Hi Chris,You have to have critics, otherwise myths get propogated everywhere!!
It seems that whenever we both comment in a thread, you enlighten me
greatly!
;-) ... I'm learning more about MySQL with every post. Ok, maybe not every post, but still ... *g*
I tend to be a critic sometimes, but I'm a really nice guy. Believe me on
this one ;-)
Yes, but that would have required some actual thought on my part. :-)
The TCO paper on the MySQL site would be one of my primary points of1. MySQL is going to cost you a lot less, no matter which way you dothings.
This is a pretty bold statement. Can you back this argument with some references regarding TCO and development time for a particular project? Obviously, there's more than just licensing costs.
reference.
Ah, good. Mentioning this the first time in your statement would have
pointed people to the right document in the first place.
Not expensive doesn't do justice to the excellent value proposition that InnoDB Hot Backup is.
There are several points that would be hard to argue against though:
* MS SQL Server has 3 licencing models - per processor, per user or per
device. Either you can pay lots now and only pay a lot more if you
decide you need more CPUs or take a gamble / educated guest about how
many things you need to plug into it. Not having to worry about these
factors is nice and the argument that you are able to use the software
irrespective of upgrades, increased user numbers or more connecting
devices is also very supporting of the above statement.
* History has shown that applying patches to MS SQL Server is a process
ranging from quite pleasant to quite painful (remember the initial
Slammer patchset?). MySQL's upgrades are quite seamless by comparison,
and I dare say are trivial to rollback. Downtime is one of the most
often ignored factors in ROI and TCO studies.
* MySQL training and certification is available and my research shows
that MySQL AB are very reasonable with the charges associated with that
service.
* Assuming that my points below regarding performance are correct (I'm
sure that Heikki will stand by InnoDB and back up anyone preaching it's
performance benefits), the lower hardware costs are an important factor
(as in lower for a given performance target).
Note: when using InnoDB in 24x7 environments, you need to purchase an additional hot-backup tool to do your backups. Not expensive at all though.
The rate that KDE and GNOME are advancing at reminds me of the landscape a few years ago, when usability experts said that Windows and MacOS were starting to reach parity in terms of usability. Hopefully the open source world won't just settle for parity (they're way ahead in many ways in my opinion).* Clustering packages are available for MySQL currently, but I can't figure out where on earth to look for them. I can say that MySQL AB are going to be demonstrating their clustering solution at the upcoming expo - let's hope it's under the same licence as all these other nice toys that come out of MySQL AB.
Things are getting better, but I often make an argument for having aAs a personal note: at a company we started a few years ago, we actively select Linux as the server OS and Firebird as our primary database simply because of the licensing costs we couldn't afford then, but we did have the spare time for learning the more advanced Linux stuff (to our minds, that is) and the somewhat less catered for UI in Linux. Mind you: things are getting better in the Linux world :-)
higher entry barrier for technical people due to the large number of
Windows "experts" who don't even know who Dave Cutler is. Either way,
it's all good!
As someone who uses Windows all day long and likes to argue with Unix/Linux techies: I really like the "clickety-click" stuff. But I do agree with your remark about the so-called "experts".
Additionally, it is an accepted fact that MySQL is faster than the mighty, mighty PostgreSQL. It is an accepted fact that PostgreSQL developers don't lie. The PostgreSQL developers say that they are faster than most commercial databases in their normal fsync mode. Therefore, by communicativity of implication, MySQL is faster than most (if not all) commercial databases.Indeed! The fact that you need to marry the child of someone high up at2. MySQL is going to perform better for the vast majority of workloads.
The only place where MS SQL Server *might* have an advantage is in
situations where it's additional language features are able to do things
that you would need to do in your application should you use MySQL (and
comparisons in this area in the past by many people have still shown
MySQL to have a speed edge).
