MySQL Outpacing Oracle In Wake of Acquisition 157
snydeq writes "Results from the 2010 Eclipse User Survey reveal interesting trends surrounding open source usage and opinions, writes InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues. Linux usage among developers is on the rise, at the expense of Windows, and MySQL has pulled ahead of Oracle, by a factor of 3-to-2, as the database of choice among Eclipse developers. 'The data demonstrate that fears surrounding Oracle's control over MySQL have not resulted in lower use of MySQL in favor of an alternative open source database,' Rodrigues writes."
Nice to them (Score:2)
I like Oracle, its products and technologies and I am glad that its opensource products are gaining sales. I wish good luck to Oracle.
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I like Oracle, its products and technologies and I am glad that its opensource products are gaining sales. I wish good luck to Oracle.
I like Oracles's database, it's a great database with tons of features but it's pretty expensive. However the business software that oracle sells is a PITA.
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I like Oracle too, as long as someone else is the DBA. Installing Oracle, setting up a database, and getting it to a usable state is almost impossible without six months of training.
PostgreSQL, MySQL, even SQL Server are all much easier to get up and running in a usable configuration than Oracle. I don't mean slightly easier, either. If other databases are like putting a band
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I don't mean slightly easier, either. If other databases are like putting a band-aid on a cut, Oracle is like brain surgery.
Totally.
I almost think oracle does this on purpose to drum up consulting fees or something. For such a powerful database product, all the tools around it are almost intentionally unintuitive and fragile.
Even connecting to oracle, arguably the simplest interaction with most databases, is more complicated. Most databases you just specify a hostname, username, and password.. oracle seems to insist on all manner of weird voodoo. Once you know that voodoo it's no problem.. but initially it's like "service name"
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It's a attempt at simplicity. Change one place, and one place only, on an entire application server and you switch from old DB server to new DB server. Cross-application, cross-language, all are changed instantly.
Even if an app is using a centralized configuration point, if you are running multiple small applications on the same server, it helps with keeping things straight.
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I like Oracle too, as long as someone else is the DBA. Installing Oracle, setting up a database, and getting it to a usable state is almost impossible without six months of training.
On every project where we've used Oracle, we ran into problems with it. Quite often, somewhere early in development, we used MySQL or something like that. At some point we move to production-like environment with Oracle, and it should be a simple matter of plugging in a different DB, but every single time, we suddenly find ourselves in a big mess where types don't quite fit or column names are too long or illegal or whatever.
Oracle might be really nice if it was just more powerful, rather than more restrict
Re:Nice to them (Score:4, Informative)
If you developed using Postgres, or another more compliant database, most of these problems would go away.
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I can't comment on the illegal hostname bit. However, the general idea behind databases is that your data is extremely important. Enter the data in once, use it in any possible way you want, often in ways you had not anticipated at the time of design. The data should be as constrained as possible at the point of entry to ensure that it is consistent and correct - this is an infinitely better time to rectify erro
Re:Nice to them (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the time, people use a database because they care about their data. That's really the point of a database - to provide a persistent store for a load of data that is as difficult as possible to accidentally break. Ideally it should be fast as well, and allow you to access the data in complex ways.
A number of rules in SQL are quite pedantic for precisely this reason. If you enter something invalid then the database could guess what you meant, and might even be right 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, it would be silently corrupting or destroying parts of your database, or maybe just discarding part of the data that you thought was persistently stored.
MySQL deviates from standard SQL in a number of ways, allowing things that are wrong to do something. Exactly what 'something' is depends on the version of MySQL that you are using.
Basically, using MySQL is like running with a load of error checking disabled. Sure, it's irritating that your code compiled with a load of assert() statements keeps breaking with an assert failure, but generally it's better to see the error and fix it than to deploy a production system after just commenting out the assert() line.
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If every production database required an arrogant and overpriced Oracle shill to maintain it, nothing would ever get done.
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Indeed. At work, we have an absolute "No Oracle" policy. In reality it's a "SQL Server ONLY" policy, but I've managed to convince them to let me use Postgres on some smaller in-house projects.
