Open Source Databases "50% Cheaper"

pete314 writes, "Open source databases can cut the total cost of ownership of a database by up to 60% compared to the cost of running proprietary databases from Oracle, Microsoft or IBM. According to data collected by Forrester Research, the savings average about 50%. Open source databases however still struggle to reach mission-critical enterprise applications because enterprises perceive them to be less secure and stable."

enterprises also want

enterprises also want paralleling clusters and failover clusters. The open source databases are getting there, give it few more years.

Re:enterprises also want

The one place that the Open Source products have a long way to go is support. Companies don't think mysql and postgres are unreliable, they're just not backed enough. The company I work for could give a rat's hindquarters about TCO -- they just want to outsource their risk so that if something breaks, the CIO/CEO/Chairman has someone to argue with. The Chairman can play golf with Larry Ellison as he tries to get more concessions out of Oracle, but he can't play WOW with the 19 year old kid who added some bit of code to mysql.

And before you say it, MySQL AG is still small potatoes compared to Oracle, Microsoft, or IBM.

product support is over-rated

> People are far more dependable when they're working for money than for charity.

not when they suck - which they frequently do when working on product support teams.

yes, I'm glad that I'm working with supported products - but I also avoid calling them like the plague. It is very much a worst-case scenario.

Where are the test results?

Do you seriously think any CIO with a functioning brain cell is going to go with free unsupported software when they can't even find a single reference to such databases from any certified performance evaluation companies or organizations?

The downtime cost of one single failure in a five year period for a mission critical system can easily run 100 times the cost of a commercial product with support. Only bean counting fools risk their entire business without properly assessed risks and disaster recovery plans.

Not having someone to source the recovery of the smouldering crater that was your data center is a huge issue.

0% savings for me

For those of us who can't afford to run a commercial database package, and have been running open source databases from the beginning, this isn't news. MySQL and Postgres are your friends.

Re:0% savings for me

Open Source Databases are only free if you don't value your time.

Dude, have you actually used both Postgres and Oracle? There is not an entity on this earth less respectful of my time than Oracle (well, maybe ClearCase) - the thing is an absolute nightmare to administer. Sure, it needs the complexity because of its advanced scaling capabilities; but most of us are not amazon.com, and never will be.

On the other hand, the administrative overhead of running Postgres is damn near 0% (MySQL is a different story entirely of course).

Sure we are a small company, and only have under a TB of data in our databases, but there are a lot of companies in the same position who shell out ridiculous amounts of money for Oracle (only for the name-brand, nothing else), and then someone ends up stabbing themselves in the eye in frustration (might be a slight exaggeration). Or else pay for a full time DBA; I've worked for a company with 3 developers and 1 full time Oracle DBA - that's just nuts.

DUH!

Of course its that much cheaper... license fees alone are more than half of maintaining a reasonable Oracle installation... this is news? how?

SQL Server = Almost Free

I just don't get it. TCO and tool support are tightly linked. Most open source database products, including MySQL, seem to require quite a bit of digging and cobbling together to set up and maintain. Microsoft SQL Server has fantastic tool support, no command line experimentation required. An experienced DBA can set up a new installation in a couple of minutes. And there's even a free Express Edition available for entry-level dabbling. The cost of a database license is pretty minimal over the long haul (referring to SQL Server, not the abominable Oracle). The real cost is in the time spent compensating for whatever your database platform's tool support shortcomings are. I love Microsoft SQL Server for this reason: I rarely have to reinvent anything.

Re:SQL Server = Almost Free

I actually found sql server to be quite expensive - from licensing (which was running > $80k for a 4-way on enterprise edition) to labor.

The lack of command-line features meant that many operational activities that could be automated required a dba to manually do the job via the gui. And lets not even talk about how you had to completely recreate DTS packages when promoting them from dev to test to prod...

So, there are labor savings that you can get on sql server vs oracle, db2, postgresql, etc - but the lack of a command line interface wasn't a driver in my experience.

Re:SQL Server = Almost Free

> Which version are you using?

