|
Softpanorama
(slightly skeptical)
Open Source Software Educational Society |
May the
source be with you,
but remember the KISS principle ;-)
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Perl Scripting for Open Source Databases
The best collection of links to start is not this page but
Pal's Linux RDBMS Library.
My page is pretty rudimentary and currently not maintained well
as my current work and research interests are more in OS security area. But
still it was useful for my students before and might be useful for somebody now.
So I decided to keep it on the WEB.
Taking into account a poor shape of most imbed database languages,
Linux+Apache+MySQL+ PHP combination (or Linux+Apache+PostgreSQL+PHP) at least
for WEB applications looks comparative to proprietary offerings. Using Python is
the other possibility. I feel that adding procedural components to SQL is a stupid
idea and the only reasonable way to go is to use a decent scripting language.
Java is another possibility and it has strong typing. Although it is almost an industry
standard (Cobol 2000 ;-), and I would like to warn you that IMHO it's not about
scripting and thus is neither provide high productivity typical for scripting language,
no high performance typical for compiled languages (it's getting better). A lot
of organizations spend millions of dollars on Java interfaces with databases with
marginal or oven negative results as for development or support costs. They would
get the same or better result much quicker and for a fraction of money with
any decent scripting language.
If you need really large database I would see first if the database
design is implementable under
PostgreSQL.
for historical reason I prefer Perl, but this is for only historical reasons. For
smaller databases MySQL is OK or in case you work with WEB might even be a better
bet (more literature, more open applications to study, more people to consult about
problems, etc). In case those two are for some reason unsuitable Oracle on Solaris
is a safe (but extremely expensive) solution. Oracle on Linux is a questionable
bet -- it you are paying those huge money for the database you need a decent hardware
and the best OS the money can buy -- that means UltraSparc III and Solaris 9. As
an embeddable database Berkeley DB is an excellent solution.
I generally prefer
PostgreSQL
which is free in true sense of the word (it is licensed under BSD license), but
of course you will be better off buying support if you are doing something
serious unless you want to became a PostreSQL developer. But MySQL is a slightly
stronger bet if we are talking about <Web-server>>-<scriptinglanguage>-<database>
troika. Actually apache-PHP-MySQL is a very strong development platform.
Note: Please remember that for large projects changing
databases is a very painful experience that should be avoided as much as possible.
Again, this page should be viewed only after
Pal's Linux RDBMS Library:
This site is a compilation of the best free online readings
about relational databases on Linux. If you're a Linux RDBMS/database administrator,
a database designer/developer, or simply a Linux user with database ambitions,
you'll find links to valuable resources here: articles, papers, and books on
various aspects of relational database management. Needless to say, much of
this material is more or less applicable to other (UNIX) environments, too.
Good luck !
Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov
Notes:
- Those pages are written by people for whom English is not a
native language. Some amount of grammar and spelling errors
should be expected.
- This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site. It
cannot replace the best teachers and
the
best books.
- The site contain some obsolete pages as it develops like a
living tree... Some links on older pages
are broken. Please
try to use Google, Open directory, etc. to find a replacement link
(see
HOWTO search the WEB for details).
We would appreciate if you can
mail us a correct link.
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|
If you are familiar with SQL, then the
small relational database language (SRDL) Sergei presents here
will seem like an old friend. SRDL is designed to provide your
applications with flexibility in dealing with database problems.
Sergei is a developer for Counselware in Montreal, Canada. He
can be contacted at savs@CS.McGill.CA
When developing software, we are often confronted with what
appears to be a typical database problem, yet ends up requiring
operations some database engines can't deliver. Obviously, what we
need in such situations is a tool that lets us quickly create
custom, specialized features. The tool I present in this article --
a small relational database language called SRDL -- is designed to
provide applications with a considerable amount of flexibility in
dealing with database problems. If you are familiar with SQL, you
will find a lot of similarities in SRDL. There are differences
between the two languages, of course, primarily in the definition of
relations, structure of operators, and typing scheme.
SRDL is implemented in C++ (using template classes). The current
implementation is about 2500 lines of code. It should compile under
GCC and most other modern C++ compilers, and run on practically any
platform. The implementation can either be used interactively or
embedded into C++ applications that call member functions
implementing the operators explicitly. The complete SRDL source code
(distributed as freeware) is available electronically; see
"Programmer's Services," page 3.
There are two distinguishable levels in the SRDL implementation
-- the lower-storage level and the upper-manipulation level. There
is a minimal interface between the two, and all algorithmic
complexity of operators is in the upper level, with the lower level
providing a way to read or write into some particular format on some
storage. Multiple implementations of the lower level are possible,
so that relations can be stored in different formats (or even in
different storage areas; for example, placed into memory to speed up
execution of consecutive operators).
|
Victor R. Rivarola S.
- Subject: MySQL? Not even in the race. ( Apr 24, 2007, 23:09:27 )
|
Don't beleive me? Make a file named mysql.sql and feed it into mysql:
CREATE TABLE A
(ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
);
CREATE TABLE B
(ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
,A INT NOT NULL REFERENCES A(ID)
);
-- These statements should fail because of
-- referential integrity.
INSERT INTO B (ID,A) VALUES (5,5);
INSERT INTO A (ID) VALUES (5);
-- If we got this far, we can already laugh at this "database"'s referential integrity.
-- Now lets check data type safety.
INSERT INTO B (ID,A) VALUES ('A',7);
-- MySQL and SQLite both finish these statements succesfully, showing that any referal to them as database should be enough to make anybody knowleadgable die of laugher.
-- Now, let us test the contents of both A and B.
SELECT * FROM A:
SELECT * FROM B;
Run this script if you dare on a MySQL server. It will spit on your face:
ID
5
ID A
5 5
0 7
Feed it like this:
cat mysql.sql | mysql database_name
Note that if you copy the script to the clipboard and then paste it back
into the MySQL console, it will at least give you a warning when you try
to insert 'A' into ID, but it will go on happily and do it. Better,
but not enough.
Any database that will let you execute those commands in that order is not
fit for a children's toy.
MySQL does, Postgres doesn't. Microsoft Access doesn't either, so it is
a better database than MySQL.
Yes, I know about InnoDB. However, it is not the default table type.
Instead, MyISAM piece of junk is. Which means that of all the people who use MySQL,
very few actually use InnoDB. So, argument is moot.
Besides, to use InnoDB you would need to add a "TYPE=InnoDB" after the closing
parenthesis and before the final semicolon. This totally non-standard "feature"
(MS style).
Besides how does this helps the type check misfeature? It doesn't.
Once again you must resort to a nonstandard, nondefault, totally unknown,
mode change command to fix it.
I would end up calling MySQL a toy, but even that would be
WAY
too generous.
As for the fact of its popularity, if you believe that fallacious argument
you would have to conclude the obviously untrue statement that Microsoft
Windows XP is much, much, much better than Linux.
|
Make your MySQL server fly with these server tuning tips
07 Jun 2007 (IBM DeveloperWorks)
Applications using the LAMP (Linux®, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl) architecture are
constantly being developed and deployed. But often the server administrator
has little control over the application itself because it's written by someone
else. This
series of three articles discusses many of the server configuration items
that can make or break an application's performance. This third article, the
last in the series, focuses on tuning the database layer for maximum efficiency.
"We are announcing today that there will be no VFP 10"
We have been asked about our plans for a new version of VFP. We are announcing
today that there will be no VFP 10. VFP9 will continue to be supported according
to our existing policy with support through 2015 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=7992).
We will be releasing SP2 for Visual FoxPro 9 this summer as planned, providing
fixes and additional support for Windows Vista.
Additionally, as you know, we’ve been working on a project codenamed Sedna for
the past year or so. Sedna is built using the extensibility model of VFP9 and
provides a number of new features including enhanced connectivity to SQL Server,
integration with parts of the .NET framework, support for search using Windows
Desktop Search and Windows Vista as well as enhanced access to VFP data from
Visual Studio.
