Обсуждение: Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

Поиск
Список
Период
Сортировка

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
"Greg Sabino Mullane"
Дата:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


> I don't think that PostgreSQL is really on Oracle's radar at the moment.

Please don't make this assumption. PostgreSQL is *very* much on their radar,
and probably represents the biggest long-term threat to their core database
business at the moment. We got a hint of that during the .org bidding, but
for now it is in Oracle's interest not to call attention to PostgreSQL.
The last thing they want is publicity for the project. We may be a harder
target to hurt than MySQL, but we are a target, make no mistake about it.
I'm sure PostgreSQL is on the radar of Sybase, Microsoft, and IBM as well.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200510170838
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iD8DBQFDU5wKvJuQZxSWSsgRAryKAKCkK1+4raUv0MOr/TaFOJoV6Vm9sACfXHDC
fRH5+YBEVRQzih/yQYr6Su4=
=AX08
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Christopher Kings-Lynne
Дата:
> Please don't make this assumption. PostgreSQL is *very* much on their radar,
> and probably represents the biggest long-term threat to their core database
> business at the moment. We got a hint of that during the .org bidding, but
> for now it is in Oracle's interest not to call attention to PostgreSQL.
> The last thing they want is publicity for the project. We may be a harder
> target to hurt than MySQL, but we are a target, make no mistake about it.
> I'm sure PostgreSQL is on the radar of Sybase, Microsoft, and IBM as well.

And they probably read every word we write ;)

Chris

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Simon Riggs
Дата:
On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 22:46 +0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

> And they probably read every word we write ;)

...and it will certainly slow them down :-)


Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Chris Travers
Дата:
Scott Marlowe wrote:

>I'd bet they read plenty, but don't necessarily understand a lot,
>judging by their pitiful fud campaign when Afilias proposed using
>postgresql as a database behind .org.  They tried to say PostgreSQL
>didn't support transactions.  So, while we may be on their screens, and
>I'm sure some marketeer there tries to keep up with some of the traffic
>here, the actual comprehension seems pretty low judging by their past
>statements.
>
>Actually, I kinda hope it stays that way.
>
>
Ok.  I should have said "serious target."  MySQL has been a serious
target for a number of years.  I think we are still the unknown bugaboo
to them.

I.e. I see no evidence that Oracle is taking the PostgreSQL threat
seriously, and the FUD campaign is more evidence that they don't (there
are plenty of areas where Oracle has an edge over PostgreSQL-- the idea
that "PostgreSQL doesn't support transactions" can only indicate that
this was a cursory and hasty attack and maybe even a wakeup call for
them, or maybe they got us mixed up with MySQL w/MyISAM).  The real
question is whether after the .org campaign occurred, we are now a
higher-profile target that is taken more seriously.  Personally, I would
doubt it for reasons mentioned below.

The thing is, we may be a head-to-head competitor with Oracle in many
areas, but we are pretty minor compared to Sybase, Microsoft, and IBM at
the moment.   I.e. while we are an emerging threat, Oracle has plenty of
clear and present threats to its  market share to deal with.  Therefore,
I am willing to bet that we are probably a distant target, somewhere
after Ingress II and maybe even Firebird/Interbase.  This is based on
the assumption that in any significantly large corporation, there will
be a lot of legacy competitive effort and that the rampup time to look
at new threats is really pretty large.  I.e. at Microsoft when I left
(2003), Java and Sun were still higher competitive priorities than Linux
(and still very much in a middle-phase).  From what I have read after
leaving, I think that Microsoft's strategy is still in an opening phase
mostly consisting of GetTheFUD and internal product research.

MySQL is different.  They established a large user base early on, and
people have a tendency (wrongly) to think of them as The Open Source
RDBMS.  So I am willing to be that Oracle has been ramping up a
competitive strategy against them for at least five years (they showed a
clear competitive strategy against them as early as 2000).  The fact
that they are an easier target complicates matters for them, but I think
that this is more of a transition to an end-game strategy by Oracle than
anything else.