SQL Server 7 & 2000

> SQL Server 2005 is MUCH cheaper than $80k for a 4 way server,

No, that depends on which version you need to use: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx [microsoft.com]

So, if you've got an internet-accessible search engine running sql server (wasn't my decision) then you can easily blow over $80k to license a four-way server. In fact the original estimates we got were over $100k.

So in other words...

Half of your database expenses aren't your software.

How is this a surprise?

Unlike a desktop PC, any serious database installation demands a serious database and at least some professional expertise, even if it's just "sysadmin of many hats, one of which happens to be dabbling in the database".

Therefore personnel costs probably don't vary that greatly. This only leaves two costs: the application and the database itself. Generally speaking, the business will choose the application first and the database second (or they certainly should do), which means the cost (if any) of the application falls under the heading of "we've got to have it so it really doesn't much matter how much it costs, within reason".

This leaves the backend database, assuming there's a choice in the matter (not all applications support all databases, despite SQL being nominally independent). In such a project, licensing that is about the only really variable item in the list.

Depends how you define business (lottery is not?)

"German Lotto Company Plays it Safe with MySQL Cluster"

http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_ 1188.html [mysql.com]

And their application is not critical either, just win or lose.

CC.

60% of..

So what is the cost of commercial databases? Do the math:

Cost of OSS DB=$0 , which is 50% cheaper than commercial DBs.

0.5 * X = $0

X=$0

So, commercial databases really cost $0. I'm calling Oracle to get my copy.

(Yeah, yeah, TCO is not $0...)

Feature comparison

I haven't played with much DB work in the last few years, so I'm a bit out-of-touch feature-wise. My understanding is that in terms of not losing data, PostgreSQL was better than mysql, Mysql was faster, but as the move on they're evening out on those fields.

Is there a side-by-side comparison of major databases (including the open-source postgre, mysql) where one can see where in the featuresets each lacks/wins?

your mileage may vary

This is a pretty trivial article which seems driven by ingres.

Anyhow, a few things that I'd consider:

1. since as the author mentions the open source databases aren't ideal for mission critical applications (yet), then many organizations will find themselves supporting multiple databases. Say, oracle for financials & crm & the corporate warehouse and postgresql for a variety of smaller projects. Makes sense in many ways - except: oracle is already free for the small databases anyway, and now you need the dbas to support multiple products. This is going to increase your labor costs - not decrease it.

2. for many large analytical databases (data warehouses, etc) the cost of using open source are actually higher than closed source. This is because db2, oracle, etc are better at using the hardware than the open source alternatives. They've got better optimizers, parallelism, far better partitioning, better better pool management, automatic query rewrite, etc. So, a $100k oracle lisense running on a $100-200k 4-way (i know, assumes discount) will out-perform postgresql (free) on a 16-way ($1m) in many ways.

3. for some applications mysql could be more expensive than oracle. Ok, not just because you need to do far more testing with mysql to make sure that none of the wacky silent errors are affecting your code. But also because of the odd licensing - that requires its own faq and tips to just license the product if you can't figure it out. Then there's enterprise db - not very familiar with this one, but I doubt that it is free. Meanwhile, at the low-end the big-three database vendors all support free products. So, whether or not you pay more may very well depend on how you use the software.

Of course, if you're at a company like mine, and get to bypass purchasing and just review the license & install - you probably are saving a vast amount of money after all.

fluff piece.

Anyone every take a good long look at the price difference between ibm, oracle, and MS? MS really isn't in their price league.

"UP TO 50%". Ya, thats great, can you be a little more vague. Given that MS, Oracle, and IBM all have different prices, WHAT ONE WAS THE 50%? What conditions created that? We could include Centura SQL Base in that group and still keep the phrase up to 50%, but centura hardly breaks the 4 figure mark.

IBM and Oracle are way more expensive than SQL Server. You want to impress me, break it all down and show us REAL NUMBERS for each database software, then tell us who quoted them prices to you. Give us a little facts to back up your claims. Explain to us WHAT support costs you are factoring in, because I'm tired of seeing journalists who are damm near technologically illiterate write tech reviews.... On top of that they aren't even neutral... they are really writing op-ed pieces (like this one) and pass it off as a study.