Concurrently, the community has been using CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com)
to enhance VFP using these same capabilities in the
VFPx and
VFPy projects. Some of these community
driven enhancements include:
- Support for GDI+
- An enhanced class browser
- Support for Windows Desktop Alerts
- An object oriented menu system
- Integration with MSBuild
- A rule-based code analysis tool similar to fxCop in Visual Studio
- An Outlook Control Bar control
To reiterate, today we are announcing that we are not planning on releasing
a VFP 10 and will be releasing the completed Sedna work on CodePlex at no charge.
The components written as part of Sedna will be placed in the community for
further enhancement as part of our shared source initiative. You can expect
to see the Sedna code on CodePlex sometime before the end of summer 2007.
The VFP team
Microsoft Visual FoxPro Roadmap
The VFP team made a special announcement to the community on March 13,
2007. The team has announced that there will be no VFP 10. VFP 9 will continue
to be supported as per the support policy (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=7992)
through 2015.
After the release of Visual FoxPro 9.0 and Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack1,
the Visual FoxPro team at Microsoft has been working on a new project code-named
Sedna. Sedna takes advantage of enhancements in Visual FoxPro 9.0. The primary
goal of Sedna is to expand on the ability of Visual FoxPro-based solutions to
better integrate with other Microsoft products and technologies.
Features in Sedna will target Visual FoxPro interoperability with application
components created using Visual Studio 2005, the .NET Framework 2.0 and SQL
Server 2005. Sedna will also help improve the ability for Visual FoxPro 9.0
solutions to be successfully deployed on Windows Vista. Sedna is planned to
be released before the end of Summer of 2007.
Additional information can be found in the transcript of theVisual
FoxPro DevCon 2005 Interview with Alan Griver and Ken Levy from June 2005,
as well as the September 30th 2005 audio podcast
FoxShow #24: Interview with Ken Levy - both interviews discuss details of
the Visual FoxPro Roadmap. The complete SouthwestFox 2005 keynote slide deck
on the Visual FoxPro Roadmap and community news now online, 1.6MB PPT download
SouthwestFox2005_Keynote.ppt.
There are two pillars for the main themes of Sedna,Interoperability and
Extensibility. Some of the extensibility enhancements will target report
system features like additional report output file types. For interoperability,
the areas (in priority) including the following upcoming Microsoft products
and technologies:
- .NET Framework 2.0 with Visual Studio 2005
- SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Express
- Windows Vista
- Windows Communication Foundation (code named Indigo)
- Windows Presentation Foundation (code named Avalon)
Sedna Feature Overview documents describe
the various aspects of Sedna.
Visual FoxPro will also release a service pack that includes several critical
fixes, including those required to better support Windows Vista.
As indicated in prior public statements, Microsoft does not plan to merge
Visual FoxPro into Visual Studio .NET, nor are there plans to create a new Visual
FoxPro .NET programming language. Visual FoxPro will remain stand-alone
Win32 based, and will run on 64-bit Windows in 32-bit compatibility mode.
For more information about Visual FoxPro, including answers toVisual
FoxPro FAQ, go to the
Visual FoxPro Developer Center Web site. at
http://msdn.com/vfoxpro.
(Updated: March 2007)
Not true, but interesting :-)
"Microsoft has announced that it will
open-source the core portions of the Visual FoxPro DBMS software to its
CodePlex community development site. At the same time, Microsoft has announced
that it will no longer be making new versions of the FoxPro DBMS."
Comment
Microsoft will be releasing the completed Sedna work on CodePlex at no charge.
The components written as part of Sedna will be placed in the community for
further enhancement as part of our shared source initiative.
You can expect to see the Sedna code on CodePlex sometime before the end of
summer 2007.
NOTE that the released part is Sedna and
NOT VFP nor VFP core elements!
Sedna is a project Microsoft has been working on for the past year or so. Sedna
is built using the extensibility model of VFP9 and provides features like better
connectivity to SQL Server, integration with parts of the .NET framework, wrappers
for Vista APIs to make it easier to write applications that run on Vista machines,
as well as better support for VFP data in Visual Studio.
The VFP Community Message is at:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb308952.aspx
Thanks!
Sun used to provide slightly cheaper support then Red Hat. Oracle undercut this
price so this advantage is lost. Still Solaris stands on its own as an enterprise
OS (and it serves as Oracle standard 64-bit platform) and in this role it competes
more with AIX and HP-UX then Linux (although X86-64 changed that). So this
development might hurt Sun a little bit on low end but it is not applicable to midrange
and high-end server were Oracle mainly used. Actually IBM AIX is the major Sun's
competitor in his space due to Power 5 CPUs scalability. But all three major Unix
vendors have sizable Oracle deployment (surprisingly HP-UX is a strong contender
in this space and many large corporations use HP-UX to run Oracle).
According to WimCoekaerts, Oracle's director of Linux engineering, Oracle's
own production servers are
rolled out with Linux -- not Solaris -- and
Linux is now the de facto standard platform for 9,000 Oracle developers.
Sun is quick to point out the technical advantages of Solaris over Linux,
and to be fair, they are numerous; score a point for Sun. What's more, Solaris
is open source, just like Linux.
... ... ...
Sun says that, when you run the numbers, Red Hat's subscription pricing is
expensive compared with what you get with a Solaris license. Oracle apparently
agrees, because its baseline Linux support contract will be priced at half what
Red Hat charges.
In short, whatever the effect Oracle's
Unbreakable Linux has on Red Hat, it will also have a heavy impact on Sun.
For the list of systems (currently approximately a dozen) see
Oracle Validated Configurations
August 14, 2006 Oracle Validated Configurations
are pre-tested, validated architectures with software, hardware, storage and
networking components together with documented best practices for deployment.
Oracle and its strategic partners offer and recommend these configurations to
enable end-users to deploy fully tested solutions to achieve standardization
with high performance, scalability and reliability while lowering infrastructure
costs.
... ... ....
Oracle is seeing significant end-user demand for Linux x86-64 architectures
and is fully committed to developing, advancing
and promoting the 64-bit commodity Linux. All new chipsets and
servers are now being shipped with x86-64 architecture, thereby offering a much
wider hardware selection to end-users than some of the other architectures.
Therefore, Oracle has chosen to initially make Oracle
Validated Configurations available on Linux x86-64.
Oracle is involved with Linux, Coekaerts says, foremost because Oracle uses
Linux. A lot of Linux. Right now almost 10,000 Linux servers are in use internally
at Oracle. Essentially, every production server at Oracle is a Linux server.
In addition, about 9,000 developers at Oracle are using Linux to develop products.
A lot of that can be attributed to one simple
factor: cost savings. "We use Linux for the same reason all the other companies
are using Linux," Coekaerts says.
But there's more to it than that. The Oracle database is a large, complex
application that places a lot of demands on the underlying OS. When Oracle wants
to experiment, changing how the OS works to optimize database performance, it's
easier to do with an open source, community-driven OS than a proprietary one.
Hence the number of Linux kernel contributions from Oracle engineers; as a fast
research and prototyping tool, Linux can't be beat.
The end result of all this in-house Linux experience is a whole lot of in-house
expertise. In a way, then, it was only natural for Oracle to enter into the
Linux support business. It's not widely recognized, but Oracle has provided
enterprise Linux support through its
Unbreakable Linux program for about four years. Now, with its new
Oracle Validated Configurations initiative, it is poised to take that a step
further.
An Oracle Validated Configuration is essentially
what it sounds like. Oracle and its partners have selected specific combinations
of hardware and software -- including server hardware, chip sets, Linux OSes,
drivers, and storage -- and subjected them to approximately 60 to 70 tests designed
to tax each system to the limits of its performance. The Validated label means
you're getting a complete system that has been fully configured, certified,
and optimized to run Oracle, down to specific kernel module parameters.
