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MySQL to Adopt Solid Storage Engine 267

Posted by Zonk from the solid-gone-baby dept.
hmart writes "As seen on ZDNet's Open Source Blog MySQL is taking another step to defend from Oracle's recent acquisitions of InnoBase and Sleepycat. From the article: 'MySQL responds by getting Solid Information Technology, a proprietary database vendor, to take its solidDB Storage Engine for MySQL open source, under the GPL, starting in June.'"
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MySQL to Adopt Solid Storage Engine More

MySQL to Adopt Solid Storage Engine

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  • This is good news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IntelliAdmin ( 941633 ) * on Sunday April 16, 2006 @10:21PM (#15140461) Homepage
    It seems that Oracle is not taking the threat from MySQL lightly. The purchases they have made have been quite public, but they also have been quietly hiring developers from many different open source projects. It is scary how many of them have dropped off the radar. On a side note: I was always under the impression that MySQL was a 'amateur' database. I was very surprised when I was forced to switch from Microsoft SQL 2000 - MySQL had a much smaller memory footprint, and the performance just blew me away. To this day I still cannot believe the performance difference. It really speaks to the power of Open Source.

    • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday April 16, 2006 @10:31PM (#15140492)
      Well, it's one thing to acquire a company in order to deny your customers and potential customers access to a competitive product. It's quite another to hire away a bunch of developers and keep them. That's difficult, especially if they happen to be the cream of the crop for a particular industry. As soon as you don't give them what they want (and money is only part of the picture) they'll drop you like a hot potato and look for greener pastures. I'm not slamming Oracle in particular since I don't know what the place is like for the development staff: it might be a great place to work. But job satisfaction is an important aspect to any position for a good programmer, and if you're good (and that is presumably why Ellison is hiring these guys) you have a lot of options. My bet is that a few years down the road you see some of those missing coders back on the radar.

      • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)

        by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @12:21AM (#15140744) Homepage
        The problem being once these important OSS coders see oracle source, they are tainted. Any further OSS contributions will have to be heavily scrutinized for IP violations.

        So oracle does not need to keep them. They just need to expose them to even bits of their db source, and they have tainted the coder.

        Devious, if you ask me. I am impressed. Or I would be if it didn't damage my own interests.
        • I hadn't thought of that. Of course, that only applies to countries where such laws exists, but that's getting to be more and more of them thanks to "harmonization".

        • Re:This is good news (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Myen ( 734499 )
          On the other hand, your important OSS people have also see OSS code before being hired by Oracle...

          I am starting to think they whole "tainting" jig is getting stupid.
        • The problem being once these important OSS coders see oracle source, they are tainted.

          That's not true, any more than someone can be "tainted" by working at one company and then getting a job at another. There's something to being cautious but it's simply not possible, especially in california which disallows non-compete agreements in almost all cases, to take away someone's open source livelihood by "tainting" him. There's nothing special about open source software.

        • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Informative)

          by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday April 17, 2006 @02:54AM (#15141019) Journal

          The problem being once these important OSS coders see oracle source, they are tainted. Any further OSS contributions will have to be heavily scrutinized for IP violations.

          Yes and no.

          Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a "tainted" developer. There are three different forms of IP law that Oracle might try to use to control what the programmers do after they leave the company:

          1. Copyrights. Copyright only covers the specific code, not the ideas. A developer could learn how to do something while working at Oracle, and could then leave the company and implement the same thing and it wouldn't constitute copyright infringement as long as the second implementation was done from scratch. Technically. In practice, if the resulting code was extremely similar, the developer might have a hard time *proving* that he didn't take a copy of Oracle's code with him when he left.
          2. Trade Secrets. Oracle could tell the developers that things they're working on are trade secrets, and make them agree not to disclose them. That only applies to the specific ideas and techniques that are designated as trade secrets, though, and only applies as long as they're secrets that haven't been revealed elsewhere.
          3. Contract. Oracle could make the developers sign non-compete agreements. Those can't last very long, though, and tend to be hard to enforce.

          So, if the developer has access to a good lawyer, it seems like Oracle really can't do much to prevent future work. But, of course, a wealthy corporation can afford legal battles much better than an indiviudal can, and any or all of the above would lend enough credibility to a lawsuit by Oracle that the coder might end up having to fight it in court... which can be really expensive even if you win. Then again, this is exactly the sort of case where the EFF and others would probably be willing to step in and help out.