You know, people on here bash MS & Oracle (or whatever closed source company it is) when they see a "fluff piece" about their products... I just hope they bash this fluff piece too, I won't hold my breath though.

Well its obvious...

The reason why enterprises don't like open source is because they HAVE been insecure and less feature laden. Anyone can write a database. It takes skill and $$$ however to write a secure database with enterprise features such as failover, 100% availabilty, hot backups, massive scalabilty over the planet, full support, and even more have had all these features PROVEN.

Being nearly there doesn't cut it at all. Being proven does. I wouldn't put my multi billion $ business on the line with some piece of free software developed by who knows with what agenda and debatable level of quality ... I'll pay for something, and have support and a legal avenue if it falls over.

No one was ever fired for...

... selecting IBM.

It's a tired cliche to be sure but it's still true nonetheless.

I think it's fair to say

...for mission-critical operations, most people don't give a flying fuck about TCO, purchase cost, or any other cost - it's about proven & reliable track-records combined with bullet-proof support. Oh, that any high-performance scalability, fail-over clustering, and all the other things OSS databases haven't quite caught up on yet.

Remember kids, if it's expensive - it must be good right?!

Read the article

It says that the 50% only applies to databases of sizes 200GB and less. Well guess what? Not only is my companies systems 24x365, but we have 1+ trillion rows of data, spread out over 1000 tables. 200GB? I have that in less than 10 tables!

And that is just the mainframe. Now add up all the UDB and SQLserver databases, and we probably have another 500 million rows spread out over those systems.

What database from Microsoft?

What database from Microsoft do you mean? Database? Microsoft? No, that does not fit together... :)

Smells like utopia

I'd so love to choose the db. But noooo.
"Here's the COBOL manual." "Whut?" "We don't have a license for Fortran anymore. Oh, and we're behind on the documentation because we were going to migrate to ."
So OK, that was the worst example. Where ever I go, I always encounter legacy databases that have to be worked with. That and an Access 'thing' lovingly setup and maintained by dr. Clueless which managed to wurm itself into the production process.

IOW- Free isn't free, you save 40-60% and.....

...for that 40-60% you give up something.

How much you give up depends on your needs of course. It still leaves plenty of competitive space for commercial products however. Is support, higher end functionality, and formalized business practice worth paying 40-60% more for? In many cases it will be. It remains up to the vendor to make the case. Is their higher end functionality really "higher end"? Is their support good enough to justify it's cost? Is that corporation surrounding your purchase adding value?

Open Source is just another kind of competitor. Commercial software vendors want to keep Open Source software as a low-end option only, and avoid it being considered competitive at the high end. Since they can't change what the OSS community does, their only choice is to continue to innovate at a faster pace that can only be supported by all that money. Sounds good to me.

Ah, capitalism remains safe from the invading threat of commie open source once again. My faith is restored.

Free versions from the "big guys"

If the cost difference we're talking about here is simply the licensing/upgrading cost, it's worth noting that several of the popular "mega expensive" database platforms offer free (as in $0) versions - albeit with certain functionality removed.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition [microsoft.com]
Only supports databases up to 4GB, and is lacking the built-in task scheduler, and most of the high-availability and business intelligence features, but is perfectly usable for small-to-mid-sized applications/web sites. Plus you can upgrade later to one of the fancier versions if necessary.

Oracle 10g Express Edition [oracle.com]
I haven't had a chance to play with this yet, but it looks similar to SQL Server Express in terms of features and limitations.

IBM DB2 Express-C [ibm.com]
I don't really know anything about this one. I just now found it in a fit of "I wonder..." The product comparison pages don't really say much about it, but they'll send it to you free on a DVD, so that's pretty neat.

Sybase ASE Express [sybase.com]
Never used this one either. It seems to be only for Linux.