The Oracle stamp of approval doesn't just benefit Oracle users. Because Oracle
is such a heavyweight application, it tends to highlight problems more quickly
than other kinds of software. A system that runs Oracle well is almost guaranteed
to run other applications well.
By comparison, Coekaerts says it typically takes customers nine to 12 months
to get full server stacks properly configured when they do it themselves. "We're
saving lots of people's time, including our own," he says.
But the bigger picture is one of perception. Over the long term, Coekaerts
would like to see Oracle recognized for the contributions it has made to Linux
throughout the years. As the world's second-largest software company, Oracle's
influence over the industry isn't going away, but its reputation as an outsider
in the world of open source just might.
"We're doing Linux the way we should be doing it," Coekaerts says. "We're
trying to use our influence to do something good."
On October 25, 2006 Oracle announced its own support for a clone of Red Hat.
It is evident that Oracle will eat Red Hat lunch, but this is also a severe blow
to Suse (making Novell almost irrelevant in enterprise Linux space). Some
people think that this is a revenge for Jboss, but big business is not about retribution.
Still details are pretty interesting and somewhat damaging for Solaris at mid-range:
Sun should be very careful with licensing and cost of support to avoid the falloff...
Currently, Red Hat only provides bug fixes for the latest version of its
software. This often requires customers to upgrade to a new version of Linux
software to get a bug fixed. Oracle's new Unbreakable Linux program will
provide bug fixes to future, current, and back releases of Linux. In
other words, Oracle will provide the same level of enterprise support for Linux
as is available for other operating systems.
Oracle is offering its Unbreakable Linux program for substantially less than
Red Hat currently charges for its best support. "We believe that better support
and lower support prices will speed the adoption of Linux, and we are working
closely with our partners to make that happen," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
"Intel is a development partner. Dell and HP are resellers and support partners.
Many others are signed up to help us move Linux up to mission critical status
in the data center."
"Oracle's Unbreakable Linux program is available to all Linux users
for as low as $99 per system per year," said Oracle President Charles
Phillips. "You do not have to be a user of Oracle software to qualify. This
is all about broadening the success of Linux. To get Oracle support for Red
Hat Linux all you have to do is point your Red Hat server to the Oracle network.
The switch takes less than a minute."
"We think it's important not to fragment the market," said Oracle's Chief
Corporate Architect Edward Screven. "We will maintain compatibility with Red
Hat Linux. Every time Red Hat distributes a new version we will resynchronize
with their code. All we add are bug fixes, which are immediately available to
Red Hat and the rest of the community. We have years of Linux engineering experience.
Several Oracle employees are Linux mainline maintainers."
SQLite is a small C library that implements a self-contained, embeddable,
zero-configuration SQL database engine. The primary benefits of using SQLite
is that you can create a self-contained database in your application.
What is so great about this? Well, for starters you can:
- Manipulate data inside your program using standard SQL construct.
- Zero database configuration – but you get database-like capabilities
for your program.
- Simple, easy to use
API. You
can actually use SQLite with just 3 main API.
- Self-contained: no external dependencies.
- Faster
than popular client/server database engines for most common operations.
With SQLite, it is possible for you to distribute single application binary,
with almost complete database and SQL querying capabilities. Compared to another
embedded database such Berkeley DB, which offers just key and value assignment,
SQLite is much more versatile and easy to use. You can just use all the SQL
syntax that you have become familiar with to manipulate your data. The data
itself is stored inside a single disk file on your local file-system, which
can grow to a maximum of 2 terabytes (241 bytes) in size. For more
information, visit SQLite site.
Under Ubuntu, to install SQLite, issue the following command:
sudo apt-get install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libsqlite3-0 sqlite3-doc
|
Oracle played a big card when it bought InnoDB,
the most popular way to inject data into the open
source mySQL database.
Monday mySQL responds by getting
Solid™ Information Technology, a proprietary
database vendor, to take its solidDB Storage Engine
for MySQL open source, under the GPL, starting in
June.
Solid has its base in telecommunications and
transaction processing, which had been considered
a completely different market from the small fry
mySQL supplies. It has 3 million copies out at places
like Alcatel, Cisco, EMC, HP, NEC, Nokia, and Nortel.
The addition of Solid technology to mySQL, the
company said, puts mySQL into the enterprise league
and makes it a direct threat to Oracle.
But does it? After all, Solid is in that enterprise
market, albeit a niche within it. Solid is not going
away, and this is supposed to be a complementary
deal.
So I talked to Paola Lubet, vice president of
marketing for Solid, She told me her 14-year old
company had been looking for a way into the broader
enterprise market for some time, and sees open source
as a "go to market" opportunity.
"Our decision at the moment is to go into the
open source track and use mySQL as a channel. So
we’re going to make available code that works only
with mySQL. On the side we have a proprietary line
of products."
Going to open source with mySQL was also a comfortable
decision for Solid. Both companies were founded
in Finland, and still do most development there.
The U.S. arms of both companies are in the same
building in Cupertino.
Stacey Quandt, research director for the
Aberdeen Group in Boston, told me the deal also
opens new markets to mySQL. "For years mySQL has
defined itself as not being a competitor (in the
enterprise space), but with a transactional engine
that gap can be narrowed," she said.
Web 2.0 projects built on mySQL can also move
ahead with confidence they’re ready as they move
into transactions and as users "rush to the rail"
to support them.
"There’s more work to be done, but the gap is
narrowing," Quandt said of mySQL. "What I would
look for in terms of feature initiatives and measuring
success is for mySQL to now get into telco and manufacturing
and other verticals." And for Solid? "The network
effects of open source may help them grow their
installed base."
You might say that Oracle’s open source problems
are far from…Finnished.
A recent
interview has DBAs talking about the merits of the open source PostgreSQL
database management system (DBMS) as compared to Oracle – and their opinions
truly run the gamut.
In that interview, Robert Treat and Jason Gilmore, co-authors of "Beginning
PHP and PostgreSQL 8: From Novice to Professional," said that PostgreSQL 8.0
is much more than just a back end for Web sites. In many situations, the authors
say, PostgreSQL can be used instead of or as a complement to Oracle and other
DBMSs.
DBAs responding to the interview said they liked the low cost of the open
source database, while others said that Oracle's rich feature set is second
to none.
Jim Allen, a longtime Oracle professional and an independent technology consultant,
says he has had considerable experience with PostgreSQL 7.4, but not the newest
version, 8.1.
Allen believes that PostgreSQL is much more suitable for the casual
database developer, such as Java developers who need a back end for [Java
Database Connectivity] access.
"PostgreSQL has a solid set of features now that includes most if not all
of what these developers would ever use," Allen said. "Oracle has a feature
set several orders of magnitude more rich, but few if any of these features
would ever be used by this group."
Another thing Allen likes about PostgreSQL is the fact that the stored procedure
compilation is transactional.
"You can recompile a stored procedure on a live system, and only transactions
starting after that compilation will see the changes," he said. "Transactions
in process can complete with the old version. Oracle just blocks on the busy
procedure."
Matt S., a DBA, said that he has successfully used PostgreSQL 8 in conjunction
with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005, as well as with Oracle 10g.
"I was impressed thoroughly with the ease of implementation, as well as compatibility
and installation of PostgreSQL, considering its open source nature," he said.
"Using it in enterprise applications [and] Web site situations was relatively
painless [and] a simplified security structure made it very appealing."
Another user, who did not want to be identified, said that it makes
more sense to compare PostgreSQL to OracleXE, a slimmed down and free version
of the Oracle DBMS. The user said that like PostgreSQL, OracleXE is
easy to install and use. He added that OracleXE includes Apex/HTMLDB to help
developers quickly build and deploy Web applications.