Despite comparisons: still a pretty bold statement. There are plenty of comparisons out there that don't say anything at all. Heck, the whole "we can do this many transactions per second if we use 64 CPUs, this many drives etc etc on a clustering system" is total hogwash, both you and me know that. It's just the sales people who are out of luck there ;-)
any of the big three before you can publish benchmarks of their products
*g*
Mimer seems to have a fair bit in common with MS SQL Server. For instance, one of their big features is Optimistic Conflict Control. They do claim "non-locking transaction control" though.
developmentwithout getting into a lot of trouble doesn't help matters at all! I'm hoping that the new benchmarks page at MySQL's site will be up soon though, saving me from thinking too hard on this point.
3. MySQL's "primary" (BDB fans, please don't flame me) transactionalMulti-versioning - in my eyes - is the future when it comes to databases
table type is the fastest transactional storage engine on the planet,
has an option for proper binary backups and has very quick and automatic
recovery, regardless of how ugly a crash is. MS SQL's "old-style"
non-multiversioned system can be problematic in this regard in some rare
cases.
with regard to concurrency (MS SQL has row locks!). Nice to read
that more and more database engines are using this MV instead of
locks. Obviously, InterBase was (one of?) the first about 20 yrs ago.
And yes, it certainly can help when stuff crashes. And it makes
easier as well. In short: good argument.
I think that your (one of) statement is not needed - InterBase seems to have been the first, with Oracle coming along later and thinking "This thing is so funky! Quick, we must build one!". At the moment though, I can only name the following 5 multiversioned engines:
MySQL/InnoDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Firebird, Interbase
Do you have any others to add?
ThinkSQL ( www.thinksql.co.uk ) and I believe MimerSQL as well
( www.mimer.com ) but I'm not sure. Then there are a lot of smaller
db engines that use the same technique. And of course the storage
engine inside www.netfrastructure.com - also created by the original
creator of InterBase. But it's more refined and faster - obviously, the
effect of modern hardware and less worries about memory etc...
In an amazingly dodgy manner? Given the amount of time they've been working on it, I'd say we're either going to see something entirely new (mutliversioning perhaps) or something "bolted on" to the old model that's just taking forever to implement and debug.
Yukon definitely won't be
I do believe Yukon get's a snapshot transaction isolation - any word on how they are going to implement this?
I can't put my hands on it at the moment, but I have seen something in the developer docs regarding the data structures used to represent locks.and I doubt IBM would dare do anything drastic to the DB2 code base. We know that Foxpro, Access and Filemaker Pro aren't.....
For all those interested, here's a list of commerical databases that still use page-level locks in some way, shape or form:
MS SQL Server, Gupta SQLBase (coming to Linux soonish), InterBase,
FireBird, Sybase
As far as I know, InterBase and Firebird don't use page-locking. Ever.
Any references on that?
And the "You will not do compatibility testing! Documents relating to this are available! Make do with those!!!" clause.
Admittedly, I haven't read through the licence, but the assurances youno comment.6. MySQL's commercial licence is quite nice for businesses as there are written assurances regarding the software's capabilities.
get on the licence document are a lot more comforting than the "If SQL
Server 2000 shaves your cat, it's not our problem. If SQL Server 2000
shaves your neighbour's cat due to you installing a device with terrible
drivers, you'll pay our court costs when we get sued."
Don't forget the "you can use this software whereever you like except in
true critical areas" clauses...
Which miserable sod would question your right to charge cash for your tools? Nothing is stopping them from creating a free alternative and your contribution to the free software world in other ways is quite notable. The fact that you even support the big open source databases is an excellent push for funky software that comes with source code!!
I should have really mentioned that MS SQL Server comes with a hot8. MS SQL's additional tools may be of interest to you (see MS's productno comment.
page, particularly their product comparison page for the number of nice
things included with SQL Server). The vast majority of this stuff exists
for MySQL as well though, you will have to get your hands on it
seperately though.
backup tool, an added extra for MySQL. That said, there are alternatives
to MS's tool that make backups a lot more managable and scriptable.