Simple reason (and they're right) is that the department would pretty much HAVE to hire an experienced Oracle administrator to keep those things running. On the other hand, for SQL Server and most other DB's, any developer who's worked with them at least a little can setup the servers. When we started doing a lot o
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Yeah, of course you could have accomplished the same thing with a tech savy high school grad who plays with the web for $10/hr and without the boot camp.
Oh, bruther (Score:5, Insightful)
What a non-story.
You use Oracle because you *have to*. Not because it is pretty.
Saying MySQL has pulled ahead of Oracle is like saying that claw hammers have pulled ahead of pneumatic hammers mounted on giant excavators.
Re:Oh, bruther (Score:4, Insightful)
You use Oracle because you *have to*. Not because it is pretty.
Similar things have been said about MySQL. It's a de facto standard, which many view as being quite unfortunate in light of the competition.
Saying MySQL has pulled ahead of Oracle is like saying that claw hammers have pulled ahead of pneumatic hammers mounted on giant excavators.
Since MySQL got clustering it became capable of replacing Oracle in certain contexts. I don't have a tool-related metaphor handy but there are actually cases in which the comparison might not be so ridiculous.
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In certain contexts, granted. And where you have such a context, by all means go for it if you like MySQL and are comfortable with it. I haven't used MySQL Cluster, but what I've read about it makes it seem pretty nifty. But I've also seen situations where MySQL even with clustering wouldn't work, particularly as transactions scale in complexity, not just volume.
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Have you ever used MySQL's clustering? I'm not talking about replication, but their NDBCluster engine. Every time it's been considered around me, MySQL AB and then SUN basically said outright that we'd need to purchase enterprise support packages. Well when we got adding up those support and optimization costs it got high enough that it begged the question, why not spend an extra 10% and go with IBM DB2.
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Every time it's been considered around me, MySQL AB and then SUN basically said outright that we'd need to purchase enterprise support packages.
Seems to me like it's one of those "if you have to ask" situations. How much will a shitload of Oracle licenses cost you? How many developer man-hours would a MySQL-based solution cost you? How competent is your company at hiring technical employees if it doesn't have the talent onboard already? Etc.
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If you don't want to pay for the NDB software, you can get the OSS/GPL version.
If you want support for the NDB software, you're going to have to pay *somebody* for it, even if that somebody is just someone on your own payroll reading the Cluster mailing list/forum/blogs/docs and learning things the hard way.
Does the "10% extra" for DB2 include support?
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If you NEED clustering you are talking about an enterprise scale implementation. If you are talking about an enterprise scale implementation and it isn't going to make you enough to justify enterprise level support... you might need to reconsider whatever led you down this path.
I work in enterprise tech and I find it annoying how much the entry level products cost or that some of them don't work without a current support contract. But the only reason that is annoying is that I'd like a small ex switch runni
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P.S. it is also possible you are undervaluing the infrastructure that makes your profits possible. I have seen ignorant companies that think sales have a greater impact on their profit than infrastructure.
The reality of course is that while sales is easy to measure and visible an infrastructure (including tech staff) breakdown will cause the house of cards to collapse just as surely.
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I disagree. Oracle makes a pretty good and fast database. They also offer a free version for OSS and small companies I believe.
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For what a lot of people use databases for (backing store for form entry) it really doesn't matter because you only use generic capabilities and work mostly in your IDE.
When it gets to really challenging database problems, it's a question of which fail comes first: the failure of the developer or admin using Oracle or the failure of MySQL to keep up with the application's needs. For example, if you need just a bit more performance, with MySQL your response is simple: get bigger iron. If it's not worth the
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I didn't. I got burned too often by small projects having to be changed because of licencing issues.
