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Linux Software

Linux and Closed Source Databases 73

Posted by Hemos from the good-overview dept.
Byte.com is featuring a column by Jon Udell regarding Linux and databases. Using comments from users, other tech industry people and personal industry, Udell takes a nice walk-through the closed-source databases, as well as documentation issues.
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Linux and Closed Source Databases More

Linux and Closed Source Databases

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  • One problem that the Byte article displays is that those that ignore whether software is "free" or not leave themselves vulnerable to the vagaries of licensing choices on the part of the vendor.

    Those that were using SOLID for things that Solid no longer supports have committed the exact opposite mistake to that of Ideology getting in the way.

    In effect, by not letting a preference for free software push them away from the "Solid choice," they have been boxed into a different corner.

    The implication is that a preference for free software does not necessarily represent ideology; it can represent a solid preference for software that doesn't leave you dependent on the good graces of a software vendor...


  • I checked out the Sybase site to see what the
    distribution terms for the 11.0.3.3 server were.

    The following is extracted from the user license:

    1. USE OF PROGRAMS. You may install and use the
    Program(s) internally in your organization solely
    for development purposes on a single Machine that
    may be accessed and used by a maximum of three
    Seats. You may not use the Program(s) for any
    production purpose or transfer, assign,
    sublicense or otherwise convey the Program(s)
    (or any one or portion thereof) to another party
    without Sybase's prior written consent


    This conflicts with their main site where it says
    that you may freely use the product to develop and
    deploy applications. I've contacted them about
    this.

    I understand that Informix SE may be freely used
    on Linux (not to be confused with Informix Online)

    I don't know how it compares to mSQL/MySQL.

  • >I've always been told that min/max_online engines should be set to # of processors -1

    A good rule of thumb but if it's on a clean, dedicated DB only server it's not necessary. It's important to have when you have other processes running on the O/S.
  • There are older versions of MySQL that are GPL:d, I think.

    --

  • I haven't heard about that discussion but I suspect you're misquoting. 32-bit OS like LINUX may have a 2GB file size limit, but DB's like Oracle and Sybase allow you to have multiple OS files within the database. While there is a limit, it's virtually unreachable (Peta-byte range for Oracle 8i).

    32-bit OS (SUN, AIX, LINUX, etc) have another 2GB limit, but it's on RAM. This means the scalability of the db is limited, but again, only the largest systems (hundreds of concurrent users) need to worry.
  • About the only app that I think justifies the trouble of having Windows around is MS Access. Specifically, MSAccess and ODBC give ultra-convenient, read-write, network access to many RDBMSs. It's not really an admin tool, just a data browser with some scripting ability, and works with Oracle and all the rest.
  • the only thing thats needs to be open source in the instance of databases, is the interface...

    If Oracle were to put out their source code, before the end of the day I would compile it with symbols and begin stepping through both server and client libs at various API calls in my code, just to figure out what the damn thing does. And I'd be grepping all over it to learn what it can do. Heck if they GPLed it, I'd be submitting new documentation.

    The article mentions both open-source and documentation issues but fails to point out that in serious, heavy-duty applications, source code is a very valuable supplement to whatever docs exist. Or rather, the docs merely supplement the code.

  • I'm disappointed to see so little discussion of PostgreSQL in the article and the comments.

    That's because this slashdot article is: Linux and closed source databases. Though I share your feelings about PostgreSQL.
    --
  • Which DB available for Linux has the best support for administration from a Windows GUI?
    Not sure about the BEST support, but I have found the remote admin tools from Oracle very handy indeed - I can administer a local Win95 personal, a remote NT and a remote Netware from the same machine, with the same tools. I've never had to try the Unix version "in anger" but when playing with it, the schema and sql-console tools seemed happy there, too.

    They would also like the Linux box to handle authentication to the DB thru Samba. I told them that I wasn't sure if that was an samba issue of something that the DB vendors would handle. So I guess that's two questions then. ;) I guess that most will auth via the Linux box's own Password scheme - that was available as an option to Oracle's DBMSs on NT and UNIX anyhow. IIRC, Samba is quite happy do do similarly.