I will be worried if and when Oracle demonstrates any intelligent
competitive strategy against us.  A poorly orchestrated and hasty FUD
campaign does not qualify.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Scott Marlowe
Дата:
On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 09:46, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> > Please don't make this assumption. PostgreSQL is *very* much on their radar,
> > and probably represents the biggest long-term threat to their core database
> > business at the moment. We got a hint of that during the .org bidding, but
> > for now it is in Oracle's interest not to call attention to PostgreSQL.
> > The last thing they want is publicity for the project. We may be a harder
> > target to hurt than MySQL, but we are a target, make no mistake about it.
> > I'm sure PostgreSQL is on the radar of Sybase, Microsoft, and IBM as well.
>
> And they probably read every word we write ;)

I'd bet they read plenty, but don't necessarily understand a lot,
judging by their pitiful fud campaign when Afilias proposed using
postgresql as a database behind .org.  They tried to say PostgreSQL
didn't support transactions.  So, while we may be on their screens, and
I'm sure some marketeer there tries to keep up with some of the traffic
here, the actual comprehension seems pretty low judging by their past
statements.

Actually, I kinda hope it stays that way.

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Robert Treat
Дата:
On Monday 17 October 2005 13:01, Scott Marlowe wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 09:46, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> > > Please don't make this assumption. PostgreSQL is *very* much on their
> > > radar, and probably represents the biggest long-term threat to their
> > > core database business at the moment. We got a hint of that during the
> > > .org bidding, but for now it is in Oracle's interest not to call
> > > attention to PostgreSQL. The last thing they want is publicity for the
> > > project. We may be a harder target to hurt than MySQL, but we are a
> > > target, make no mistake about it. I'm sure PostgreSQL is on the radar
> > > of Sybase, Microsoft, and IBM as well.
> >
> > And they probably read every word we write ;)
>
> I'd bet they read plenty, but don't necessarily understand a lot,
> judging by their pitiful fud campaign when Afilias proposed using
> postgresql as a database behind .org.  They tried to say PostgreSQL
> didn't support transactions.  So, while we may be on their screens, and
> I'm sure some marketeer there tries to keep up with some of the traffic
> here, the actual comprehension seems pretty low judging by their past
> statements.
>
> Actually, I kinda hope it stays that way.
>

Don't bet on it.  If Afilias is 4 years smarter about postgresql, you can bet
Oracle is too. In fact my guess is that they started reading up as soon
as .org was awarded to a pg based company.   I think before that they
probably figured that my$ql, being more popular, was roughly equal if not
better than postgresql, and often confused the two.  If there smart enough to
be buying innobase these days, you can bet that by now they have this stuff
all straightened out.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Tom Lane
Дата:
Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> If there smart enough to
> be buying innobase these days, you can bet that by now they have this stuff
> all straightened out.

No, that doesn't seem to follow ... if Oracle are spending their
resources to attack MySQL rather than us, the conclusion would be that
they are clearly still more informed by "the buzz" than technical merit.

What seems likely to me is that the Innobase purchase was a target
of opportunity --- they saw a chance to destroy a potential threat,
and took it.  This proves nothing about their assessment of the
relative risks from us and MySQL ... only that they haven't yet
thought of an equally painless way to destroy us.

            regards, tom lane

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Christopher Kings-Lynne
Дата:
>>If there smart enough to
>>be buying innobase these days, you can bet that by now they have this stuff
>>all straightened out.
>
>
> No, that doesn't seem to follow ... if Oracle are spending their
> resources to attack MySQL rather than us, the conclusion would be that
> they are clearly still more informed by "the buzz" than technical merit.

With no disrespect to PostgreSQL, MySQL has 100x our downloads and
installations...

Oracle is simply going after by far the biggest open source database
player...

