Will Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Stay With MySQL? 245
littlekorea writes "The world's largest web-scale users of MySQL have committed to one further upgrade to the Oracle-controlled database — but Facebook and Twitter are also eyeing off more open options from MariaDB and cheaper options from the NoSQL community. Who will pay for MySQL enterprise licenses into the future?"
Re:Enterprise? (Score:5, Informative)
And the article confirms the large-scaler users aren't part of that elusive group, either:
Re:How do you get cheaper than free? (Score:5, Informative)
Hell, it's not even cost effective to switch to another SQL database like PostgreSQL.
Can you imagine the downtime required to export Facebook from MySQL and to re-import it to another database? The users would go ballistic!
I don't expect any "earth shattering" movement by any of the big users in the near future.
I'm involved in a project that involves moving databases. We write each transaction to both the old and new structure using our data access layer, then export historic data and eventually, once we've verified the new system is working as expected, remove the old structure from the data access layer. This is the main reason data access layers are used.
Re: and so meanwhile... (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, Postgres has all the standard GRANT and REVOKE, plus some things I don't immediately recall MySQL supporting. This support goes back at least to 7.3, which is a decade old. From what I can tell from the changelogs, looks like they started adding that around 1997 in 6.0.
I'll also note that PostgreSQL places a lot of importance on following the standards - they seem to support far more things than MySQL. In fact, looking at their "list of unsupported SQL features", it seems the bulk of them are "embedded [outdated programming language]" of one sort or another, or fancy XML stuff.
Re:License (Score:2, Informative)
Bullshit.
It's a variation of the BSD/MIT license, which has fewer restrictions than the viral GPL. It's functionally equivalent to the most permissive Creative Commons license, only requiring attribution. It's explicitly listed on the OSI website [opensource.org] as an approved license.
"Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies."
The only people who object to this type of license are GPL bigots who want to impose their version of "freedom" on everyone else.
Re:and so meanwhile... (Score:4, Informative)
"Now we've switched to Postgres, because MySQL's future is so hazy..."
It's no more hazy than it was when Oracle took it over. The MariaDB project is largely run by ex-MySQL developers... where's the problem? If anything, it was Oracle that muddied the waters. Now things are getting BACK on track.
I like Postgres in some ways, but it has some significant deviations from standard SQL syntax, and other idiosyncracies.
For me (I'm not doing anything "enterprise" at the moment), the slight performance gain of Postgres is not worth putting up with its oddities.
Re:and so meanwhile... (Score:4, Informative)
I like Postgres in some ways, but it has some significant deviations from standard SQL syntax, and other idiosyncracies.
Strange you would mention that, one of the reasons I've switched to PostgreSQL (and never looked back) is because it more closesly follows the SQL standard and has many less "gotchas" and bugs than MySQL (boolean is actually an int field, reset counter on increment, etc).
When people complain about Postgres' "non-standard SQL", this usually comes from those that have only used MySQL and think it's the standard.
About the only technical advantage MySQL has over Postgres is an easier setup, and generally better performance out of the box (before any tuning).
Re: and so meanwhile... (Score:4, Informative)
Go back further to when MySQL got momentum and Postgres did not do SQL *AT ALL*.
[citation needed]
Actually, let me get some citations for you, although they contradict your statement:
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgresql [wikipedia.org]
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysql [wikipedia.org]
So it would appear that Postgres supported SQL before MySQL even existed.