"I've used PostgreSQL in the past [and] it is fine," the user wrote. "However,
Oracle is stepping up and making a pretty good product and making it easier
for organizations to upgrade their database systems down the road from the free
version to their other versions of their product."
Richard Goulet, a senior Oracle DBA with a New England-area power components
manufacturer, said that he uses Oracle and PostgreSQL side-by-side for numerous
tasks.
Goulet agrees that PostgreSQL is easy to use, and he says it complies with
the SQL standard nicely. He adds that there is plenty of support readily available
for PostgreSQL through numerous mailing lists. But that's where Goulet's fondness
for the open source software ends.
PostgreSQL doesn't behave as nicely as Oracle when the system fills up, Goulet
said. In those instances, the system tends to crash quickly.
Goulet said that setting up a TCP/IP connection capability with PostgreSQL
is hardly an intuitive process. To do it, he says, one needs to modify the
postgres.conf and pg_hba.conf files manually.
"The last big thing between PostgreSQL and Oracle that's really missing is
a gateway product from Oracle. These two don't talk to each other except by
externally built and most times [highly customized] connectors," Goulet said.
"An Oracle gateway to PostgreSQL would mean a lot to those who use both products
happily."
Josh Berkus, who works with the PostgreSQL Project Core Team, said there
are in fact third party tools available on the Web which help integrate Oracle
and PostgreSQL data. They include Ora2pg and DBI-Link, he said.
Within the past two years, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft have all released freely
available versions of their flagship database servers, a move that would have
been unheard of just a few years ago. While their respective representatives
would argue the move was made in order to better accommodate the needs of all
users, it's fairly clear that continued pressure from open source alternatives
such as
MySQL
and
PostgreSQL have caused these database juggernauts to rethink their strategies
within this increasingly competitive market.
While PostgreSQL's adoption rate continues to accelerate, some folks
wonder why that rate isn't even steeper given its impressive array of features.
One can speculate that many of the reasons for not considering its adoption
tend to be based on either outdated or misinformed sources.
In an effort to dispel some of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) surrounding
this impressive product, instead, I'll put forth several of the most commonplace
reasons companies have for not investigating PostgreSQL further.
Reason #1: It doesn't run on Windows
PostgreSQL has long supported every modern Unix-compatible operating system,
and ports are also available for
Novell NetWare and
OS/2. With the 8.0 release, PostgreSQL's support for all mainstream operating
systems was complete, as it included a native Windows port.
Now, you can install the PostgreSQL database on a workstation or laptop with
relative ease, thank to an installation wizard similar to that used for installing
Microsoft Word or Quicken.
Reason #2: No professional development and administration tools
Most users who are unfamiliar with open source projects tend to think DB
administrators manage them entirely through a series of cryptic shell commands.
Indeed, while PostgreSQL takes advantage of the powerful command-line environment,
there are a number of graphical-based tools available for carrying out tasks
such as administration and database design.
The following list summarizes just a few of the tools available to PostgreSQL
developers:
- Database modeling: Several commercial and open source products are at
your disposal for data modeling, some of which include
Visual Case and
Data Architect.
- Administration and development: There are numerous impressive efforts
going on in this area, and three products are particularly promising.
pgAdmin III has a particularly long development history and is capable
of handling practically any task ranging from simple table creation to managing
replication across multiple servers.
Navicat PostgreSQL offers features similar to pgAdmin III and is packaged
in a very well-designed interface. A good, Web-based tool is
phpPgAdmin.
- Reporting: PostgreSQL interfaces with all mainstream reporting tools,
including
Crystal Reports,
Cognos ReportNet, and the increasingly popular open source reporting
package
JasperReports.
Reason #3: PostgreSQL doesn't support my language
 |
| Proprietary vendors' free databases: |
| Database heavyweights IBM, Microsoft
and Oracle have all recently released free versions
of their products. More information about the respective
products can be found by navigating to the following
links:
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Today's enterprise often relies on an assortment of programming languages,
and if the sheer number of PostgreSQL API contributions available are any indication,
the database is being used in all manner of environments.
The following links point to PostgreSQL interfaces for today's most commonly
used languages:
C++,
C#,
JDBC,
Perl,
PHP,
Python,
Ruby and
Tcl.
Interfaces even exist for some rather unexpected languages, with
Ada,
Common Lisp and
Pascal all coming to mind.
Reason #4: There's nobody to blame when something goes wrong
The misconception that open source projects lack technical support options
is curious, particularly if one's definition of support does not involve simply
having somebody to blame when something goes wrong.
You can find the answers to a vast number of support questions in the official
PostgreSQL manual, which consists of almost 1,450 pages of detailed documentation
regarding every aspect of the database, ranging from a synopsis of supported
data types to system internals.
The documentation is available for
online perusal and downloading in PDF format. For more help, there are a
number of newsgroups accessible through Google groups, with topics ranging across
performance, administration, SQL construction, development and general matters.
If you're looking for a somewhat more immediate response, hundreds of PostgreSQL
devotees can be found logged into IRC (irc.freenode.net #postgresql?).
You can plug in to IRC chat clients for all common operating systems (Windows
included) at any given moment. For instance, on a recent Wednesday evening,
there were more than 240 individuals logged into the channel. Waking up the
next morning, I found more than 252 logged in, including a few well-known experts
in the community. The conversation topics ranged from helping newcomers get
logged into their PostgreSQL installation for the first time to advanced decision
tree generation algorithms. Everyone is invited to participate and ask questions
no matter how simplistic or advanced.
For those users more comfortable with a more formalized support environment,
other options exist.
CommandPrompt Inc.'s PostgreSQL packages range from one-time incident support
to 24x7 Web, e-mail and phone coverage. Recently,
Pervasive Software Inc. jumped into the fray, offering various support packages
in addition to consulting services. Open source services support company
SpikeSource Inc. announced PostgreSQL support last summer, along with integration
of the database into its
SpikeSource Core Stack.
Reason #5: You (don't) get what you (don't) pay for
To put it simply, if you require a SQL standards-compliant database with
all of the features found in any enterprise-class product and capable of storing
terabytes of data while efficiently operating under heavy duress, chances are
PostgreSQL will quite satisfactorily meet your needs. However, it doesn't come
packaged in a nice box, nor will a sales representative stand outside your bedroom
window after you download it.
For applications that require Oracle to even function properly, consider
EnterpriseDB, a version of PostgreSQL, which has reimplemented features
such as data types, triggers, views and cursors that copy Oracle's behavior.
Just think of all the extra company coffee mugs you could purchase with the
savings.
... Using the open-standard
JDBC interface, Savvica ported its data to DB2 Express-C from MySQL in less
than a day, said Green.
Defections such as Savvica's
hearten big commercial database vendors, including Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and
even Sybase, which have all released free "express" databases in the past six
months.
Despite more robust features,
these hugely profitable databases have in recent years lost mind share -- and,
increasingly, customers -- to their open-source counterparts. MySQL AB's success
has epitomized the corporate revolt against the license and support fees charged
for commercial databases.
But the free express databases
are "significantly challenging the conventional wisdom about commercial vs.
open-source databases," said Peter O'Kelly, an analyst at Burton Group.
The commercial database vendors
are opening a second front by adding support for application frameworks popular
with open-source users. On Tuesday, Zend Technologies released software
that enables developers to write applications interacting with the Oracle database
in the PHP scripting language.
"IBM and Oracle are doing something
similar to what MySQL has done: win the hearts and minds of developers by giving
them easier access to technologies," said Mike Pinette, Zend's vice president
of business development.
It's early, and the success
of the big commercial database vendors at wooing back software developers --
who wield increasing influence over corporate buying decisions -- is not yet
clear.