          Finally, if Oracle failed to terrorize the devs into meekly going along, Oracle probably wouldn't want to go to court very much. Not only is it bad PR, but it does cost a lot of money, even if you're a corporation with deep pockets. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the cost is worth the result, which seems pretty unlikely. Threatening a lawsuit you probably can't win doesn't cost much, but actually pursuing one does.

          So oracle does not need to keep them. They just need to expose them to even bits of their db source, and they have tainted the coder.

          No, I really don't think that's enough. What they really need to do is to terrify the coder with weighty, frightening non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements. If they do too much of that, though, they won't get the hire in the first place.

          Of course, IANAL. But I have read the relevant law, and have some familiarity with the applicable precedents, thanks to other cases.

          I really hope that the open source developers who've gone to work for Oracle have run their employments contracts past attorneys of their own.

          • Tainting does seem to be a big issue for us developers.

            I'm not thinking about the move from a CS to OSS project but just getting hired by another company who are extremely risk averse. For example if you've seen Sun's Java source code (who hasn't Sun were pimping all around the shop at one time) there is no way IBM would hire you to work on the J9 JVM.

            It seems crazy though, what actually adds value to you as a developer stops you working elsewhere.

    • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Sunday April 16, 2006 @11:38PM (#15140653)
      That's kind of the thing.

      I don't want to offend MySQL devs, but, eh, here goes.

      MyISAM isn't so hot. It doesn't support transactions... it won't enforce your referential integrity constraints... it doesn't work like, probably, it should. It indexes things so you can look them up quickly with SQL queries.

      InnoDB on the other hand, sticks all of the features into MySQL that it needs in order to be considered a serious database engine.

      When Oracle bought InnoDB, they bought all of the stuff that makes MySQL actually useful. In order to stay competitive, MySQL will need a new storage engine... or perhaps keep updating the GPL'd version of InnoDB. The response has been to get a new commerical engine that works out of the box open sourced, so they can keep the edge that they need in order to stay in the game.

      • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Informative)

        by Antony T Curtis ( 89990 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @12:16AM (#15140729) Homepage Journal

        Oh, I doubt that there is a single MySQL developer who would be offended. We are not so aloof that we cannot take criticism - actually we welcome constructive criticism, it lets us know what needs to be improved.

        Perhaps we have been a bit lazy: Assuming that the partnership with Innobase would continue forever and that MySQL would eventually acquire Innobase.

        MySQL has a few advantages - it is a small company which can react quickly to unexpected changes. We learn. Jim Starkey has joined us - he is a veteran of relational database designs and a delight to work with - and we do plan to have our own storage engines with transactional goodness, we already have Cluster but we need something more lightweight usuable by everyone.

        In the meanwhile, it is good to take advantage of the MySQL architecture and make partnerships which can make use of one of our strengths. Having 3rd party storage engines is something which has been quietly encouraged for many years and is now something I think will see more publicity.

        (disclaimer: opinions are my own and not of my employer nor anyone else)
        • Wow. I appreciate the reply. I always kind of worry about offending people, unless I'm in some sort of serious discussion, then I bare my teeth. It comes from being an AI guy... get me around Systems folks too long, and I play just as rough as they do, haha!

          Anyway, on a lighter note, this new engine looks pretty hot, and like it could take MySQL in a lot of directions that I never really foresaw it going.

          I hope that it goes well, and you don't mind my gentle prodding at MySQL fanboyism, which I lump toge

          • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Antony T Curtis ( 89990 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @12:49AM (#15140804) Homepage Journal
            Anyway, on a lighter note, this new engine looks pretty hot, and like it could take MySQL in a lot of directions that I never really foresaw it going.


            I think it would be fun to make MySQL as versatile as possible with a huge choice of plug-ins available. Sort of like what Linux is for operating systems but for databases instead. MySQL is platform agnostic and want it to perform well everywhere, including Microsoft Windows and even... SCO (hey, its not their customer's fault).

            If there is anyone out there which has some kind of data storage/retreval system, I am sure that MySQL would be happy to assist and encourage them to make it into a storage engine for MySQL. If they want to GPL their code and join the open-source party, I am sure MySQL would be happy to help in that too.

            • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Funny)

              by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @12:55AM (#15140814)
              SCO has customers?

              • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Funny)

                by jusdisgi ( 617863 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @01:14AM (#15140853)

                SCO has customers?