(rant starting)
For instance I had a 'team' (of 2) doing advanced analytics that were hammering the data warehouse. It was proposed to use RAC and have them access another machine - for the cost of RAC I could buy a whole team to write custom replication code! Then it was proposed to replicate using some simple ETL code to another database, canned due to the cost of another production Oracle licence just to
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Well, one thing I don't like about Oracle is its rapaciously sales-oriented corporate culture. Of course business is all about making sales, but Oracle really doesn't care of you bought the wrong thing or spent 10x what you needed to. They don't care if you buy the wrong class of license and have to throw it away because it doesn't work for you. I've seen cases where organizations have paid huge amounts of money to get Oracle Enterprise where they only intended to use features in Oracle Standard at a tin
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I tend to agree with your decision, having been burned badly by Oracle agreeing to a mutually reasonable licensing arrangement up-front and then deciding to force a change of terms down the road.
My current employer is a Fortune 50, and might have enough clout to avoid that -- but the little startups I used to work for in the past most certainly couldn't.
Anyhow, where I was going -- one of those startups had a fairly positive experience with EnterpriseDB (a commercial product built on top of PostgreSQL -- th
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You use Oracle because you *have to*. Not because it is pretty.
Oracle is past that and way into user-unfriendly in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, if you write queries that are exactly how Oracle likes them it's fast and solid, but I've worked with SQL Server, PostgreSQL and MySQL as well and the management tools are easier, the query optimizer is more flexible and the error messages more helpful. Particularly that Oracle wants queries their way, I've reused queries that run in seconds on SQL Server and take minutes on Oracle but hardly if ever the other way around. It
Re:Oh, bruther (Score:5, Insightful)
Treating the database as a black box is the problem, not the solution. At least if you're dealing with more than trivial amounts of data with trivial queries. It is amazing how many developers are shocked that their app, that worked perfectly on their desktop against their own personally installed database with, gosh, nearly two megabytes of data, completely falls over when deployed into against the eight terabyte production database.
In other words, a database isn't a replacement for thinking.
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Treating the database as a black box is the problem, not the solution.
Then the database is broken.
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You've pretty much proved the point. A developer wants a tool that works. A "professional DBA" wants to lecture the developer on why what he's doing is theoretically impure.
In 4+ years of dealing with professional DBAs, I've never once met one that got anything done, and twice I've directly witnessed companies move away from Oracle specifically because the developers did a better job of accomplishing business goals with MySQL than the "professionals" did with Oracle.
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Don't be stupid. If the developer does a "SELECT * FROM TABLE_X" and it works fine on his 2MB database, you really think that'll be ok with a 2TB database? Or even a 2GB database?
Strawman and you know it. That would apply to any datastore, even a filesystem, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the asinine behavior of certain overpriced RDBMS products when the developer clearly asks for a specific subset of the data.
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ridiculous. that is thinking about scale. It applies equally when treating the database solution as a black box and affect different database products the same way.
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Ah, you must be from the OO/Java/NoSQL crowd. Come on in, take a seat, don't mind that they only have three legs instead of four. What's that? What happened to the fourth one? Oh, you know, we thought it was unnecessary, I mean, it's a chair, right? You shouldn't have to think about a chair!
Remarkably, it's possible for someone to have an opinion without having other opinions you happen to associate with it in your confused little head.
For the record, my most commonly-used programming languages are Python and C, my most common database backend is MySQL, and I can't stand the clusterfuck that is Java.
Re:Oh, bruther (Score:4, Insightful)
Well doh, that would be comparing blueberries to watermelons. But I've been been working with a product that supports both SQL Server and Oracle so production databases of about equal size, equal hardware and equal content. I develop queries to show something at one client site, then reuse it at a different client site with a different database system. In short, two equally smart database systems should perform about the same. What I'm saying is that in my experience Oracle often generates very poor execution plans, and fiddling with it to make Oracle do it "right" that others manage just fine on their own is not treating it as a black box, it's tedious and unnecessary micromanagement to overcome product shortcomings.
Re:Oh, bruther (Score:4, Informative)
In short, two equally smart database systems should perform about the same.
Bingo. Ergo, something is wrong with your Oracle installations.