Chris


Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Robert Treat
Дата:
On Tuesday 18 October 2005 23:44, Chris Travers wrote:
> Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> > With no disrespect to PostgreSQL, MySQL has 100x our downloads and
> > installations...
> >
> > Oracle is simply going after by far the biggest open source database
> > player...
>
> As I said,  Oracle demonstrated in 2000 that they had already singled
> MySQL out for special competitive treatement.  They did this by starting
> to offer db conversion utilities in order to help people migrate from
> MySQL to Oracle.  It is not about technical merit, it is about market
> share.  We could have the best RDBMS in the world but if we never get

wadda ya mean "could"?"  :-)

> enough users to directly threaten them to the level that MS SQL Server
> or DB2 does, we are not the threat that they are, and we are not worth
> the time and expense that research, competitive strategizing, etc. would
> incur.  Therefore, I suspect that we are sort of on the back burner
> competitive strategy wise.  I.e. competition is on a project-by-project
> basis, and not coordinated as of yet.
>
> There are some things on the horizon that could change this quite
> quickly, however:
>
> 1)  Sun is talking about packaging PostgreSQL and distributing it with
> Solaris.  This would bring us directly head to head with Oracle in a
> large number of potential installations.
>
> 2)  EnterpriseDB's efforts and awards may have attracted some
> attention.  This may reinforce the idea that we are a threat.
>
> If this is the case, I bet that Oracle is probably pressuring Sun not to
> distribute PostgreSQL, and if they do anyway, we need to be concerned
> about the beginning of a high-level coordinated strategy targetting us
> specifically.  IMO, it is likely to start with one of two things:
>
> 1)  PostgreSQL to Oracle database conversion utilities released by
> Oracle (unlikely given extensible languages in PostgreSQL).

they need to "reverse" engineer enterprisedb :-)

> 2)  Some sort of FUD campaign on the part of Oracle directed
> specifically at us and not tied to any specific project (fairly likely).
>

look for pointers to lack of benchmarks, patent issues, and great bridge...
those seem to be the most common rehash of fud.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Tom Lane
Дата:
Chris Travers <chris@verkiel.metatrontech.com> writes:
> IMO, it is likely to start with one of two things:

> 1)  PostgreSQL to Oracle database conversion utilities released by
> Oracle (unlikely given extensible languages in PostgreSQL).
> 2)  Some sort of FUD campaign on the part of Oracle directed
> specifically at us and not tied to any specific project (fairly likely).

Well, #1 would require quite a nontrivial investment of time by Oracle
(I doubt they'd even think about offering ports of any PL other than
plpgsql, and still it'd be a major project).  #2 only requires inventing
some plausible lies.  So you can bet we'll see #2 long before #1.

As Andrew noted, we've already heard plenty of FUD from Oracle.  What
we've not seen is a FUD campaign based on serious study of our
weaknesses --- they've only bothered to muster transparent attacks on
"open source DBs" in general.  My prediction is that the next step will
be FUD that's really designed specifically against Postgres.

            regards, tom lane

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Christopher Kings-Lynne
Дата:
> 1)  PostgreSQL to Oracle database conversion utilities released by
> Oracle (unlikely given extensible languages in PostgreSQL).

Strangely a pgsql to oracle exporter is a good thing.  It'd be a great
feature of PostgreSQL.  Imagine how many people would start on
PostgreSQL if they KNEW that one day they could easily move to Oracle if
they needed to.  Risk management.

Chris


Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Christopher Kings-Lynne
Дата:
> As Andrew noted, we've already heard plenty of FUD from Oracle.  What
> we've not seen is a FUD campaign based on serious study of our
> weaknesses --- they've only bothered to muster transparent attacks on
> "open source DBs" in general.  My prediction is that the next step will
> be FUD that's really designed specifically against Postgres.

I admit I must have missed all this '.org FUD' - is it still around.  I
really don't know what you guys are referring to.

Chris


Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Tom Lane
Дата:
Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
> Strangely a pgsql to oracle exporter is a good thing.  It'd be a great
> feature of PostgreSQL.  Imagine how many people would start on
> PostgreSQL if they KNEW that one day they could easily move to Oracle if
> they needed to.  Risk management.