                No...didn't you see, he said "it's not their customer's fault."

                customer's

                ...is a singular-possessive.

                customers'

                ...is the plural form.

                SCO doesn't have customers. They have a customer.

              • Re:This is good news (Score:3, Informative)

                by ocelotbob ( 173602 )
                SCO's still somewhat big in the medical profession. Being one of the first "cheap" unixes, a lot of small medical offices went to SCO in the early 90s during the first big rush to digitize patient charts, etc. I've got a buddy who deals with a lot of SCO installs on a daily basis. It's still used because though SCO is a pain in the ass, migrating away from these recordkeeping apps would be even more painful.
                • I've seen a live SCO OpenServer recently. A friend was getting rid of it so he gave shell accounts to buddies just for a quick play; if you don't care about being legal, you can even grab it off P2P.

                  It is absolutely abysmal. Hell, it is far worse than Ultrix I have seen in '97. It is as if all Unix innovation from 90s and 00s haven't happened at all.

                  These days, an Unix distribution is considered all musty if it has remnants of non-UTF8ness or has issues with IPv6. But for SCO, do you know what they are

              • SCO has customers?

                You might know them better as Defendants

          • OpenOffice.org (a long time ago, before discovering what I consider to be superior alternatives for my needs).

            Out of curiosity, what apps do you find superior to OOo2 for general purpose use?
            • I use LaTeX for documents that I want to look nice, or KWord if I want to open a Word document.

              I use gnumeric as a spreadsheet.

              I find OpenOffice to be kind of sluggish by relation, which is my biggest criticism of it. I'm sure it's a nice product and all, but I just think that it doesn't quite live up to the hype.

              I think that everyone's like "ok, we kind of win the web browser wars... lets move to Office," the difference is, firefox really is better than IE. Can you really say that OpenOffice is better th

              • Re:This is good news (Score:3, Interesting)

                by Nutria ( 679911 )
                I think that everyone's like "ok, we kind of win the web browser wars... lets move to Office," the difference is, firefox really is better than IE. Can you really say that OpenOffice is better than MS Office?

                Ah, ok. I was just curious as to your thought process.

                As to whether I think that OOo2 is better than MSO 97 (that's all I have), well, it's hard to say. Word 97 & Excel 97 are very snappy on my Win2k 933MHz/256MB RAM laptop, and OOo2 is really snappy on my Sempron-754 2800+/1GB RAM PC and does eve

      • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @12:30AM (#15140765)
        In order to stay competitive, MySQL will need a new storage engine... or perhaps keep updating the GPL'd version of InnoDB.

        I don't think that is not an option. MySQL AB has a dual-licensing scheme for MySQL. They need another company (like Solid) from whom they can dual license an engine for use with MySQL.

        Now... if they wanted to go completely GPL and quit selling MySQL for use in proprietary applications, they could keep updating the GPL version of InnoDB and keep distributing it. But then they would lose the revenue that comes from the proprietary-licensed versions of their product... and there goes their business model.
        • Your right, dual-licensing requires ownership or agreement. It does make me wonder what happens if Oracle buys Solid.

          New Business Plan:
          1. Build transaction database engine
          2. let MySQL license it in their dual licensing scheme
          3. Get bought by Oracle

          MySQL might want to build their own engine or branch a BSD / Public Domain (e.g. SQLite) engine. It would sure keep this stuff from continuing.

          Once again "If you go the dual-licensing route - you need to own the code"

        • I don't think that is not an option
          You shouldn't not use double negatives, you might not say something that you don't mean.
      • I sure hope the current level of performance and reliability will be maintained. Youre scaring me there.

    • Re:This is good news (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      It seems that Oracle is not taking the threat from MySQL lightly. The purchases they have made have been quite public, but they also have been quietly hiring developers from many different open source projects. It is scary how...

      Seems to me that Postgresql would be a bigger threat because its SQL convensions are closer to Oracle's. Postgre would be easier for Oracle shops to convert or transition to.
                 

      • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Interesting)

        by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @01:22AM (#15140872) Homepage
        PostgreSQL is a much bigger long term threat to Oracle than MySQL. The one place where Oracle still has an advantage over FOS projects is in big iron and big databases. PostreSQL has closed that gap significantly where (I believe) MySQL never will. It simply will not serve the market need that Oracle meets now.
        • Interesting. That is exactly what my friend, who is a salesman for Oracle told me. They have got the large contracts with the big industries and that's all they need. Like it or not MySQL is still viewed as a "cute" and "cool" little open source experiment. It might not be true but the perception is still there. We as developers and /.-er think "Wow, open source, kewl!" People who choose database vendors and make other such big IT decisions for companies like GM, Boeing, Wal-Mart and such, think "Open sour

          • Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)

            by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @06:55AM (#15141285)
            "People who choose database vendors and make other such big IT decisions for companies like GM, Boeing, Wal-Mart and such, think "Open source = toy for the geeks"."