I've done the same, supported an application that is available for MS SQL, Oracle and Sybase Sql Anywhere. MS SQL and Oracle blow SQL Anywhere out of the water in performance, but in most situations you couldn't tell the difference.
From a developer's POV, SQL Anywhere was in most cases a pleasure to work with, Oracle was acceptable in most cases and outstanding in a few, and MS SQL was a horrible PITA. MS SQL doesn't even provide you with a utility to get a human readable dump of the transaction log, much less any way to use the transaction log in a complex recovery (unless you fancy working with page addresses). When a customer does something really stupid, and calls you up saying, "please, please make it like that never happened," it's as easy as rolling off a log in Oracle, practical in SQL Anywhere and not worth doing in MS SQL.
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Has anyone done a good performance:scalability roundup on RDBMSes recently? When I worked for Tivoli, which was years ago now, DB2 was slowest but most scalable, Oracle slightly faster and significantly less scalable, Sybase much less scalable and much faster, and SQL Server (which was based on Sybase 10 at the time; Sybase being on Version 11) was the fastest and by far least scalable. I would be surprised if all this wasn't still true; is it?
The only thing I've personally noticed (the performance tests we
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You ain't kiddin' about Oracle installs being a PITA. Not for somebody who does them all the time, but if you support apps you get reminded.
Most RDBMS EULAs forbid publishing benchmarks unless they've been improved by the vendor, so who knows? Your experience pretty much agrees with mine.
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Two things, wonderful Freudian slip unless "improved" was intentional.
Second, the motion for bad installer is carried. Oracle 10g's Windows client installer cannot figure out that if I set my virtual memory to automatic, then I actually do have virtual memory and that it shouldn't fail with a suggestion that I set my virtual memory to bigger than 256MB.
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Thank you! I thought it was just me!
I did the same test a couple of years ago. I was writing an app for a huge data set, but I was told to do the proof-of-concept on both Oracle and SQL Server. I used two identical servers, identical SAN volumes, etc...
The result was shocking. Oracle is at least 5x as slow as SQL Server. It seems to pick acceptable query plans, but for some reason it's just... slower.
One possible explanation that occurred to me is that SQL Server clusters all data by default, whereas that's
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MS SQL does a pretty good job optimizing common queries, but at a tremendous cost in orthogonality of T-SQL. I've also found limitations in MS SQL handling of very complex queries, but there is no question that on the kinds of queries that dominate in the vast majority of applications, MS SQL provides reliably good performance out of the box.
That's an engineering trade-off that works for lots of people.
That said, you're going about this the wrong way. The solution to generally inconsistent query performanc
Re:Oh, bruther (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, look (Score:2, Insightful)
An InfoWorld submitter submits a non-story about Oracle/MySQL on Slashdot. A Slashvertisement for an advertisement.
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I always cringe going to a website with a name that starts with "gizm". Well, not always, but if I'm looking for tech news or whatever, then yeah... especially anything related to iProducts.
But what will Oracle do? (Score:2)
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I know I've installed Oracle dozens of times - on the same machine.
What Oracle could do is provide an easy migration path from MySQL to Oracle DB, so one could develop/deploy on MySQL, and move to full Oracle when traffic/size warrants. Just being able to use the same
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If MySQL meets your needs you wouldn't consider Oracle. If your application is successful enough that you need help scaling out a heavy duty DBMS solution, the guys who are supporting MySQL will be happy to send out a "consultant" to suggest alternatives.
And what do you suppose they will suggest?
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postgres didn't do so badly (Score:5, Interesting)
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11%...edging out ms sql server! Postgres 9.0 has built in replication -- it will be interesting to see how that affects its share of the open source db space.
Postgres has been in continual development for decades longer than MS SQL server. Postgres is a far better quality product than Microsoft's effort plus it's free.
The only reason to use MS SQL for anything new is if you are getting bribes from a Microsoft salesman.