In the area of database instructional
book sales, considered a good indicator of developer interest, sales of SQL
Server how-to books have surpassed MySQL books this year, according to Roger
Magoulis, director of research at leading publisher, O'Reilly Media. He believes
that interest is due more to the general release of SQL Server 2005 last fall,
rather than just its free edition -- especially as sales of Oracle or DB2 how-to
books have not increased significantly since the release of their free versions.
Sybase says its Adaptive Server
Enterprise 15 express edition has been downloaded 45,000 times since its September
release, with "a lot of that converting into business," according to Marty Beard,
Sybase's senior vice president of corporate development and marketing.
Microsoft, which released its
first free database, MSDE, back in 1999, did not immediately provide the number
of downloads of SQL Server 2005 Express, which was released last October. But
Oracle said hundreds of thousands of developers and students have downloaded
Oracle XE since its beta release that same month. IBM's DB2 Express-C was made
generally available only in late January.
In contrast, the latest 5.0
version of MySQL has been downloaded more than 6 million times since October,
said Zack Urlocker, vice president of marketing at the Cupertino, Calif.-based
firm. "Sure, the express versions are free, but they come with very significant
limitations, especially the lack of support," Urlocker said. "No enterprise
customer will go into production with a database that cannot be supported."
MySQL user Andy Meadows said
he hasn't been tempted to switch.
"Unless it's a large CRM or
identity management system, I've found MySQL to be robust and scalable enough,"
said Meadows, president of Live Oak Interactive Inc., an Austin-based Web development
and hosting firm. And while he acknowledges that "you can do quite a bit within
the parameters" of the express databases, he fears that vendors will pressure
him to upgrade to an expensive supported version of their database.
Rajeev Kaula, a professor in
Missouri State University's information systems department, said Oracle XE is
easier to install than earlier "lite" Oracle databases and helps teach students
to program more efficiently.
"Students who honed their skills
on MySQL and PHP tend to treat databases only as a way of storing tables," Kaula
said. Learning on Oracle XE, "they are realizing the power of transferring the
business logic to the database itself."
The company has taken its Database 10g Express Edition
(XE), a stripped-down, free version of its flagship database software, to general
availability.
XE is exiting
beta mode, where it received strong global support from several hundred
thousand Java, .NET, PHP and Web developers and students.
Programmers use it to write database applications
on Windows and Linux platforms, Oracle said in a statement.
For example, Oracle said Missouri State University
computer science students use XE in their classes to get a better feel for the
Oracle database through procedures, functions and triggers.
The software is built on the same code base as
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 and is compatible with all of Oracle's database
family of products. Oracle intended XE to have a simple upgrade path for users
who wish to upgrade and get the bells and whistles associated with Database
10g standard and enterprise editions.
Database XE is available now on 32-bit Windows
and a slew of Linux operating systems: Debian, Mandriva Linux 2006 Power Pack+,
Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and SUSE Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 4, Red Hat Fedora and Ubuntu.
The software can be downloaded for free
here.
Most Perl users are familiar with using Perl
to talk to databases. Perl's DBI is, along with ODBC and JDBC, one of the most
common and widely ported database client interfaces. The DBI driver for
PostgreSQL,
DBD::Pg,
is very well-maintained, and quite featureful. For example, it
recently acquired proper support for prepared statements. Previously, the client
library had emulated these, but with the latest DBD::Pg and PostgreSQL distributions,
you can get real prepared queries, which can lead to big performance gains in
some cases.
However, there is another way of using Perl with
PostgreSQL--writing little Perl programs that actually execute inside of the
server. This way of using Perl is less well known than using the DBI driver,
and is, as far as I know, unique to PostgreSQL. It lets you do some very cool
things that you just can't do in the client.
CA is selling its
Ingres database technology
to private equity firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital, which is forming a new company
to develop and market the open-source software.
Does anyone care? Where will Ingres get it's
market share from? Enterprise DB is sort of a different animal and MySQL
has such a huge user base it doesn't seem like a great business move to
launch yet another open source RDBMS database...especially when Ingres isn't
widely adopted in the enterprise and doesn't have a niche that will get
it in the door. Maybe I am missing something?
At last years LinuxWorld I moderated panel of
open source database company executives, including a guy from CA who unfortunately
became the target for everyone, especially me, to attack. That was largely
based on the fact that CA was treating it as some noble offering to the
community. But I still think Ingres is an also-ran product without a big
market.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg
on November 7, 2005 11:02 AM |
TrackBack (0)
I disagree with your comments. Being the original
database and enhanced to the level it is Ingres is the most advance database
in the market. It has a large customer base who are loyal to Ingres.
Running a small website is fine one can use MySQL or anything else for
that, but if you are doing something serious, uou need a database which
is as serious as Ingres.
Ingres scales really well, has great backup
and recovery, can work on multiple platforms, installs in a flash and the
best part is that with Ingres being such a mature product you do not have
to worry about stability of the system.
MySQL 5 is just coming out with some very
important database features which Ingres has had for years.
Ingres is the "real" database at fraction
of the cost of Oracle, but languished due to lack of promotion. With G&H
pumping in so much resources on it, I believe it can be the best out there
leaving MySQL far behind.
Cascade is a Web-based content management system.
It's based around the idea of organizing resources into a hierachy of categories,
much like Yahoo. Some features include generating static or dynamic HTML, allowing
user comments on ratings on resources, design abstraction through templates,
suggested addition and update management, an auto-generated "What's New" page,
support for related categories and virtual subcategories, and more. It can use
Postgres or MySQL as its SQL database.
Postgresql AutoDoc has the ability to output
XML, which can be loaded into Dia to create a UML diagram of the database (complete
with table relations and descriptive information), an HTML form for further
detailed information, GraphViz .dot output, and Docbook 4.1 style SGML for inclusion
with project documentation as an appendix. It works on any 7.x PostgreSQL-based
database.
The libsite-db-perl module provides basic and
easy database-connectivity through both URLs (like 'postgres://user:password@myhost/mydatabase')
and standard DBD-parameters. This method should be useful for both beginners
and experts since it decreases the duplication of code and its nice URL-based
access.
AllCommerce is an e-commerce/content application
based on Perl and SQL92 databases which runs under Unix/Linux/Win2000 using
SQL database engines (MySQL/Postgres/etc). In addition to a shopping cart, it
provides tools for content, merchandise, statistics, vendor, order, and inventory.
Its modular design allows it to be used as a complete or partial solution.
dSQL is an SQL query tool for MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, MS- SQL, ODBC drivers,
and all supported Perl DBI drivers. It uses Glade and GTK-Perl.
At last summer’s Linux World expo, Computer Associates
International Inc. (CA) unveiled plans to open up the source code to its Ingres
R/3 database.
Ingres is used by thousands of customers, but
(these days) it’s far from a relational-database powerhouse. With this in mind,
CA sought to sweeten the pot, announcing a total of $1 million in prizes to
encourage programmers to develop open-source tools to migrate applications and
data from DB2, Oracle, and other databases to Ingres R/3.
Last week, CA announced the results of its Ingres
challenge. The winners were determined by a panel that included Robin Bloor
(of consultancy Hurwitz and Associates), JBoss architect Gavin King, and Ingres
founder Dr. Michael Stonebraker. Qualifying entries had to ensure that applications
running on Oracle, IBM, and other databases could interoperate unmodified with
Ingres.
By all accounts, the winning entries—called Shift2Ingres,
EzyMigrate, and DbConverter—do so splendidly. What’s more, they also amount
to a victory of sorts for the Indian subcontinent. Two of the three winning
entries were submitted by programming teams based in India (New Delhi and Kerala,
respectively). The third, for the record, was written by Bipin Prasad, a programmer
from New York.
Shift2Ingres, which took home the biggest prize
($400,000) is a schema-, data-, and application-migration toolset for Oracle.
It’s based on a Java GUI that lets DBAs configure and perform the migration
of tables and underlying data, views, grants, sequences, PL/SQL procedures and
functions, triggers and other schema objects from Oracle to Ingres r3 databases.