            Yes that's why no large corporation in the world uses mysql. Hey wait a minute that's a complete lie isn't it? There are lots of fortune 500 corporations using mysql aren't there. Never mind.

            "They want top notch support, perhaps even an Oracle team to be on-site for a couple of months during deployment, they want someone to blame and to complain to when things don't work right. MySQL provides support but it is just not going to be the same quality."

            Spoken like somebody who has never bought support from oracle or mysql. If you pay mysql half of what you pay oracle for support they will give you the phone number of a developer. How is that for support?

            Mysql offers some of the best support of any database vendor. Go ask any of their big costomers. Then compare what they say to the customers of oracle.

            I don't mean to be a cheerleader for mysql but I really really get tired of the same old "you can't get support or blame somebody" FUD about open source.

            It's over, strike that item from your big book of FUD and find something else to complain about mkay?
    • You know, it may seem "obvious" that Oracle acquired Innobase and Sleepycat to hurt MySQL AB but I am not sure if MySQL really competes in the same application space as Oracle. They are two very different products.

      Have you concidered that Oracle has started to acquire opensource companies because they have suddenly discovered that companies like IBM, Novell and Sun may have something profitable in their open-source strategies and wants to get a piece of that pie?

      Who knows what Oracle's reasons are. Only the

      • Why must people assume the most malicious reason all the time?

        Because such assumptions are usually correct.

      • Re:This is good news (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ErikZ ( 55491 )
        IBM, Novell and Sun are actually contributing to open source.

        I haven't heard of Oracle doing anything like that. What have they contributed to? Have they changed the licence of anything they own to GPL?

        If not, it doesn't sound good to me.

        • Re:This is good news (Score:3, Informative)

          by Saanvik ( 155780 )
          You mean projects like these (see Oracle's development tools page [oracle.com]))
          • Apache ADF Faces
          • Eclipse EJB3 Tooling Project
          • Elipse JavaServer Faces Tooling Project
          • Eclipse BPEL Designer Editor Project

          Take a look at Oracle's OSS page [oracle.com] for more projects. One of the biggest is OCFS, Oracle's clustering file system which they released with a GPL license.

          Sure most of it is to make it easier for them to sell software for Linux users, but it's out there, with various OSS licenses.

    • I may be wrong, but to me mysql is a different class of database than sql2000. They cannot be compared. Similarly certain queries from sqlite will be faster than from mysql. It doesnt necessarily mean sqlite is superior or dbase5 is superior. We've run ERP systems on oracle and sql2000, and I've played with the idea of trying to copy all the schemas to a mysql database and attempt to use mysql as the database (DB size 7GB, hundereds of tables and ~30 simultaneous connections). Not sure it will practically w

  • Note to self: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16, 2006 @10:22PM (#15140466)
    buy out Solid Information Technology.

    -Larry Ellison

  • it's about time (Score:3, Funny)

    by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Sunday April 16, 2006 @10:23PM (#15140475)
    So mysql will now have solid storage? Finally! Oh wait, it's " Solid Information Technology". Never mind...

  • More Info? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <gerdesNO@SPAMinvariant.org> on Sunday April 16, 2006 @10:27PM (#15140482) Homepage
    Does anyone know where I can find more info on the sorts of options/features this storage enginge supports?

    For that matter can anyone point me somewhere which describes the deliniation of responsibilities between generic MySQL code and the storage engines? In particular is MySQL just an SQL query parser/optimizer stuck on top of storage engines?

    • Re:More Info? (Score:3, Informative)

      by jadavis ( 473492 )
      can anyone point me somewhere which describes the deliniation of responsibilities between generic MySQL code and the storage engines?

      Interesting question. However, MySQL does not completely abstract the storage engine. Different storage engines have different semantics at the higher levels. For instance, MyISAM does not support transactions, while InnoDB does.

      • Re:More Info? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Antony T Curtis ( 89990 )
        That is an obvious difference but not the most surprising difference. The non-transactional MyISAM tables can be very useful for referential (read mostly, update rarely) data for which transactions are not useful. There are other non-transactional storage engines such as CSV.