Problem is: to offer such a thing with a straight face, we'd have to
confine ourselves to an Oracle-subset version of SQL.  For instance,
lose the ability to distinguish empty-string from NULL.

            regards, tom lane

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Chris Travers
Дата:
Tom Lane wrote:

>Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
>
>
>>Strangely a pgsql to oracle exporter is a good thing.  It'd be a great
>>feature of PostgreSQL.  Imagine how many people would start on
>>PostgreSQL if they KNEW that one day they could easily move to Oracle if
>>they needed to.  Risk management.
>>
>>
>
>Problem is: to offer such a thing with a straight face, we'd have to
>confine ourselves to an Oracle-subset version of SQL.  For instance,
>lose the ability to distinguish empty-string from NULL.
>
>
Funny how many Oracle DBA's don't seem to be aware of this "feature" ....

Funny how many of those that are seem to think that this is perfectly OK
:-(  On the other hand, it is one weakness of Oracle that has not gotten
a major airing in public...  It might be worth saving for when the FUD
starts to fly :-)

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron technology Consulting

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Christopher Kings-Lynne
Дата:
> Problem is: to offer such a thing with a straight face, we'd have to
> confine ourselves to an Oracle-subset version of SQL.  For instance,
> lose the ability to distinguish empty-string from NULL.

I wasn't saying we write it - let Oracle do it :D

Chris


Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Martin Marques
Дата:
On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

>>> If there smart enough to be buying innobase these days, you can bet that
>>> by now they have this stuff all straightened out.
>>
>>
>> No, that doesn't seem to follow ... if Oracle are spending their
>> resources to attack MySQL rather than us, the conclusion would be that
>> they are clearly still more informed by "the buzz" than technical merit.
>
> With no disrespect to PostgreSQL, MySQL has 100x our downloads and
> installations...

Yeah, kids playing with toys. You can't imagine how many people I heard
have MySQL installed in there win98.

The bad thing is they addopt MySQL because they could have it installed
there. :-(

--
  11:55:01 up 155 days,  1:49,  3 users,  load average: 0.12, 0.72, 0.86
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Lic. Martín Marqués   | select 'mmarques' || '@' || 'unl.edu.ar'
Centro de Telematica  |  DBA, Programador, Administrador
              Universidad Nacional
                   del Litoral
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Oliver Elphick
Дата:
On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 12:51 +0200, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> Just for the hell of it I looked at the popcon stats for debian
> installs (see below). It tells me the following:
>
> - Something like half the people who install mysql-server (any version)
> never use it. People who install PostgreSQL are (slightly) more likely
> to actually use it.
>
> - For mysql, users of the client are approximatly twice the amount that
> use the server. For postgres, the client and server count is about the
> same. This one is curious, don't know what to make of it.

When you install Debian from scratch, the tasksel list offers you the
chance to install database packages.  If you select that, it installs
postgresql server rather than mysql, which may help the statistics in
Debian.  The postgresql server package depends on postgresql-client.  I
think that the only people to install postgresql-client without the
server would be those with multiple machines communicating with a server
and a number of those might install the server by mistake.  The ratio of
nearly 6 to 4 seems quite reasonable.
--
Oliver Elphick                                          olly@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/A54310EA  92C8 39E7 280E 3631 3F0E  1EC0 5664 7A2F A543 10EA
                 ========================================
   Do you want to know God?   http://www.lfix.co.uk/knowing_god.html


Where to concentrate (was: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase)

От
Andrew Sullivan
Дата:
I think this probably belongs back on -advocacy, so I'm cc:ing there
so we can move it.

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 03:16:23PM -0700, Chris Travers wrote:
> Interesting.  So they are willing to appear ill-informed in public but
> better informed in private?  To what end?  That seems strange to me....

To the end of dismissing the serious-but-free competition in public.
If Oracle is talking to the computer press, they have enough
experience to know just how much they can play with stating the way
the world is, and have it quoted verbatim as revealed truth.  Apart
from database weenies like us, people reading the Oracle
pronouncement conflating PostgreSQL and other database systems will
just think it's true.  After all, Oracle said it, and the press guy
from InfoWorld must have checked it out, right?  If you think I'm
being unduly cynical, note that the Gartner comments in their
consulting for ICANN in the .org reassignment basically argued that
PostgreSQL was a significant risk because it wasn't Oracle.  There's
nothing _wrong_ with that way of thinking -- corporations are mostly
about stability, which means following conventional (==safe) wisdom.
But that mindset is something that Oracle is skilled at exploiting,
and I'm not surprised they do it against PostgreSQL (even if their
behaviour sounds irrational to someone who really knows the
capabilities of the various systems).