Though honestly, from what I've seen of Postgre, I'd almost think that one would be worth looking into more so than these for small systems. One of these days I'll get around to experimenting with it. The advantage with the Express Editions is, however, that you don't have such a nasty learning curve if you can just jump right in with a database platform you're familiar with from at work. Why else would I do something insane like running php + MS SQL Server? :)

OS = free = you get what you pay for

Lack of support, poor backward compatibility and shifting standards are all common problems for open source.

I worked for the company that used MySQL for very data-intense large application and my recollection was that a) updates always broke something b) some things never worked as intended and required hacks c) it cost money to get developers to fix specific bug that severely affected them but very few other people d) problems with fail over, where any hardware failure caused few hours delay from real time for a day or so. I'm sure overall cost, even with costs of time lost by database programmer, was a lot less than enterprise database.

postgres works great!

This article should mention Postgres.

In upgrading a mission critical MS Access database, I first looked at MySQL, then after a month more of research I ended up going with Postgres (aka PostgreSQL). It will always be free due to the BSD license. It does what a database should do, supports things like referential integrity without the need for hacked on tables ala MySQL, and has few gotchas. Seems very quick to me.

And did I mention free? If you have a boss who is a real tightwad and doesn't understand computers let alone databases, Postgres is a godsend. Especially if he'd rather pay your salary than Larry Ellison. Some bosses would rather pay $100k in employee salary than spend $10k on software. I'm not saying that Postgres will take $100k worth of employee salary to figure out, I'm just making the point that there are bosses who only like to fork out money for tangible things, like hardware or employees. If you need to accomplish something at work and don't want to go through the stress of going hat in hand to your boss to buy something he will not understand and begrudge you for, Postgres is just what you need.

The market leaders have had to put out a free intro product to compete. So what. Eventually your needs may expand, and then Ellison or Gates (or MySQL) start holding you up by the ankles to see how much money drops out. Postgres will still likely be happily chugging along. Any features it lacks will probably come online by the time you need them anyway.

So, you might have to spend a month or three learning all the setup and maintenance aspects of Postgres (and Linux or FreeBSD, if you are unfamiliar with them). The good thing is, you only have to learn it once. Then you are up to speed and you should be as effective as with any other RDBMS. Now you can roll out highly scalable, rock solid internal business applications. I'm not even a CS major. I'm just a EE who has taken 3 or 4 CS classes, none of which involved databases.

Not everything is amazon.com. It may not be glamorous, but there are huge numbers of small - large businesses and departments struggling away using Excel for things that need a database, dealing with questionable data and lots of double entry (or more!) due to inherent problems with flat files. Sure, you could use Access, but it's a bit like buying a goldfish bowl for your new pet baby shark. Or you could go with MSDE or whatever "free" intro thingy Oracle has. But why would you bother? Postgres does all that and scales to most conceivable sizes for such businesses.

I've found the support to be very good, from both IRC and the mailing list. Just make sure you do some googling, RTFMing and possibly buying one of the existing books out there.

In fact, I think that Postgres really only lacks a couple things. One is a really good book. The other is the name, which is confusing. If you need to google for info, PostgreSQL gets the most hits.

They becoming cheaper by the minute...

From the title to the story clip they became 10% cheaper...:) *duck and run*

Reality

I am about to tick a few of you off, but oh well. I work at a hospital as a system analyst. Look at my profile for my qualifications. We tend to purchase systems that are best fit for our environment, then write the glue to make them work. We have had systems running on MySQL that we have purchases the last couple of years. Every single one of them have converted to another DBMS package, usually MS SQL Server - with one moving to Oracle. Every system we have had running on MySQL has been undependable and unreliable. Support from the vendor has stunk and we end up having to troubleshoot the database issues without much help from the developers, because they do not have DBMS vendor support. When they switch to a commercial package, support quality improves drastically. All a person has to do to understand why is to go out to MSDN [slashdot.org] or Technet [slashdot.org]. Microsoft isn't the only vendor that has such fantastic support, but they are a good example.

The support issues with applications using MySQL have gotten so bad, that we now have a directive from my CIO that we are not allowed to implement any system based off of MySQL. The cost-benefit is not there for us to try to keep a MySQL database stable.