EzyMigrate, one of the two $300,000 winners,
is a database-migration tool for SQL Server. It uses ODBC to connect to discover
database tables resident in SQL Server and displays table definitions to end
users by means of a Web-based front end. DBAs can use the interface to make
modifications to the table definitions, and the tool itself creates and populates
the tables in the target database. DBAs can use EzyMigrate to selectively perform
individual table migrations, but the tool also provides models for several different
data migration scenarios, including drop-and-replace, delete-and-replace, and
append.
The final winner, DbConverter, also took home
a $300,000 purse. The database-migration program can convert tables, views,
synonyms, indexes, triggers, constraints, groups, roles, users, permissions,
sequences and other schema components from MySQL. DbConverter uses a Java-based
UI that lets DBAs select not just which components they want to use for a migration,
but also what kind of migration they want to perform—e.g., directly into the
target database or by means of generating a SQL script and relevant output files
so they can perform the migration externally. The tool also supports plug-ins
that can be written to parse and convert associated applications.
"Oracle is the latest database vendor to put
its weight behind the PHP scripting language for business, with a new tool that
integrates PHP applications with its databases.
"Oracle and PHP tool developer Zend Technologies
have developed a PHP engine called Zend Core for Oracle. The tool, to be released
for free in the summer, will integrate Oracle's databases and Zend's PHP environment..."
Oracle: Open source hucksters and challenge
Oracle Vice President of Technology Marketing Robert Shimp,
whose company is among the only database providers not trending toward open
source in some way, was critical of some open source moves by database makers
in an interview with NewsForge. Shimp did not name names, but he noted that
while Oracle welcomes the market growth and competition from open source databases,
much of the open source database noise is centered on "orphanware."
Shimp cites companies "using open source because they
see it as a marketing mechanism -- a tool for creating hype or awareness of
older products. This is 'orphanware' -- software they want to abandon
that has no real commercial value, so they put it out and see what happens."
Shimp elaborated by dividing open source database strategies
into two categories: "serious" open source databases that provide transparency,
allowing developers and users to learn and share; and the "hucksters" putting
out abandonware.
In terms of competition from open source, Shimp
said Oracle views the other databases as an asset in bringing new database users
to the market, calling Oracle's biggest competitor the filing cabinet.
Quite often, users are introduced to databases through a free or open source
database, then move to Oracle as their needs become greater, according to Shimp,
who called innovation Oracle's challenge and advantage.
"I'm confident we'll be able to create cool things that
will get people to use Oracle," he said. "But I love the challenge the open
source guys are providing."
IBM: Seeding the market
IBM program manager Les King, who touted Big Blue's move
to open its Cloudscape database through the Apache incubator project
Derby, said
he took exception to the idea that Cloudscape was a case of abandonware. "It
had a very thriving life on its own before we decided to open source it," King
said.
He also indicated that like Oracle, IBM sees open source
as a way to gain more market share by catering to developers with open source
databases.
"There is an opportunity for vendors offering base code
to hopefully seed their own market," King said. "Certainly, if we consider the
seeding play, you need something to seed and Derby is perfectly set up to start
seeding DB2 Express."
While there is
talk of IBM open sourcing parts of its full-featured, enterprise-class DB2,
King discounted the idea, referring to the complexity and value of the code.
"If you take the multiple millions of lines of code [in
DB2], it naturally doesn't lend itself to dumping all of that code out there,"
King said. "In addition, today, there is a lot of intellectual property in the
software we sell, and we wouldn't want to make it all open source."
King did anticipate more open source moves from more database
players, however.
"I think you'll start to see more choice as companies
do take pieces of software and make it open source because that's what they're
targeting," King said, referring to developers. "It doesn't seem to be slowing."
IBM and Oracle say they are happy to see open source bring
new users to the overall database market, but OS database players say that their
users prefer to stick with open source, which is now rivaling DB2 and Oracle,
even at the higher level.
CA: Commodity competition
Computer Associates Senior Vice President of Development
Tony Gaughan referred to a sort of seeding, indicating his company -- which
this year
released its Ingres database under its own
Trusted Open Source License, sees open source as a chance to increase mindshare
and foster innovation by collaborating with its community.
Gaughan, who said the Ingres open sourcing is a return
to the database's "roots" as an open source project at UC Berkeley, also pointed
to the database as another instance of commoditization.
"Customers do not set out to buy a database, they purchase
an application that requires a database," Gaughan said.
"We have seen a need and demand for an enterprise-class,
open source database solution," Gaughan said. "MySQL is suited to read-only
operations and serving up HTML content; PostgreSQL has a much richer feature
set but has scalability problems and doesn't have a company behind it providing
enterprise-level support; Ingres has a mature, proven, scalable transactional
database, and includes clustering, peer-to-peer replication, and distributed
query support."
In response to calls that the CA Trusted Open Source License
is not OSI-approved and the Ingres moves are half-hearted, Gaughan said the
elements not included in the available source were B1 security and the spatial
object library for the database, which CA does not own.
"The security component that was removed was B1 security,
which is a level of security used exclusively in situations of national security
and is only available on B1 secure operating systems such as Sun CMW," Gaughan
said. He added CA is working on a new 3-D, OpenGIS-compliant spatial object
solution the company plans to develop with its community.
PostgreSQL: Others are too little too late
PostgreSQL
core team member Josh Berkus said the open source moves by other companies are
both a marketing play and done for technical reasons.
"I think that recent events in databases have vindicated
the idea that open source will continue to spread through the software world,
annexing one sector at a time," Berkus said in an email. "It's not a question
of if software companies will need an open source strategy, but when."
While it might have been a competitive concern if Sybase
and CA were making Linux and open source moves three years ago, Berkus indicated
it is now the larger, older companies that are at risk from open source progress.
"My feeling is that both of these are good examples of
proprietary software companies worried about being left behind by open source,"
Berkus said.
Berkus said databases are a likely part of the software
stack to go open source because they are infrastructure software, making it
easier to attract developers. However, Berkus questioned whether Sybase or CA
could reap the same benefits as would a database that was born open source or
free.
"In the case of CA, I'm going to reserve judgment until
its license is approved by the Open Source Institute," Berkus said. "Right now,
it looks like more PR than substance; unlike IBM, CA has not made Ingres separate
from CA product management, which means that they're rather unlikely to attract
developers. Compare the failure of both Borland's Interbase and SAP's SAP-DB
as open source projects -- no offense to
Firebird DB,
which became a dynamic project after they forked it away from Borland. CA seems
to be repeating the same mistakes."
As for Sybase, Berkus said the likely reason the competitor
released the free version for Linux was a
Software Development Magazine
survey, which suggested PostgreSQL was pushing Sybase out of the market. Sybase
did not respond to that contention.
Berkus said regardless of what other vendors are doing,
the open source databases are catching up and in some instances surpassing the
proprietary competition.
"PostgreSQL and even MySQL have surpassed Sybase in several
areas, even if we lag behind in others," Berkus said. "PostgreSQL is particularly
a threat to Sybase because our very robust, fully ACID transaction support,
high availability, and support for custom statistical functions and complex
queries make PostgreSQL perfectly suitable for a variety of financial applications."
MySQL: Everyone wants to be a toy
For MySQL
CEO Marten Mickos, the free and open source database cavalcade from the old
veterans is welcome news, and a validation that open source databases are now
competing at the highest levels.
"We think it is good news for users, and we welcome these
products to the open source world, Ingres, and the Linux world, Sybase," Mickos
said. "We have predicted for some time that this would happen. It validates
the MySQL business model. Two years ago, people said MySQL was a toy. Now, apparently
everyone wants to be a toy!"
Mickos said the open source trend among databases
is because of a combination of things, and is also, "a typical reaction from
a large company that would like an older product to become more popular."