But that isn't really why I replied to this :)

> This is one reason why I would like to see some of us push PostgreSQL
> into a role of *the* RDBMS to study for RDBMS theory.  Unfortunately
> this means a lot of documentation written by experts interested in
> really teaching beginners the right way to do things....  I don't
> consider myself qualified to do this by myself.

I like this idea.  I wonder how to get it moving.

A
--
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
"The year's penultimate month" is not in truth a good way of saying
November.
        --H.W. Fowler

Re: Where to concentrate (was: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase)

От
Robert Bernier
Дата:
On Wednesday 19 October 2005 09:58, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> > This is one reason why I would like to see some of us push PostgreSQL
> > into a role of *the* RDBMS to study for RDBMS theory.  Unfortunately
> > this means a lot of documentation written by experts interested in
> > really teaching beginners the right way to do things....  I don't
> > consider myself qualified to do this by myself.
>
> I like this idea.  I wonder how to get it moving.

Support those companies that do training, hint hint ;-)

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Andrew Sullivan
Дата:
On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 01:11:10PM +0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> I admit I must have missed all this '.org FUD' - is it still around.  I
> really don't know what you guys are referring to.

I mentioned this in another message, but all the redelegation stuff
is available from ICANN's site.  The Oracle comments were in this
thread:

http://forum.icann.org/org-eval/gartner-report/

A

--
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
This work was visionary and imaginative, and goes to show that visionary
and imaginative work need not end up well.
        --Dennis Ritchie

Oracle and PostgreSQL...

От
Chris Travers
Дата:
Andrew Sullivan wrote:

>I think this probably belongs back on -advocacy, so I'm cc:ing there
>so we can move it.
>
>On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 03:16:23PM -0700, Chris Travers wrote:
>
>
>>Interesting.  So they are willing to appear ill-informed in public but
>>better informed in private?  To what end?  That seems strange to me....
>>
>>
>
>To the end of dismissing the serious-but-free competition in public.
>If Oracle is talking to the computer press, they have enough
>experience to know just how much they can play with stating the way
>the world is, and have it quoted verbatim as revealed truth.  Apart
>from database weenies like us, people reading the Oracle
>pronouncement conflating PostgreSQL and other database systems will
>just think it's true.
>
You mean like that RDBMS comparison on Dev-X by the marketing head of
Daffodil?  Somehow I don't think that this is limited to Oracle...

>  After all, Oracle said it, and the press guy
>from InfoWorld must have checked it out, right?  If you think I'm
>being unduly cynical, note that the Gartner comments in their
>consulting for ICANN in the .org reassignment basically argued that
>PostgreSQL was a significant risk because it wasn't Oracle.  There's
>
>
>nothing _wrong_ with that way of thinking -- corporations are mostly
>about stability, which means following conventional (==safe) wisdom.
>
>
Sure.  But in this case, Gartner came across as poorly informed.  I
think that this sort of strategy can only go on so long before people
assume that Gartner is largely acting as paid shills, and Gartner looses
a bunch of buisness.  You have to understand how this process likely
works.  ICANN hires Gartner.  Gartner asks Oracle what they think.
Oracle directs the question to their PR agents, who then ask if anyone
has any information.  The PR agents who don't understand the technology
are then in charge of repackaging the data up to suit Oracle's agenda.
They probably then do some analysis on this data, maybe ask a few of
Oracle's customers what they think, and call it a day.  I think that
this happens because the industry is far to vast for anyone to really
know all of it well, especially as an industry analyst.  So these firms
get their data from the big, entrenched companies.  However, I think
that these firms will suffer huge reputation issues as the industry changes.

