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Curious if you have specifics. I've worked both ends of the spectrum (completely integrated and best of breed for all apps with interfaces), I definately prefer the integrated approach. What you gain with best of breed you quickly lose in complexity of interfaces, loss of functionality because data from one app's model can't be easily represented in the other app's model and loss of a compre
Re:The real MySQL is... (Score:5, Informative)
For starters, the database schema is extremely complicated, much more so than is necessary for most companies. The web interface to eBusiness isn't too bad, although even on big iron it is still pretty slow for a lot of filter and search operations.
The web-launched Java interface takes a LOT of resources per instance; it's very slow on a typical desktop computer. The java interface is MDI, whereas separate windows would be quite a lot easier for users to use. It's also single threaded, meaning one blocking MDI child window blocks the entire eBusiness instance. Clicking the List of Values[...] object is scriptable and in some situations isn't very intuitive. In some cases it will not check the associated field or entered text first, meaning it performs a wildcard search. If done in a field that is populated with hundreds of thousands of records, this can block your eBusiness for 10 or 20 minutes. There is no "break" either, you let it run or you kill it and lose whatever didn't have saved in other MDI children windows.
This is just a short list. There are a lot of reasons Oracle eBusiness is a huge frustration for users and developers.
Re: (Score:2)
I would not recommend trying to sell your boss on a FOSS solution that was bought out by a commercial company who is running it into the ground. There's other projects out there (Ex: PostgreSQL) that are better sells.
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I'm not trying to put the other projects down, and I can appreciate why they exist, but this is the exact reason I'm always being laughed out of meetings where they decide to buy an Oracle license, or a Microsoft OS, those guys have the message down (i.e. marketing).
You are being laughed out of meetings? Sounds to me like YOU need marketing experience, as well. How are you presenting your OSS solutions? More importantly, if you are in an environment where you are laughed out of meetings, WHY are you present
Re:The real MySQL is... (Score:5, Funny)
a. the tech is solid (typically mention Wikipedia for that one)
So do you edit the Wikipedia page just before you tell your boss look at it?
Damn (Score:2)
Great Sun Acquisition (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's been plenty of speculation that Sun was interested more in MySQL from the sales side of things than from the technology one. MySQL had figured out how to sell open-source solutions to people for money successfully, something Sun would like to do more of. The high-profile engineers can jump to other projects on a whim, that doesn't necessarily mean they've lost what they wanted out of the purchase.
Database software? (Score:5, Funny)
What, haven't you people heard of Access??
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What, haven't you people heard of Access??
Have you heard of FileMaker Pro??
I for one... (Score:2)
Where is the confusion? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, the article really answers its own question. Sun own the MySQL trademark, therefore they own "MySQL". There may be other forks, but they are not "MySQL". The end.
Whatever Google Says (Score:2)
Re:Ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
Here we have the one shinning open source alternative to commercial databases and it is now faced with an identity crisis because they sold their name to a company about to be bought by IBM and outsourced to China and India.
Huh?
I think the two main open source alternatives to commercial databases are Firebird and PostgreSQL.
Re: (Score:2)
Firebird arguably has some branching issues (Interbase, Firebird, Fyracle, and Yaffil, at least) but it's not that bad -- Yaffil and Firebird are re-merging, after having explored different problem spaces and come up with different features, they decided it'd be even better to share the new code. I was pleased, for example, when Yaffil's function/expression-based indexing got merged back into the main tree. It wasn't about egos or brands, it was just about features.
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Yes but MYSQL was the only one that was just starting to be capable of running on large clusters using much more complex storage/data integrity/etc.
You are right that MySQL is the only one that is just starting to be capable of complex data integrity. The others have been there for som etime. For complex storage, etc. yes all three are feasible in complex storage environments, though neither of them are feasible in the sort of DLC environments that Oracle RAC uses, etc.
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It seems to me this is squarely in slashdot's sweet spot.
If the blurb doesn't interest you, give the story and the discussion a pass. There'll be another story soon enough that doesn't meet your specifications either.
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You think that the machinations of what is either the number 1 or number 2 name in the open source world is of narrow interest?
If an executive knows the name of any Open source project, it will be either Linux, MySQL, Openoffice or apache.
Now, while I think that MySQL fading away, and leaving PostgreSQL as the leading database would be a Good Thing, MySQL is still of great importance, and it's fracturing under Sun's (Mis)Management is one of the most important things happening in IT right now.