February 21, 2007
Ray Lane Digging Open Source
Looks like folks interested in MySQL + Postgres aren't the only ones eying the open source model. It seems Ray Lane is too. As a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Kaufield & Byers he will be an advisor to Vertica, a new open source database startup.
Vertica Systems is building a fast new database system which it claims can execute queries 100 times faster than row-oriented relational database systems. Of course marketing hype aside, without a quantifiable description of such a test, and how each database was setup, it remains to be seen whether it will actually meet that claim.
Ray Lane is no newcomer to the industry, having been Oracle's own president and COO back in the early 1990's.
If you're interested in some further reading on the subject of Oracle history, I highly recommend The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He Is Larry Ellison.
Posted by admin at 01:44 AM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2007
MySQL Coming to Unbreakable Marketing?
Everything else is Unbreakable, why not MySQL? Why not indeed. Rik van Riel talks with Marten Mickos where he talks about just that.
Of course moves like this not only help Oracle, but they can sometimes (to use a popular term these days) embolden the technology, and providers. What's more those of us implementing technology infrastructure in enterprises know that having one provider for everything isn't always a good thing. But competition is...
Posted by admin at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2007
MySQL - new Falcon storage engine
MySQL AB, the company that releases the open-source MySQL database has announced a new storage engine called Falcon.
In MySQL, storage engines determine the features of the underlying tables. For non-transaction tables (readers and writers not protected from each other) MySQL has MyISAM, and for transactional tables, Bdb and InnoDB. Now the new Falcon type is poised to take the lead as the best choice for high-transaction websites.
Posted by admin at 02:11 AM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2006
Fear of an Open-Source Planet
This article from internet financial news has a table showing the recent growth in the database market accross various segments. Although the Open-Source databases have eaten into the commercial market a small amount, Oracle for instance still commands the lions share of it. And also note that ALL of them are still growing, albeit at different rates. Microsoft, IBM, Sybase, Ingres, and MySQL are all mentioned.
SearchOracle, always on the Open Source edge, talks a bit about oracle, and has some links including an interview with Andy Astor of EnterpriseDB otherwise known as Postgres.
Posted by admin at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
Growing Open-Source DB Market
The market for open-source databases is growing by leaps and bounds. This is a good article with plenty of statistics and links to relevant resources. Of course at the same time that the open-source market is growing, the commercial market for enterprise databases is growing as well, albeit slower.
All this points to more data being stored, and more administrators needed all around. Indeed.com job trends shows these figures for MySQL jobs (1/5%) and these figures for Oracle jobs (3%). That's 15 times as many Oracle job postings.
Posted by admin at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2006
MySQL Performance Tuning
Just found this really excellent blog with the very original name MySQL Performance Blog!! Seriously, despite it's name, there is a lot of good information here if you're struggling with MySQL at all, or want to take your system to the next level.
Posted by admin at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2006
O'Reilly Radar - Database Job Market
I like O'Reilly's Radar for staying on top of the latest trends in the web, internet, and open source in general.
They have a really excellent in-depth article MySQL and the Database Job Market which I highly recommend.
Posted by admin at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
January 31, 2006
IBM Follows Oracle's Lead - Free DB2
IBM has just announced it will offer DB2 free as Oracle did with it's database product. Incredibly, they've put many fewer limitations on it.
IBM's "DB2 Express-C" is the full-featured database product. The limitations are on the number of processors (two) and maximum memory (4gb). Where have I heard that name before?
Download everything including developer tools, here.
Posted by admin at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
GSA Ink 5yr MySQL Deal
The General Services Administration has inked a 5yr contract with MySQL AB. Now as many as 70 different government offices will be able to deploy MySQL in their departments. Again, this isn't any sort of mandate of course, and with more and more government services moving to the web, it makes sense that they would embrace MySQL as it adapts well to many of these type of applications.
The GSA was also in the news recently when their eOffer site went offline because of a security problem.
Posted by admin at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2006
Openness + the Disclosure Debate
While we're on the subject of database security, I'll also point out that the Voyager Worm vulnerability was released under Full Disclosure which , rather than trying to provide code through support channels and hoping it gets fixed quickly, presents the code to the world, hopefully encouraging the software company to fix the problem quickly. The opposite of such an open tactic is what security professionals call security through obscurity. If you take the perspective of the vendor, they argue that code released will find it's way into the hands of malicious hackers. If you see the security professionals perspective, they would argue that such code would get to malicious folks anyway, and without full disclosure the vendor has much less incentive to fix the problem.
Another interesting side of the question though is that disclosure of a serious security flaw can provide powerful advertising for a security firm. Brian Martin at The Age discusses this debate in further detail.
Posted by admin at 04:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2005
War of the Databases?
This zdnet blogger argues Ingres is the real threat and that a database war is brewing. There is real venture money behind this. What with Oracle buying Innobase, SQL Server 2005 newly out, and MySQL 5.0 now in production. But there also seems to be some excitement in the ERP space. At Openworld in October, Oracle mentioned Salesforce.com as a significant threat, but what about the Open Source Sequoia ERP? This newswire argues that Open Source ERP will drive Open Source database adoption. But the truth is that many of these open source apps can and will support Oracle on the backend, and I would argue as they scale will really require Oracle.
Interestingly there are other companies out there that are betting on Open Source for HA. That's a big question, and one that remains unanswered.
Posted by admin at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2005
MySQL through an Oracle DBA Lens
Jeff Hunter writes about automating the role of Oracle DBA in his blog So What?.
I read his blog fairly often as it is insightful, and full of interesting information. This week we're in for a real treat as he has written a four part series about MySQL.
Many Oracle DBAs are starting to be taxed with a MySQL database or two, and don't know where to start. Here's where, MySQL to an Oracle DBA, Part I, Part II, Part III and finally Part IV. Enjoy!
Posted by admin at 02:24 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
pros and cons of open source
A recent article cautions against open source databases. While caution is always good thing, the sword can cut both ways. There are plenty of websites and other smaller applications for which an enterprise database like Oracle might be overkill both in terms of budget, and firepower. But I still maintain that the Open Source databases will remain their own niche for some time to come.
Another article discusses a potential legal timebomb because Open Source conflicts with traditional intellectual property. ADTI's financing may be a factor too.
Posted by admin at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)