Hi,
In my "real life" job, I'm a web/database/whatever developer for a DoD
lab. We made the jump from Access to client/server architecture quite a few
years ago. We evaluated many choices and settled at the time on Sybase. Of
course, MySQL did not exist then (or may have, just not in a useable form
for us). We have a modest user community of about 1000 users, and host
roughly 20 to 30 GB of data (tiny by many peoples standards).
I can tell you that if we were moving from Access today we would not
only be considering the big commercial systems (MS SQL Server, Sybase,
Oracle and DB2) but also PostgreSQL and MySQL. You should objectively
evaluate each of these choices. I'm a big MySQL fan (see my site
below...10000+ databases :)) but I wouldn't say it's the right tool for
everyone.
What is your driving factor? In our case it was not cost. I know
$20k for a server license sounds like a lot (I believe thats roughly the
cost for MS SQL server and Sybase, Oracle is $40k IIRC) , but when a
man-year of labor is $150k and you have a team of programmers, the fact that
mysql is free really gets lost. Maybe saving $20k is a big deal for you
though.
We have a lot of legacy business logic (at least 1000 stored procedures
and triggers) in Sybase. If I proposed to my boss that I wanted to migrate
to MySQL and recode he'd laugh in my face. How complex is your overall
system? Is your development team really a couple of VBA weenies? Do you
think that they can rapidly pick up other tools? Can they meet a
reasonable time to market? I will bet that it is pretty easy to migrate an
access database to SQL Server and port the VBA forms to ASP pages.
Support? Thats usually the magic question and the reason that people
go commercial. I'm sure you can get excellent support from MySQL AB, but
I'm not sure you can get 1 hour response 24/365 support (Redhat now sells
that for PostgreSQL for about $40k/year, which is roughly industry standard
from what I've seen)
Interoperability? Some agencies must adopt the software standards of
the parent organization. Security? Up until very recently much of the
Navy was *forbidden* to use opensource software (the rule was seldom
enforced and generally ignored)
These are just off the top of my head, I hope this helps!
Regards,
Gary "SuperID" Huntress
=======================================================
FreeSQL.org offering free database hosting to developers
Visit http://www.freesql.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Kirk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 9:23 PM
Subject: Selling MySQL to Government
> Today, I started a temporary position at the US Export/Import Bank.
They're
> a government agency that provides loans and other financing servies to
small
> exporters and importers who can't get funds from their local banks.
>
> They put me to work cleaning up the database of their marketing division,
> which sends out direct mail, faxes, and e-mails, among other things.
Besides
> being poorly organized, etc., there's a serious flaw: they're using MS
> Access 2000 to manage over 350K records.
>
> While speaking with my boss, she mentioned that they were looking to go
away
> from Access, as it crashed regularly and had major trouble handling that
big
> of a load. They were particularly concerned, since the database is
projected
> to grow to 1 million records in the next year or two. I mentioned MySQL as
a
> possible solution, explained the concept of open-source software, and got
> her intrigued.
>
> I'm very much uncertain about how to take the next step, though. I'd like
to
> be able to present her with a good sales pitch for MySQL, but I don't
really
> know enough about it to make one up (I'm still very much a newbie to it,
> though I do like it so far). Since I'm sure this sort of thing has come up
> before, I'm wondering if you can point me to any good resources,
> particularly as they might relate to the US Gov't, banks, or direct
mailing
> agencies.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
>
> Alex Kirk
>
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