"Some years ago, Borland did the same thing with Interbase,
and later they withdrew from the open source world," Mickos said.
However, the MySQL chief did refer to the
MaxDB database,
formerly known as SAP DB, as an example of older, closed code that was successfully
nurtured with open source.
"MaxDB may be the only DBMS that started as closed source
and was later successfully open sourced," Mickos said. "SAP AG open sourced
it some years ago, and today, our company is the open source and commercial
channel for MaxDB. It is a very robust, enterprise-level database and it powers
an increasing number of SAP R/3 applications all over the world. It is also
being used more and more by cost-conscious enterprises, by government agencies,
and in developing economies. So here you have a great example that a DBMS with
a long history can indeed enjoy new growth."
Sybase: Sidestepping corporate approval
While it has not released its Adaptive Server Enterprise
(ASE) database as open source, Sybase has scored success with the
free Linux version of its database. Citing the same database stepping stone
theory as others, Sybase Senior Group Marketing Manager Amit Satoor said companies
are struggling with the switch from free and open source databases to enterprise-class
databases.
"Most of the customers just want low-cost access to software
so they can start projects that they can deploy on a scalable platform," Satoor
said.
Sybase sought to strengthen its Linux database recently
with the
announcement that its ASE database would run on IBM's eServer OpenPower
server, a prominent Linux deployment based on the Power 5 processor.
Sleepycat: Feeling pressure from open source
Berkeley
DB open source database maker Sleepycat Software's Vice President of Marketing
Rex Wang said moves by Sybase, CA, and IBM were the older players' reactions
to inroads from the open source newcomers.
"There's no doubt that these proprietary database vendors
are being pressured to do this by the success of open source vendors," Wang
said, referring to a Sybase statement that the free Linux ASE was intended to
compete directly with the open source databases, as well as DB2 and Oracle.
"The fact that large, incumbent, proprietary players have been motivated to
make these moves indicates that the momentum is real."
Wang said Sybase, for example, felt tremendous price pressure
and therefore made a restricted version of its product free to the most price-sensitive
segment of its market. "Their hope is to get people to try it for free, then
sell them the unrestricted version as they scale their use," he said.
But not so fast, Wang indicated, as Berkeley DB's developer
focus and relative maturity -- in the market for eight years -- mean it is already
appropriate for mission-critical use.
Open source getting good enough
Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner said the use
of a free Linux or open source database to introduce customers to a wider range
of products that scale up to enterprise is a legitimate strategy. However, Gardner
also said the databases that have been open source since the start may benefit
from an evolving, total open source solution.
"What will be interesting is if the full stack of open
source components becomes some kind of de facto standard," Gardner said. "In
a best-of-breed open source approach, what are the databases that are part of
that de facto standard?"
Gardner added that while he does not see open source databases
such as MySQL and PostgreSQL dethroning the dominant Oracle and DB2 databases,
the capabilities of the open source databases are quickly catching up and are
also sufficient for many higher-level users.
"MySQL and PostreSQL -- those are quite full-featured,"
Gardner said. "If they continue that trajectory, good enough is good enough
for many people."
FutureSQL is a Rapid Application Development
web database administration tool written in Perl. FutureSQL allows one to easily
setup config files to view, edit, delete and otherwise process records from
a MySQL database. It uses a data dictionary, configuration files and html templates,
and allows "pre-processing" and "post-processing" on both fields, records and
operations. It allows multiple views and operations on a data set, including
the use of joined tables for queries and reports.
A demo application with most of the features
is included.
By Robert Westervelt, News Writer
12 Aug 2004 | SearchDatabase.com |
Oracle, Microsoft and IBM will respond to a flood
of interest in open source databases by slashing prices and ramping up automation
features, according to "DBMS: Foundation of application Infrastructure," a market
report issued by Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.
Proprietary database management system (DBMS)
vendors are beginning to feel the pinch from MySQL, Computer Associates International
Inc.'s Ingres and other open source DBMS vendors that are attracting new customers
with a low cost, no-frills systems.
"Right now we're seeing the impact of open source
databases in the entry-level database arena," said Noel Yuhanna, a senior analyst
at Forrester. "As open source vendors add new features and functionality, the
adoption rate [of open source databases] will increase."
While more than 80% of enterprises continue to
focus on the top-tier DBMS products -- such as Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2
and Oracle -- for mission-critical database applications, open source products
are accounting for more low-end, small scale deployments, according to the Forrester
report.
Most of the open source DBMS deployments are
for non-mission-critical applications, but Forrester predicts that more than
20% of overall deployments will be mission-critical by 2006.
Forrester surveyed DBAs, chief information officers
and other IT personnel at 85 North American firms that use or plan to use open
source software. Of those, 52% said that they use or plan to use MySQL DBMS.
Those surveyed said they were lured by low cost of support and maintenance,
low acquisition costs and easier integration with customized software.
"Open source is clearly making a dent in database
low-end deployments today," Yuhanna said. "I expect larger scale deployments
in the near future."
For now companies are downloading the free open
source versions, initially to test out the functionality in their specific environment,
Yuhanna said. Once enterprises get through the initial stages of their testing
models, most will make the switch to the fully supported version.
"Enterprises that are serious about open source
will purchase the supported version," Yuhanna said.
MySQL is the leader in open source systems, but
CA announced plans in May to open up the source code to its Ingres DBMS. In
addition, CA said last week it would offer $1 million to encourage development
of an open source database migration toolkit.
"We're seeing very good comments about Ingres
in terms of performance, scalability and feature sets," Yuhanna said. "It's
definitely going to be an important open source database and will compete on
the deployment adoption rate with MySQL."
Meanwhile, IBM is also jumping on board, announcing
recently that it would contribute its Cloudscape Java database, which it acquired
from Informix, to the Apache Software Foundation. The project is called "Derby,"
and amounts to more than 500,000 lines of Java code.
While open source databases begin to take more
market share, Forrester said it is seeing increased interest in mobile and XML
databases. A Sybase subsidiary, iAnywhere Solutions Inc. dominates the mobile
space with more than 65% of the market.
XML-enabled databases supported by Oracle, IBM,
and Microsoft also continue to grow, according to Forrester. The current market
size is about $250 million and is likely to grow to $400 million by 2007, Forrester
said.
By: Michael Dortch, Robert Frances
Group
The
LinuxWorld Conference
and Expo in San Francisco last week featured many interesting announcements.
However, the show was at least as noteworthy for its implications as for its
actual news announcements.
IBM Corp.'s announced transformation
of its Cloudscape database solution into an Open Source offering follows closely
the announcement of a similar transformation for
Computer Associates International,
Inc. (CA)'s Ingres database solution. Between Cloudscape and Ingres, Open
Source developers now have multiple new and powerful options for building more
"enterprise-class" solutions.
CA also announced actual availability of Ingres r3 as an Open Source offering.
The company also announced a million-dollar challenge/inducement to developers
who build tools that help users migrate to Ingres from other proprietary and
Open Source database solutions.
Other software vendors announced, discussed, and/or failed to deny or dispute
rumored plans to transform other proprietary solutions into Open Source offerings.
Clearly, the typing is on the display for many of these vendors. They understand
that they need to deliver Open Source complements and alternatives to their
proprietary solutions, or complements and alternatives priced like Open Source
offerings, to remain competitive. No IT executive desirous of continued employment
is going to be able to justify paying proprietary-level prices for applications
without strongly compelling value propositions, when supporting operating environments
become increasingly cheap or free.
But no IT executive similarly incented is going to argue to "rip and replace"
all proprietary solutions with Open Source alternatives. The enterprise software
market, therefore, looks more and more like a striated, multi-tiered arena,
analogous in some ways to the current market for broadcast content.
Today, there is "free" broadcast content subsidized rather speculatively by
advertising, the effectiveness of which is impossible to track perfectly. There
is partly subsidized content, paid for by combinations of grants and subscriptions
paid for by only a portion of all consumers. Finally, there is completely subsidized
content, for which consumers pay via subscriptions or per use.