>But that mindset is something that Oracle is skilled at exploiting,
>and I'm not surprised they do it against PostgreSQL (even if their
>behaviour sounds irrational to someone who really knows the
>capabilities of the various systems).
>
>
I am sure that they do.  But they will do the same against any other
RDBMS.  In other words, if Oracle has formed an internal team to focus
on "how to beat PostgreSQL" I don't think they have done it very long ago.

>But that isn't really why I replied to this :)
>
>
>
>>This is one reason why I would like to see some of us push PostgreSQL
>>into a role of *the* RDBMS to study for RDBMS theory.  Unfortunately
>>this means a lot of documentation written by experts interested in
>>really teaching beginners the right way to do things....  I don't
>>consider myself qualified to do this by myself.
>>
>>
>
>I like this idea.  I wonder how to get it moving.
>
>A
>
>


Re: Oracle and PostgreSQL...

От
"Joshua D. Drake"
Дата:
>>
>> To the end of dismissing the serious-but-free competition in public.
>> If Oracle is talking to the computer press, they have enough
>> experience to know just how much they can play with stating the way
>> the world is, and have it quoted verbatim as revealed truth.  Apart
>> from database weenies like us, people reading the Oracle
>> pronouncement conflating PostgreSQL and other database systems will
>> just think it's true.
>>
> You mean like that RDBMS comparison on Dev-X by the marketing head of
> Daffodil?  Somehow I don't think that this is limited to Oracle...


FYI, I have been tasked by Devx to rewrite that comparison.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

--
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc. 1.503.667.4564
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: plPHP, plPerlNG - http://www.commandprompt.com/


Re: Oracle and PostgreSQL...

От
Andrew Sullivan
Дата:
On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 02:25:58PM -0700, Chris Travers wrote:

> Oracle's customers what they think, and call it a day.  I think that
> this happens because the industry is far to vast for anyone to really
> know all of it well, especially as an industry analyst.  So these firms
> get their data from the big, entrenched companies.  However, I think
> that these firms will suffer huge reputation issues as the industry changes.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about this; but I don't
think for a second that markets are actually efficient at driving out
nonsense and cant.  If they were, the current stock markets wouldn't
work, and InfoWorld would have gone out of publication ages ago.  The
computer industry has been like this practically forever: in the
past, there was a safe choice (IBM), a moderately safe choice (the 7
Dwarves), and something that would get you fired if it didn't work.

And consulting companies exist exactly to parrot whatever the current
conventional wisdom is.  Gartner only came across as ill-informed in
that report (or any other I've ever read by them) when I actually
knew something about the technolgies in question.  Do I trust
anything that Gartner says?  No.  But I'm not their market, and never
will be.  Their market is conventional-grade MBAs who have never
studied anything except commerce.  Those people want affirmation of
their prejudices; not truth.  Their prejudices will change over time,
but only if we are successful in moving PostgreSQL from the "get you
fired if it doesn't work" into the "Seven Dwarves" category.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
I remember when computers were frustrating because they *did* exactly what
you told them to.  That actually seems sort of quaint now.
        --J.D. Baldwin

Re: Oracle and PostgreSQL...

От
Richard Huxton
Дата:
Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> And consulting companies exist exactly to parrot whatever the current
> conventional wisdom is.  Gartner only came across as ill-informed in
> that report (or any other I've ever read by them) when I actually
> knew something about the technolgies in question.

Gartner seem to have the same problems as the wider press do with any
technical field - they don't know what they're talking about. When it is
reporting on who said what when, both are fine. When it's discussing
figures, they seem broadly OK. Once you need to get technical they
generally flounder.

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Chris Travers
Дата:
Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

> With no disrespect to PostgreSQL, MySQL has 100x our downloads and
> installations...
>
> Oracle is simply going after by far the biggest open source database
> player...
>
As I said,  Oracle demonstrated in 2000 that they had already singled
MySQL out for special competitive treatement.  They did this by starting
to offer db conversion utilities in order to help people migrate from
MySQL to Oracle.  It is not about technical merit, it is about market
share.  We could have the best RDBMS in the world but if we never get
enough users to directly threaten them to the level that MS SQL Server
or DB2 does, we are not the threat that they are, and we are not worth
the time and expense that research, competitive strategizing, etc. would
incur.  Therefore, I suspect that we are sort of on the back burner
competitive strategy wise.  I.e. competition is on a project-by-project
basis, and not coordinated as of yet.