        I think a more startling difference for users between the different storage engines is that of Referential Integrity - foreign keys are currently only supported within InnoDB.

        This is something which I personally hope will change in the

    • Something I blindly stumbled over... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) on Sunday April 16, 2006 @11:15PM (#15140595)
      Within two clicks of the Slashdot story page, I found THIS [solidtech.com].

  • Solid has good stuff! (Score:4, Informative)

    by sgifford ( 9982 ) <sgifford@suspectclass.com> on Sunday April 16, 2006 @10:33PM (#15140497) Homepage Journal
    We used to use a Solid SQL database a few years back, before I really knew anything about databases or SQL. It was extremely reliable, fast enough for everything we did, and very easy to administer (even for people who didn't know anything about databases or SQL). I haven't used it recently, but if their technology is still top-notch, this will be very good news.

  • Hooray (Score:4, Informative)

    by brennz ( 715237 ) on Sunday April 16, 2006 @10:47PM (#15140529)
    As Mysql continues to catch come towards the Mid-tier in the market, Postgresql is charging at Oracle.

    The entire Database market is heading towards OSS.
    • It may be charging, but it's still a long long way from offering everything Oracle can offer. That said, Oracle is still quite lacking in its support for Indic and Arabic language handling, so maybe Postgres can accelerate in this area?

    • Re:Hooray (Score:2, Insightful)

      by itunes keith ( 900814 )
      I'm not sure I would agree 100% that everything will go to oss - even in the long-term. I've been on mainframe/db2 for three years and have inherited a lot of respect for big iron's sw abilities (and hw, of course). But, I guess, you cannot predict the future.
      • Yeah, if you have the need/money/mindset as a company to actually have a mainframe, then you're gonna fork out the money for DB2. Those things are weird and cool, so completely alien to the PC and Unix/Linux world.

        Out of curiosity, which version of DB2 were/are you using?

  • No reporter would miss an opportunity for a solid pun like that ;)
  • It's the sound of Oracle money flushed down the toilet. :0) Man, that Ellison guy must be MAD right now.

  • I hope they've got a perpetual licensing agreement (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Sunday April 16, 2006 @11:52PM (#15140675) Homepage Journal
    I guess somewhere down the line MySQL users will be pressured to move off of innodb onto this Solid DB. (At which point, we might see some community backlash and a big controversial fork where the community makes a GPL-only version of MySQL to maintain InnoDB support -- which would please Oracle greatly.)

    I hope the MySQL has gotten something in paper that will make sure that this is the last time that users have to migrate. Sure, they can claim that a migration will be seamless, but who's going to be foolhardy enough to risk their data on a transition like this without significant testing?

    Actually, now that I think about it, I don't know if it is reasonable to expect users to switch "just" so that MySQL will be able to sell commercial licenses to their drivers and what not. The switch to InnoDB took years (and it's probably still ongoing for many users), but in return, those who switched got a lot of new features that made it worthwhile (probably). This time around, there is not much of an incentive for end users -- assuming that the feature sets will be roughly comparable between InnoDB and Solid.

    • Re:I hope they've got a perpetual licensing agreem (Score:4, Informative)

      by Antony T Curtis ( 89990 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @01:49AM (#15140910) Homepage Journal
      There will be no need to pressure existing users off from InnoDB .... InnoDB is GPL code and as such will always be available: This is the strength of open source software, it is very hard for players to pick up their toys and leave the sandbox. If they leave the sandbox, they have to leave their toys there. Besides, Oracle has stated that they do not intend to change Innobase's business. Lets hope that they keep that promise.

      Of course, MySQL can encourage people to use a particular product choice based upon future roadmaps but I don't imagine that InnoDB support will ever be axed.

      (opinions are my own, not of my employer nor anyone else)
  • I don't know anything about InnoBase but I do use BerkleyDB (as part of Bogofilter) and I know that Sleepy Cat dual licenses it under a commerical and an OSI approved open source license. While I understand that Sun could try and close the BerkleyDB source code, wouldn't MySQL be able to fork it and continue on their own?

    I looked at the license for BerkleyDB and didn't notice anything that would prevent forking. Am I wrong?

    http://www.sleepycat.com/company/oslicense.html [sleepycat.com]
    • If you took a look at the BDB source code, you're understand immediately why forking this is not an option unless you happen to have hired the developers.
  • First it was ACID [wikipedia.org]. And now they're going SOLID? Make up your minds! :P
  • Ok. I read the article.