Re:postgres didn't do so badly (Score:4, Informative)
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I think what you meant is that PostgreSQL had a number of 3rd party Replication tools that were designed for certain types of usage. Over the years I've used PGCluster I/II, PGPool, SunPlex, and Slony. And a lot of the times, when I saw this happening, the person making the decision was a developer/programmer who often times thought they knew systems and databases. With MySQL, that decision is easy. With PostgreSQL you have to know what your goal is and then which tool is right for that job. Sometimes
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Postgres's pain in the ass enumeration handling annoys me greatly.
(What I mean: Once an ENUM has been set in a table, you cannot add/remove/edit fields in it. That really sucks.)
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SQL Server does integrate quite well with ADO and .NET environments with Microsoft Ecosystems. Hate it all you want but many I.T. mangers standardized on Microsoft a decade ago and wont consider anything else. If you are stuck in an ms environment and SQL Server is already free with your $$$$ VS.Net licenses then why not use it?
From a technical point of view MS SQL has nothing on Postgres or Mysql. It has less than nothing on Oracle. If you are in the position of getting MS SQL free as part of some other deal it still costs the same as better databases, and it still has the security risk that goes with MS software. ( You remember slammer right? )
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From a technical point of view MS SQL has nothing on Postgres or Mysql. It has less than nothing on Oracle. If you are in the position of getting MS SQL free as part of some other deal it still costs the same as better databases, and it still has the security risk that goes with MS software. ( You remember slammer right? )
From a technical point of view you are completely wrong. MS SQL server is every bit the enterprise database - just short of DB2 and Oracle in some very large applications, ahead in other areas. Postgres and MySQL are not in that league in any way. They are great and open, but don't pretend that they are in the same ballpark as the big 3. This is an article about Eclipse developers using -surprise, surprise- open source databases in preference to closed and especially Microsoft. You might as well trumpe
Fears (Score:2)
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>most developers don't know about that/don't know the consequences/aren't familiar with other free databases
Really? That's rather disingenuous. I know plenty of Java developers ( the type who are in between McDonalds jobs ) who are familiar with MySQL.
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So you should have written
"many developers don't know about Oracle's acquisition of MySQL"
rather than
"most developers don't know about that/don't know the consequences/aren't familiar with other free databases"
Apologies that I cannot read your mind.
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The title is misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
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Any statistic significantly skewed by adding or subtracting 1 to either your numerator or denominator is a statistic too fragile to support a conclusion.
Some POed sales guys (Score:2)
Re:Some POed sales guys (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think there are many MySQL users that would have even considered talking to an Oracle sales representative.
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Wow! Talk About a Misleading Headline (Score:2)
"MySQL Outpacing Oracle Among Eclipse Developers In Wake of Acquisition"
Of course, that headline isn't particularly newsworthy. As the article cited states "it would be a stretch to say that these results from the 457 respondents represent the overall market".
Diff niches (Score:2)
Oracle specializes in keeping the "master" corporate data. It is robust and well-tested. MySql specializes in department-specific copies of subsets of the master data for internal or local usage. There may be a middle area where they fight for control, but in general it's a matter of the best tool for the job.
Eclipse + JBoss + MySQL + PHP? (Score:2)
I've got to add some embedded client components for syncing a MySQL DB data mart to a remote customer's web services XML interface to an existing app that runs in JBoss against MySQL, with a PHP interface (and a Flex/Flash client), code in an SVN repo.
Is there a good website telling me how to get started with Eclipse and the best plugins and configs, installed and configured on an Ubuntu server?
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* - The Visual Studio Express editions don't allow you to redistribute very easily. Yeah, I tried installing the some of the runtimes and other things that it requires but I've never gotten an app I've written to work on another machine.
I managed to do that in 2005 with express visual c/c++ when playing with quake3 code to give modified engines to friends etc. Wasn't too much trouble so probably just something minor wrong
F/OSS dev tools on Windows just don't work well (there was so much shit that wouldn't work together well that I gave up) ;
It works well but I readily admit it can be an absolute pain in the ass to setup, again this was some time ago, perhaps 2004'ish, since 2006 was the last time I dual booted to windows for playing around.