Google MySQL

Although there is limited support, MySQL can be clustered on a load balanced system. Just search the MySQL site.

Google embraces open source development with MySQL being their database of choice. I haven't found any articles about Google using any proprietary database management system.

Research by Forrester

That's incredible!

Forrester? The intellectual giants who brought forth Rob Enderle and Maureen O'Gara (The MOGTroll)?

This has to be solid analysis then! They wouldn't just make up meaningless numbers to compare the incomparable. That would be disingenuous, disreputable and intellectually dishonest.

So who paid for this study?

But the open source databases generally lack the features for mission critical applications, trailing behind their proprietary peers in security, uptime, performance and features such as XML support.

Ah, that would be Oracle or Microsoft then.

Why kids quit?

Most high schools simply want cookie cutter kids. Teach them all the same stuff (with little variation allowed), the same way, and push them out on the other end. There is rarely any accommodation for differences in learning style, or for a young person's unique talents, aptitudes, or approaches. That's what made me hate high school, and I hear the same from young people today, too.

I have received praise in every job I've held for my communications skills--verbal and written. When finally in college, my writings were nominated numerous times for recognition and publication. In high school, however, my grades were mediocre. I lost points for not having all of the requisite drafts for term papers, even though I could sit down without a formal outline and write a first draft that was better than the final papers of most of my peers. I failed junior year English composition, because I did not complete a paper on what I wanted to be when I grew up (I would still have a tough time with that one today, almost 20 years later!--I still don't know what I want to be). That missing English credit (and some other poor marks where I was penalized more for thw "how" of my work rather than the work itself) kept me from receiving a high shcool diploma, prevented me from going to college full time for many years, and directed me on a very unpleasant path for a number of years.

Math teachers automatically penalize students who solve problems in nontraditional ways (or without showing all of that long multiplication or division)--a real problem for intuitives who could derive the answer by looking at the problem. I'm one of those (but probably not as gifted as many other /.ers). In time, however, I learned the value of showing my work (to help others in the process, or to allow others to proof my work), but to force young people into tedium for tasks that are second nature to them makes them despise school. The only reason why I did not drop out is because I thought my parents would kill me (only a slight exaggeration here).

Later, when I returned to college as a nontraditional student, I was given much more latitude in how I approached my work, I was able to select courses that better fit my interests, and my grades were top-notch. Unless high schools are willing to break the cycle of disfunction that treats students like cogs on a wheel (after all, aren't modern high schools simply extensions of the industrial revolution?), more and more students will become disenfranchised and will risk dropping out.

Enterprise ready Open Source DBMS

Check out MAXDB [1] (no it's has nothing to do with the regular MySQL stuff - except the name - the engineers are payed by SAP and sit in Berlin). It is solid, scalable, has a decent speed. It has all the enterprise features like triggers etc. and is very easy to administrate and use. It has some nice features like no need for reorgs, no tablespaces (just data files/raw devices in which the tables are stored in) etc.

It is out there as open sources (GPL) since 2000.

[1] http://www.mysql.com/products/maxdb/ [mysql.com]

Re:This just in!

This just in, 0 is less than 100!

Seriously did someone really need to do a whole study to determine this and then write an article telling the world?

If you need clustering, failover, remote backup, separation of indices from data, you make heavy use of materialized views, and you need to retrain your DBA's on a new database, there are a lot of people who still say that it will cost you more to use Postgres than Oracle. Don't even think about MySQL.

But if you're starting from scratch on a new project and your current projections don't indicate you'll need a lot of those features, now the PHB's will have finally heard that free databases should be considered. We deployed on SQL Server and Oracle after developing on Postgres (because Postgres was about twice as fast when running the test suite). Postgres scaled better than Oracle on any single box configuration, and customer data sets never required more than 100GB databases in the worst case.

We were forced to deploy on Oracle and SQL Server because none of our customers thought that Postgres was enterprise qualified. Now, some of them might.

Regards,
Ross