    MySQL responds by getting Solid Information Technology, a proprietary database vendor, to take its solidDB Storage Engine for MySQL open source, under the GPL, starting in June.

    Why? InnoDB was already GPL'd. Why not continue to use and develop it? Instead MySQL is going to switch to something completely different with source no one has seen yet (therefore no one outside of Solid is familiar with the codebase). What's to stop Oracle for making Solid Tech a great offer and buyi

    • MySQL uses a dual-licensing scheme. It's GPL to anybody who is willing/able to comply with that license. Otherwise, you pay MySQL for a license.

      This means that every component MySQL uses must be a) GPL licensed, and b) produced by a company willing to sell commercial licenses through MySQL.

  • Good, but how good not known yet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PizzaFace ( 593587 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @12:41AM (#15140788)
    Solid's database server has a good reputation. Philip Greenspun used to recommend Solid as a cheaper alternative to Oracle, though it seems he now recommends [greenspun.com] PostgreSQL. What all three systems have in common is multi-version concurrency control, which improves concurrent data access by tracking the changing versions of data rather than locking the data when a user might change it.

    I'm just worried about this quote from Solid's V.P. of Marketing:
    So we're going to make available code that works only with mySQL. On the side we have a proprietary line of products.
    It sounds like MySQL will use only a subset of the Solid product. So how good this news is will depend on how complete a subset of its product Solid opens.

  • Also reported... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Insiders claim that the liquid storage plans went down the drain when an executive bumped into the file server and spilled hundreds of critical files.

  • postgres (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jdew ( 644405 )
    Hmmm, any real reason why they don't just take postgresql and use that as their backend?

  • Adopt? No! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Khanom ( 163353 )
    There is a world of difference between "MySQL to Adopt Solid Storage Engine" and getting "Solid Support", as in, from TFA: "...getting Solid Information Technology, a proprietary database vendor, to take its solidDB Storage Engine for MySQL open source, under the GPL, starting in June".

    Solid is just offering YA storage engine that works with MySQL, and they happen to be GPLing it. This does -not- mean MySQL is adopting anything from Solid.

    Slashdot editors: please read TFA once in a while and please stop wri

  • Solid(TM) and the Oracle connection (Score:3, Insightful)

    by adnonsense ( 826530 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:29AM (#15141133) Homepage Journal

    Says here [sql-info.de] that the marketing VP quoted in TFA, Paola Lubet, used to work for Oracle.

    Now I wouldn't want to read anything into that, I'm guessing there's a lot of rotation between database companies, and it's a private company [solidtech.com] held by a bevvy of investors, so Larry Ellision presumably won't be able to drop it in his shopping basket when he pops out for some milk. On the other hand the investors sound like venture capitalists (I may be wrong, corporate finance is not my field) who might be interested in any short-term returns on their investment that a large, cash-rich company could offer.

  • MySQL tries to play catch up ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tetard ( 202140 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @06:42AM (#15141269)
    ... while others (PostgreSQL) have all one needs. I guess that's an unavoidable dynamic of free software (and a good one as well -- just like in other competing open source projects). So probably one day MySQL will have everything that PostgreSQL has today, but why wait ? It's mostly transparent to move from one to the other, and there are tons of guides and scripts to convert from MySQL to PgSQL. Even PhpMyAdmin has its Pg pendent (PhpPgAdmin).

    And it's painful to go back when you've learned to do proper logic separation using stored procedures, triggers, views and transactions, things that way too many projects duplicate in the PHP or Ruby front-end, relegating the DB to the "simple" role of being a storage backend (even Ruby on Rails forces you to think that way via the MVC architecture).

    For that purpose, use SQLite -- it does what you need, is very high performance (on-disk, non-concurrent access -- can't get any faster than that). For real solid DB work, with garanteed integrity, just the way RDBMS were meant to be, go for PgSQL.

  • it is solid! (Score:3, Informative)

    by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @06:50AM (#15141276) Homepage
    we're using HP data protector backup/restore software, which uses solid as its database for storing all data information.
    HPDP itself is as stable as an italian taxi driver stuck behind two priests in a skoda, but thank GOD, the database is rock solid and doesn't corrupt when HPDP goes belly up again.

    so all in all, a good pick of mysql!

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