Soon, there are likely to be three similar tiers of the enterprise software
market. There will be free software, offered in the hopes that it will generate
follow-on demand for fee-based enhancements, services, and/or support. There
will be proprietary software, priced, sold, and supported much as it is today.
In addition, there will likely be a rapidly growing middle tier of enterprise
software solutions that are priced aggressively and built atop free and inexpensive
Open Source foundations, including but not limited to Linux.
This likely means expanded choices for developers and enterprises alike. However,
environments made up of various combinations of solutions from all three tiers
will definitely require comprehensive, integrated management. A key question
is, therefore, from what vendors will such management solutions come?
The ability of the leading traditional IT management vendors to answer this
question apparently varies widely. BMC Software, Inc., which won a Best of Show
award at LinuxWorld in 2003, announced no new solutions or reaffirmations of
its commitment to Linux support in San Francisco last week. This is in marked
contrast to CA, Hewlett-Packard
Co. (HP), and IBM. CA, in addition to the announcements discussed above,
has repeatedly stated publicly that it is encouraging eventual development of
an entire Open Source IT management suite. Regarding HP and IBM, there were
no specific HP OpenView or IBM Tivoli announcements at LinuxWorld. However,
both HP and IBM were prominent at the show, and very willing to discuss how
their respective management arms are committed to making Linux and Open Source
solutions safe bets for the enterprise.
Veritas Software Corp.
, a vendor known primarily for storage management, reminded LinuxWorld Expo
attendees that it had been shipping Linux solutions since 1999. The company
also reinforced its new position as a provider of solutions intended to enable
utility computing. Veritas also announced offerings intended to enable rapid
migration between Linux and other environments, and that it had joined the
Open Software Development Labs,
Inc.
Veritas is transforming and expanding its core mission by focusing specifically
on making enterprise IT architectures ready for Linux and Open Source solutions.
IT executives should expect to hear lots of other vendors tout similar strategies
- and be prepared to carefully separate promise from reality.
RFG believes IT management solution vendors must quickly and firmly declare
and demonstrate willingness and ability to help IT executives build and operate
infrastructures that embrace Linux and Open Source. Furthermore, IT executives
should work with their most trusted vendors to ensure that architectures at
those executives' enterprises become and remain sufficiently flexible and elastic
to support promising new Open Source solutions as they appear. Such architectures
will enable IT executives to incorporate such solutions as they demonstrate
the ability to lower costs and deliver other business benefits, without disrupting
operations or enterprise elasticity.
Meanwhile, IT executives should ensure that their leading incumbent management
vendors have strategies and offerings adequate to address growing enterprise
Linux and Open Source support requirements - or begin considering alternative
solutions and vendors.
=====
Michael Dortch is a principal business analyst and the IT infrastructure
management practice leader at Robert Frances Group (RFG). RFG provides business-centric,
timely advice, consulting, and research about the IT marketplace to Global 2000
IT executives, their teams, and their senior executive colleagues. More information
is available online at http://www.rfgonline.com
Open-source databases took a giant
step toward the mainstream last month when Hewlett-Packard began supporting
MySQL and certifying it to run on HP servers--the first major system vendor
to do so.
HP's move adds to the growing evidence that
open-source databases--primarily MySQL--are becoming a viable alternative
to commercial databases from IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. "It's no longer
the lunatic fringe," says Gartner analyst Kevin Strange, who has seen a
surge of interest in MySQL in the last six to eight months.
Like the open-source Linux operating system
and Apache Web server, open-source databases are freely available on the
Web, and developers can download the source code and modify it any way they
like. But companies also can pay vendors such as MySQL AB and PostgreSQL
Inc. for support and other services in the same way they can purchase Linux
software and support from Red Hat Inc.
Why the sudden interest in open-source databases?
Cost is the main reason. Companies are undertaking new IT projects as the
economy improves, but budgets remain tight and IT managers are increasingly
open to low-cost alternatives to high-priced database software. MySQL implementation
costs can be as little as 10% or 20% the cost of a commercial database,
says Mike Gaydos, the lead architect of MySQL solutions at IT services firm
EDS.
Business-technology executives now have a
higher comfort level with open-source software overall. As Linux, Apache,
and the JBoss open-source application server gain acceptance, IT execs who
just a year ago might have balked at the idea of using an open-source database
are taking a second look.
Open-source databases lack some of the sophisticated
capabilities offered by commercial databases, but they're widely perceived
as capable of handling routine and even critical computing tasks. AMR Research,
in a report predicting open-source databases will be widely adopted by 2006,
found that 43% of companies using open-source databases say they can handle
mission-critical jobs today, while 37% expect them to be ready for such
tasks within 24 months.
Increased use of MySQL and other open-source
databases, in fact, represents something of a revolt among IT buyers against
IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, which continue to fill their database products
with new features and technology that many business users aren't ready to
use. Oracle, for example, built grid-computing capabilities into
its 10g database, even though many customers are a long way from building
grid systems.
The government of Pottawattamie County, Iowa,
is swapping out its Windows server software for Linux. It uses MySQL for
several database applications and plans to convert others to MySQL from
Microsoft's SQL Server database. Aside from the cost advantage MySQL has
over SQL Server, county IT director Thomas Broniecki claims MySQL is more
secure than Microsoft's database.
Few companies, however, are ripping out their
Oracle, Microsoft, or IBM DB2 databases in favor of open-source databases.
Commercial databases are too entrenched within IT networks, and businesses
have too much invested in applications--either developed in-house or packaged
apps from PeopleSoft, SAP, and others--that run on those databases.
Open-source databases move in most often
for new, custom-built applications, particularly within small and midsize
companies, educational institutions, and government organizations.
"Pretty much every part of the business runs
on MySQL," says Corey Ostman, technology VP at PriceGrabber.com LLC, an
online comparison-shopping Web site. The database serves up content to the
Web site, which gets thousands of hits every second during peak times, and
tallies up the clickstream data used to calculate fees paid by retailers
to PriceGrabber.
PriceGrabber chose MySQL when the company
was started in 1999 because the database was easy to manage, Ostman says.
He had worked with Oracle's database and says it needed constant attention
and tuning. And while cost wasn't a major factor in the initial decision
to use MySQL, Ostman says it doesn't hurt that its maintenance and support
from MySQL AB costs "thousands of dollars per year rather than [the] hundreds
of thousands of dollars per year" a commercial database would cost.
MySQL finds its way into some big companies.
Sabre Holding Corp. has 45 Linux-based servers running MySQL databases to
give travel agencies fare and seat-availability information. But the heavy-duty
job of calculating prices and processing reservations remains on an HP NonStop
transactional database.
While the roster of open-source databases
includes PostgreSQL and Berkeley DB, the momentum is rolling in favor of
MySQL, which has more than 4 million installations.
Doug's Impromptu Survey A customizable online survey using Perl, Apache,
and MySQL.
Some new scripts:
-
DTGraph Builds graphs/stats/alarms based on temperature data stored in MySQL.
-
sync_db.pl A Perl script for syncing a MySQL database.
-
HandySQL A handy MySQL access module that is 20% faster than DBI.
-
mysqlwdb
Manages MySQL database tables via a Web interface.
-
CrudBoard
A fast mod_perl+MySQL web board with a clean interface
-
MySQL Backup
A Perl script to safely backup MySQL databases and tables.
-
DCVS A Perl/MySQL CVS server.
-
Solomon MySQL Web Interface
A Perl Web frontend to MySQL tables.
-
FutureForum Web Discussion Software Web based discussion forum written in
Perl and MySQL
-
MySQL Import Perl written script that imports data into MySQL with a Web
browser.
-
(Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.feratech.com/about/bios/ahochber/)