[General] Oracle buys Sun!

[Burhan Khalid]

Hey Majed:

  The free version of Oracle DB is called Oracle Database Express
Edition. You can think of it as equivalent to MSSQL Server Express
Edition, in that it is a limited version of the flagship product.
However, Oracle XE is free to distribute, which gives it some edge.

  As far as features go, it has a few limitations, mainly to prevent
people from using it as a replacement of the stupid-expensive Oracle
DB Server:

  • Supports up to 4GB of user data (in addition to Oracle system data)
  • Single instance only of Oracle Database XE on any server
  • May be installed on a multiple CPU server, but only executes on
one processor in any server
  • May be installed on a server with any amount of memory, but will
only use up to 1GB RAM of available memory

  Other than the above, there are no limitations on the feature set of
the product. Anything that you can do on 10g, you can do on XE
provided the deployment conditions above are met.  For 99% of
applications that are using MySQL, the above restrictions are not an
issue, in fact, I think that Oracle aimed XE squarely at web
developers because almost all the documentation revolves around PHP
and ASP.NET. The server supports all APIs PL/SQL, ODBC, C++ etc.

  Regarding the memory hog issue; this is true for the full-blown
enterprise versions of Oracle -- the same can be said for any
enterprise database server (MSSQL, DB2, etc.) They are designed for
scaling quickly, but I must admit that Oracle is a bit daunting to
install. In a previous life I used to support Oracle on Linux. A lot
of hair has been lost thanks to that.

  Lets not start digging the grave for MySQL just yet -- it will be at
least a year, maybe even two, before Oracle decides what to do with
MySQL (if anything). Their main reason for purchasing Sun would have
been the hardware side of the business. Tweaking Oracle to run on
Sun's servers -- especially now that Sun has some good offerings on
Intel would be the prime motivation. In the grand scheme of things,
MySQL is a very small drop in the bucket when compared to the other
considerable assets that Oracle has acquired from Sun.

  Postgres suffers a bit from the success of MySQL. MySQL has spoiled
a lot of developers into thinking that they "know" SQL just because
their convoluted JOINS work in MySQL-SQL. It also has a different
philosophy and learning curve; so the migration process will be a
challenge for all but the most seasoned developers. I'm surprised no
one mentioned giants like Facebook, BT, etc. which are using MySQL in
very large production scenarios -- what will Oracle approach them
with?

  We certainly live in interesting times =)

Regards,
--
Burhan

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Majed B. <majedb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Burhan!
>
> I didn't know there was a free version of Oracle DB. Are its features
> as "rich" as MySQL's? Because if they're not, there's no point in
> using Oracle's.
>
> Also from what I've seen from Oracle DBs, is that they're memory hogs
> and don't play well with low memory setups (think tiny development
> box, Virtual Private Servers or virtualized systems [Linode]).
>
> I agree with you on the demand issue of postgres; but the problem goes
> further than just user demand, because now web applications are being
> built for MySQL by default (wordpress) and you'd have to wait for a
> long time to get a decent port to another DB.
>
> So, maybe now that Oracle owns MySQL, web hosts will start offering
> Postgres. And maybe not.
> --
>       Majed B.
>
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