CONTENTS

Introduction

Eighth Layer News

Not in The Fine(?) Manual

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Introduction

A short issue about open source databases.

Happy New Year,

Simon

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Eighth Layer News

Been busy doing security audits, and HP-UX and Oracle upgrades.

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Not in the Fine(?) Manual

The shortness of this issue is due to spending too much time on upgrading a system to Oracle 8.1.6. The minimal installation of Oracle once linked and ready for use takes an entire gigabyte of disk space - that is before we store any user data.

Okay - pricewise 1 Gb of hard disk is cheap compared to the cost of Oracle for a 50 user application - but my 1Gb installation lacked a feature that the smaller Oracle 7.3 had. Gone was the dumb terminal install - the new Java installer means you have to have a GUI (This will change in 8.2) to install Oracle. More was less.

The time when relational database technology becomes an accepted part of the IT infrastructure rather than an expensive and complex application should have arrived long ago. Its arrival was delayed by vendor lock-in caused by extensions to, and non-compliance with, SQL standards. Lack of standard interfaces was partly addressed by ODBC - but ODBC is at best a sticking plaster for a gaping wound.

It looks as if the way this wound will be healed is by widely used and widely supported open source databases that will allow vendors to bundle their database solution with their application, or be driven to support widely used free databases.

Historically two open source databases have led the field - MySQL and PostGreSQL.

MySQL has by far the largest installed base of any free database solution. It has grown with the Internet to form the back end to many web sites. However its slightly unusual approach to data integrity (it hasn't supported the traditional commit/rollback of transactions familiar to Oracle programmers) has made many experienced database

people wary of adopting it.

PostGreSQL on the other hand has long supplied the familiar integrity features but is percieved as difficult to use and lacking key features and interfaces.

The last year has seen some changes in these offerings.

MySQL now has integral support for the Berkeley database engine - BDB - providing the familiar commit and rollback support for those tables that require it, whilst still being able to provide the performance for data analysis activities onthose tables that don't need transactional integrity.

PostGreSQL version 7 has brought new features, and better support from other applications has made this a better contender.

Acceptance of these products in the commercial world has been slow. Commercial support of these products is now available, and third party vendors (for example VistaSource) are beginning to bundle the relevant drivers to ease the system integrators' work with these databases.

SAP - once described as the German Microsoft - also share my view that the relational database should be part of the infrastructure. SAP also own a database that has over 800 implementations and a development team to back it up - the SAP name is also known to those people with the cheque books at large companies with large IT budgets.

SAP has made the SAP database source code open. Of course a support agreement is required if you want to run one of SAP's applications on top of this database. Now I'd love to be able to tell you which databases will grow and thrive, and which will whither. To be honest I think all the databases mentioned here will be around for a while - SAP DB is the hardest to gauge and I can't see a rapid take up outside of SAP integrators who already have experience and support, but I could be wrong.

I can tell you that open source, free databases, are now available in several flavours. Software vendors who move quickly and take advantage of these offerings, will be able to undercut the prices of their competitors.

We live in interesting times.

References

http://www.mysql.com/

http://postgresql.rmplc.co.uk/

http://www.sapdb.org/

Comparison on MySQL and PostGreSQL (With discussion).

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20001112.php3

Article discussing recent commercial activity relating to open source

databases

http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=384080

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