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>Usage of Windows by developers declined from 64.3 percent in 2009 to 58.3 percent in 2010 we have to take this with a pinch of salt - it was a survey of Eclipse users. That's like surveying alcoholics on whether they drink beer or not.
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Don't blame the tools for your inability to use them correctly.
That's bullshit and you know it and it's that attitude that gives IT people a reputation of being immature and arrogant .
When I had those problems I googled quite a bit and you know what? The problems I mentioned are very common; which means that it's a design and implementation problem with all of those development tools.
So, I am blaming the tools for their poor design. You can be as condescending and insulting all you want but it doesn't change the fact that the tools have problems.
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There's no difference between an app made with VS Express and VS Pro. All you need is to install .NET 4.0 on the target machine. Thats it.
You seriously have to be brain dead to fail at that. I probably have over 100 distinct apps of all kind, ranging from windows services to web applications, going by noob command line apps and everything in between, across 15 companies and most continents, and countless customers, with all versions of visual studio (including express and ultimate), and literally: there's n
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The apps "Just work"
except that with .NET 4.0, it uses a different CLR version (the first since .NET became popular), so a lot of apps that were built using .NET 1.1, 2.0 or 3.5 will not work with your app.
The more I use .NET, the more I find its a PITA, there's too many dependancies and funny ways of referencing different dlls. Why they couldn't just use "current directory, GAC, path" for searching, for example, is crazy. When something goes wrong, for a complex piece of software (and that's what I do, mul
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.NET 4.0 breaks backward compatibility to some extent, yes. Except thats not what I was replying to. I was replying to a post saying that Visual Studio Professional was required because apps made with Express couldn't easily be deployed and thats bullshit =P
And Fusion works very much the way you described it. GAC -> Current dir in a couple different ways (Path would have been nice i guess). There's only a "lot of different ways" of referencing DLLs at compile times. At runtime it is very, very simple, wi
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The thing is again, there's no difference between Express and Pro in that regard. If you're having issues with Express, you WILL have issues with Pro. Its simple to understand why: The compiler and the DLLs aren't even PART of Visual Studio, they come with the .NET framework (yes, the compiler too!) and that doesn't change between editions.
Make an app, compile it, pick all the files in the bin/release or bin/debug directory (by default), put them on the target machine. Just make sure the target machine has
Re:State of the Databases (Score:5, Insightful)
You could not be more wrong about:
Oracle needs to drop the high prices, the competition in the market now doesnt allow them to have those prices.
An this is why...
It's called support. One of the major reasons I recommend Oracle to clients who need maximum uptime and downtime is just not an option is because of the world class support Oracle provides. If you are a licensed Oracle site you have support 24/7/365 no matter what time zone or country you happen to be in. If you pick up the phone and say those magic words, "I'm down" the calvary is not just coming over the hill they are at your door. Guess what that kind of support costs a lot of money to provide.
In our race to the bottom of the price bucket lots of things have to be cut and guess where they cut first, you guessed it, in support. With Oracle support you do not get script readers in India or the Philippines you get an Oracle engineer on the phone ready to tackle the problem with you until the problem is solved and they will bring in whatever other resources are required.
MySQL is a wonder database that does what it does very well, but would I put it up in a mission critical bit of infrastructure? Not on a bet. Those companies that have, eg: Sales Force and the like have had to hire LOTS of engineers/developers to handle MySQL in big installations and that costs even more.
Postgre has no such level of support either. So when you missions critical DB goes south either you better be able to fix it or you had better have a lot of friends you can wake up in the middle of the night.
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Some guy to rushing to my door to quickly not be able to fix the problem, is often useful for keeping the bosses at bay, but not so useful from a technical POV. It is an often critically
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If your mission critical infrastructure suddenly stops working, are you seriously suggesting the best answer is to post a message to a mailing list and hope for a prompt response?
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"If your mission critical infrastructure suddenly stops working, are you seriously suggesting the best answer is to post a message to a mailing list and hope for a prompt response?"