There are some things on the horizon that could change this quite
quickly, however:

1)  Sun is talking about packaging PostgreSQL and distributing it with
Solaris.  This would bring us directly head to head with Oracle in a
large number of potential installations.

2)  EnterpriseDB's efforts and awards may have attracted some
attention.  This may reinforce the idea that we are a threat.

If this is the case, I bet that Oracle is probably pressuring Sun not to
distribute PostgreSQL, and if they do anyway, we need to be concerned
about the beginning of a high-level coordinated strategy targetting us
specifically.  IMO, it is likely to start with one of two things:

1)  PostgreSQL to Oracle database conversion utilities released by
Oracle (unlikely given extensible languages in PostgreSQL).
2)  Some sort of FUD campaign on the part of Oracle directed
specifically at us and not tied to any specific project (fairly likely).

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting

Вложения

Two places to concentrate

От
Chris Travers
Дата:
Andrew Sullivan wrote:

>
>
>>This is one reason why I would like to see some of us push PostgreSQL
>>into a role of *the* RDBMS to study for RDBMS theory.  Unfortunately
>>this means a lot of documentation written by experts interested in
>>really teaching beginners the right way to do things....  I don't
>>consider myself qualified to do this by myself.
>>
>>
>
>I like this idea.  I wonder how to get it moving.
>
>
I think there are two aspects to this puzzle.  The first is to support
the companies that do training as Robert suggests.

But there is a second one too.  I think that we as a community would do
well to create documentation about RDBMS fundamentals using PostgreSQL
as the reference example.  Topics might include:

1)  Relational Theory
2)  Normalization
3)  Database Design (including Date's Central Rule)
4)  Performance considerations (implimentation and
non-implimentation-specific)

Any others?  Maybe SQL as a language?  However, part of what would be
required to make this work is that you would need to make the RDBMS as
standards-compliant as possible, and provide the option for standard
behavior even if people don't generally like one specific aspect of the
standard.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting

Вложения

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Martijn van Oosterhout
Дата:
On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 10:55:22AM +0800, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> With no disrespect to PostgreSQL, MySQL has 100x our downloads and
> installations...

Just for the hell of it I looked at the popcon stats for debian
installs (see below). It tells me the following:

- Something like half the people who install mysql-server (any version)
never use it. People who install PostgreSQL are (slightly) more likely
to actually use it.

- For mysql, users of the client are approximatly twice the amount that
use the server. For postgres, the client and server count is about the
same. This one is curious, don't know what to make of it.

- when it comes to client libs, a lot of people have them installed
(presumably linked to various apps) but they don't apparently connect
anywhere with them.

Now, this is not exactly a represenative sample and statistical errors
abound, and we're not counting Windows installations but 100x seems
like an exaggeration to me... :)

Have a nice day,

#<name> is the package name;
#<inst> is the number of people who installed this package;
#<vote> is the number of people who use this package regularly;
#<old> is the number of people who installed, but don't use this package
#      regularly;
#<recent> is the number of people who upgraded this package recently;
#<no-files> is the number of people whose entry didn't contain enough
#           information (atime and ctime were 0).
#rank name                            inst  vote   old recent no-files (maintainer)
183   libmysqlclient12                4483  3026   663   421   373 (Christian Hammers)
266   mysql-client                    2803  2188   216   172   227 (Christian Hammers)
453   libpq3                          3710  1266  1065   231  1148 (Martin Pitt)
478   mysql-server                    2342  1171   529   490   152 (Christian Hammers)
553   libmysqlclient14                2437   954   145   332  1006 (Christian Hammers)
583   mysql-client-4.1                1111   886    21   204     0 (Christian Hammers)
661   postgresql-client               1709   729   372    31   577 (Martin Pitt)
662   postgresql                      1286   728   132    14   412 (Martin Pitt)
883   mysql-server-4.1                 883   490    84   309     0 (Christian Hammers)
1202  postgresql-7.4                   468   308    37   123     0 (Martin Pitt)
1531  libmysqlclient10                3277   214   518    48  2497 (Steve Langasek)
2253  postgresql-client-8.0            185   110    16    59     0 (Martin Pitt)
2261  postgresql-8.0                   172   109    17    46     0 (Martin Pitt)
2332  mysql-client-5.0                 120   102     1    17     0 (Christian Hammers)
2757  mysql-server-5.0                 113    77     3    33     0 (Christian Hammers)