I bet one of the reasons why there are sooooo many MSSQL tools is
that "where there's MSSQL, there's money". No offence, but from what
I see sometimes in open source worlds (I had this with Firebird too) is that
I - as a tool vendor - get questions like "you create a tool for an open
source product and you're asking MONEY for it? tss tss"... Well, bread,
table and so on :-)
Along those lines, I have a friend that says to me "I wouldn't store my MP3 list in Oracle! Give me Sybase, MySQL or FoxPro any day!". After mentioning FoxPro, I laughed at him.
Nor can MS a lot of the time - it gets them into trouble. :-)9. The general opinion in industry is that MS SQL Server's replicationI cannot comment on the state of the MS SQL replication stuff.
capabilities are not ready for prime-time. MySQL's replication
capabilities are very solid.
I once heard about someone who was programming the Oracle engine
and his exact comments about the state of the code with regard to a
transaction rollback was: "hairy". Still, it works though :-)
>>10. With MySQL, it's easy to get support for it from the people whoAlso you could mention Novell and Sybase. I think Microsoft still have a major grudge against the network dudes from Utah.
actually wrote it. If there's a feature that you desperately need and
you're willing to pay for it (and paying for it equates to about the
same as buying a decent MS SQL Server setup), they may very well be able
to help you out!
Obviously true. Except for the license price of MS SQL - there's always the "how to get a discount" guide :-D
For anyone reading this message, allow me to sumarise the document that Martijn has pointed out above.
Have a 3 hour conversation with an MS Sales rep at your office and mention all of the following terms:
* Oracle
* DB2
* Linux
* Redhat
* NT 4 retirement
* MySQL
* J2EE
woohoo, darn, there goes the secret *g* ... It does work though. With
pretty much any company out there.
Triggers are slated for the 5.1 timeframe, along with FK constraints for all table types (including BDB?).
I could only name a few reasons for migrating away:11. If you change your mind later, migrating from MySQL to anotherHmm. In your eyes, why would someone do that? ;-)
database engine is a well-travelled path with utilities and full-blown
product offers all over the place.
* Management all get labotomies over the weekend and decide to migrate
to MS SQL Server. :-)
* You're a total cheapskate and refuse to pay for a commercial licence
and want to develop an app that links to libmysqlclient but will not be
under the GPL.
* You want to execute statements such as this: ALTER TABLE table ADD
INDEX sum ((col1 + col2 + col3));
* You want to be able to ROLLBACK DML statements
* You're bored on a Saturday night and want to prove to your friend that
Foxpro is a sick joke that nobody "got" when it was released.
I can think of a few others:
- stored procedures (not finished with MySQL) - triggers (not even on the roadmap with MySQL?) - check constraints (please, Heiki?!)
I'm a constraint-freak, if you like. I want my database to check the
data. In all sorts of possible ways...
Check constraints have beem discussed in various presentations (at the 2003 MySQL conference, they were mentioned specifically with regard to MySQL's compliance to SQL92 and SQL:1999).
The stored procedure support in MySQL looks like it will come along to a very complete fruition - with the ability to plug in modules that can execute PL/SQL and T-SQL. Once we get some form of T-SQL support (from some community project I would like to be a part of ), I will definitely work on writing a proxy program that allows you to use MySQL instead of MS SQL Server, just to annoy his Billness.
There is indeed, but at no point should that database engine ever be FoxPro.
Beer? I would rather deploy SCO UnixWare than drink beer! How about vodka?13. You'll have my eternal gratitude if you use MySQL over MS SQLSend beer instead... *g*
Server...I'll send you a postcard.
Naah, no vodka for me ;-)
Either way, one thing I should say, is that there is a database engine for
anyones
purpose, depending on your need. Sometimes, this can be MySQL, sometimes
it needs to be something else...
Take care.
With regards,
Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL
Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
Regards,
Chris
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