I do suggest it's usually no worse than take the phone and hope for a clued answer instead of one from a boiler-plated, menu-based monkey's one -but it's always awfully front-cost cheaper.
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That is my point, when you call Oracle support you do not get a "Menu based monkey reading from boiler plate", you get an oracle Engineer that knows your Oracle Software inside and out.
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"That is my point, when you call Oracle support you do not get a "Menu based monkey reading from boiler plate", you get an oracle Engineer that knows your Oracle Software inside and out."
Maybe...
Once you pay for "premier support". I know that kind of support gives you a warm fuzzy feeling but did you ever considered ROI? I have to admit I never worked for a F-100 but it needs to be a *very* critical system the one that makes Oracle "premier support" a sounded technical decision instead of plain CYA.
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Many vendors hide their knowledgebase behind a paywall (e.g. CheckPoint Software, and Oracle it seems). That's not true for stuff like Postgresql.
I don't regard being able to pay to access a knowledgebase, as a positive feature. Or being able to pay to get support from people who have access to that paywalled knowledgebase. It really isn't better support to be able to talk to someone who is "more experienced" just because mountains of info has
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If they really need world class support, then they ought to use db2 - its better than Oracle in every dimension, even if you include Larry Ellison's yacht.
If they just need something that works properly, then Postgresql will solve their problems.
Disclaimer: I have frequently been a victim of Oracle since Oracle 5.
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I will further that if you need support with PostgreSQL there is EnterpriseDB and a couple other companies who specialize in PostgreSQL. We've often used PostgreSQL for clients and it works extremely well. Then if they need more, we transition to DB2.
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In our race to the bottom of the price bucket lots of things have to be cut and guess where they cut first, you guessed it, in support. With Oracle support you do not get script readers in India or the Philippines you get an Oracle engineer on the phone ready to tackle the problem with you until the problem is solved and they will bring in whatever other resources are required.
Well, I don't know if you'll be getting engineer or script readers but I did a little stats on their SUPPORT positions:
Chile: 78
US: 71:
India: 70
Romania: 28
Egypt: 16
China: 11
Rest of world: 47
Looks like Chile is the new India...
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Nice try at a refute but that don't work. They are spread across the globe because as long as you will stay on the phone they will keep transferring you to the next support center as the world continues to turn. I know because I have done it, had an Oracle server down hard and started the conversation with a center in Denver and as the clock kept going I got transfered to the next engineer after they were briefed by my current engineer.
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I've had very good support from MySQL as well. This is experience from several years ago, before Sun or Oracle got involved. The nice thing is that you get to choose, if you don't want support then you pay very little - but ther enterprise level support is quite good.
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You're serious?
I've had a production Oracle database go down due to a bug in Oracle and raised a support ticket. It took Oracle a week to produce a workaround - what kind of environment can afford to have the production database down for a week? I consider Oracle support okay if you're doing development and don't require quick turnaround but pretty much worthless for handling P1 incidents.
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You waste your money an overpriced corporate IT admin college grad and support contracts. Your admin had information thrust at him rapidfire in school so the school can claim an impressive curriculum, of which every class is worthless without several months of in the trenches experience BEFORE the next class. So he doesn't know a damn thing, except maybe some impressive sounding operational theory that might be useful to troubleshoot some fringe cases.
As a result, your admin makes you pay ridiculous prices
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In a lot of organizations it is cheaper to pay for a 24/7/365 MySQL expert from the local community. I know a guy who does just that, signs up businesses, gives them the cell phone number, and is prepared at any time to help them.
What does he do if two of them call at the same time ?
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recommends someone more competent? how much do your db's go down?
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The Eclipse plugin for SVN is one of the most godawful pieces of crap I've ever seen, though. When we moved from CVS to SVN I couldn't understand why the other developers in our shop were complaining that "Subversion is slow!" when I always found it blazingly fast. They were using the Eclipse plugin, while I was using the command line tools. Yech.