--
Martijn van Oosterhout   <kleptog@svana.org>   http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.

Вложения

Re: Oracle and PostgreSQL...

От
Chris Travers
Дата:
Richard Huxton wrote:

> Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>
>> And consulting companies exist exactly to parrot whatever the current
>> conventional wisdom is.  Gartner only came across as ill-informed in
>> that report (or any other I've ever read by them) when I actually
>> knew something about the technolgies in question.
>
>
> Gartner seem to have the same problems as the wider press do with any
> technical field - they don't know what they're talking about. When it
> is reporting on who said what when, both are fine. When it's
> discussing figures, they seem broadly OK. Once you need to get
> technical they generally flounder.

This is my point.  Gartner doesn't have a great reputation involving
product comparisons and areas like TCO, technological advantages, etc.
They come across much more like semi-techie journalists than quality
consultants.  When you compare their studies with those of, say, the
IDC, their methods seem opaque, and their conclusions difficult to
verify or even outright wrong.  Similarly CapGeminii comes across as
"the Windows experts" so why would one take their word on something like
Linux?

The problem I am mentioning is that consulting firms exist to provide
competent advice.  When they are proven wrong, it becomes a black eye.
Indeed, they could have made a better case against PostgreSQL by simply
saying "this is a less-known solution that we have not had prior
opportunity to study.  This may present risks in terms of finding
qualified administrators and support staff."  And if one is going to
parrot conventional wisdom, it makes sense to say so and say why.  Even
something like "Oracle is the default solution in this area and
PostgreSQL seems relatively untested.  We see that as a serious business
risk simply because it seems to be an unknown quantity" would be more
honest than what came out.

This is a general sickness which exists in many of the larger
consulting/analysis firms.  I assume that this is different than the
technical consulting firms such as Accenture, but I have little
experience in this area.  Though to be fair this is largely a problem
with hiring firms to do things that they are not able to do.  For
example, if I want a market forecast or an analysis of the current
market, it might make sense to hire the IDC, but hiring them to help me
make a decision between say, Linux and FreeBSD is likely to be very
uninformative.  Hiring Gartner to do this comparison seems to me sort of
like using NT4 to manage user accounts in a 20000 user business (this is
hardly uninformed:  I am an MCSE).

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting

Re: [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase

От
Terry Fielder
Дата:

Tom Lane wrote:
> Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
>
>>Strangely a pgsql to oracle exporter is a good thing.  It'd be a great
>>feature of PostgreSQL.  Imagine how many people would start on
>>PostgreSQL if they KNEW that one day they could easily move to Oracle if
>>they needed to.  Risk management.
>
>
> Problem is: to offer such a thing with a straight face, we'd have to
> confine ourselves to an Oracle-subset version of SQL.  For instance,
> lose the ability to distinguish empty-string from NULL.

Oh please PLEASE *PLEASE* don't bend that way.  Oracle has some SQL non
compliant flaws at least one is serious:  The inability to distinguish
between the absence of value and an explicitly empty string is just ONE
of Oracle's ridiculous fubarness.  People who know what a NULL really is
and use it properly have to program around Oracle's stupidity to "dumb
it down" for the weak application developer, let's not do that.

Terry

>
>             regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
>

--
Terry Fielder
terry@greatgulfhomes.com
Associate Director Software Development and Deployment
Great Gulf Homes / Ashton Woods Homes
Fax: (416) 441-9085