  • I agree--unfortunately my app has everything on the same box--I'd have to pay twice as much for co-location if I had a dedicated DB server and another box to do everything else.

    So, I leave a processor free for Apache, perl, mail, etc...

    anyone know of any cheap (less than $200 a month) co-location places?

  • IIRC (Score:1)

    by tilly ( 7530 )
    Those commands do do something special - on 64-bit operating systems - which is why they are carefully #ifdefed out so they cannot be used on 32-bit ones.

    Remember that Linux standard libraries have a common source for different operating systems. So just because you can see it in the header files does not mean that you can use it on your machine.

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • Sybase (either Adaptive Server Enterprise or Adaptive Server Anywhere) can be administrated from the (IMHO) excellent tool Sybase Central running on NT or 95. Works like a charm.
  • i think databases are very similar to the linux kernel and i think there will be good open source ones soon..
    • lot of people need them.
    • they are not too complex (certainly less complex then the kernel)
    • and they have a well defined API.

    postgres and mysql are already very promissing...
    i am sure good databases will be here soon..

    mond.
  • You can buy Sybase 11.9.2 ASE with full support from Sybase *now* -- costs the same as other "Workgroup" servers like NT, which ain't bad at all.

    I think Sybase is actually in a pretty good position with Linux. The Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly SQL Anywhere) is an excellent, fast, full featured yet low-maintenance engine. Just the kind of thing to install on a machine to drop at a client's location and not worry about it. Combine that with SQL Remote (replication) and you've got a kick-ass solution on a rock-solid platform.
  • Well, it probably doesn't do reliability in the wake of hardware (sounds like a hard thing at the best of times), but you can add Zope for 'making pretty pictures easy', too :)
  • We use Oracle for Linux for serious production
    applications and MySQL for simple web stuff
    (which includes serious production applications
    like managing authenticated sessions). PHPLIB
    and Perl DBI make it easy to switch.

    I wouldn't consider other closed-source
    databases. Nothing else, not even DB2, has the
    technical depth and experience and cool things
    like real optimistic locking, which enables
    apps that are simply impossible in Sybase or
    MS-SQL.

    Read the MySQL docs. They have a good discussion
    of the tradeoffs and, because they're not
    selling licenses all the time, there's little
    marketing BS.

    PostgreSQL is getting to be a contender with
    some of the best virtues of MySQL and Oracle,
    but I don't feel it's as stable as either yet.
    The current team only really started to make
    the code their own with the last release. Oracle,
    MySQL, and Sybase have more experience.

    If you don't need a heavyweight SQL database,
    don't use one. Applications like sendmail and
    LDAP where transactions are simple and
    replication is desired are much better off with
    GDBM or Sleepycat.
  • The article has one flaw, and that is, although it did mention the open-sourced databases like mySQL and PostgreSQL, it doesn't really compare the benefits of open-sourced databases vs those of the closed-sourced variety.

    My only hope is that one day _someone-else_ would do a fair comparison.
  • Having a 2G file size limit does not mean you can't have a table or database with more than 2G of data. Actually most Oracle tuning books recommend splitting huge tables into multiple datafiles, for ease of backups, among other reasons.
  • The point is that if a company wants a database that is satisfactory for building systems that are not allowed to go down, they are likely to find things like DB/2 or Oracle more satisfactory than PostgreSQL or MySQL.

    There exist tools to help keep the pricy proprietary products up and running very near to 24x7x365, whereas the free products simply weren't built with that in mind.

  • The goal? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Will MySQL and PostgreSQL start to infringe on the territory occupied by DB2, Oracle, and Informix?

    That will be the true test of Open Source. Building a web server or a kernel is one thing, but beating Oracle is a lofty goal.

  • I am curious if anyone here has experience implementing DB2 or Oracle on Linux in a "production environment". I'm especially interested in people moving from other operating systems to Linux. What software and people problems did you have? Did you have any difficulty getting customer support for Linux compared to the same database support on commercial operating systems?

    From what I've read, IBM seems to be buying into Linux more than Oracle. Oracle seems to see Linux as simply a jab at Microsoft.
  • I have worked with a number of companies that feel safe using Open Source databases, for their reliability and for the availability of documentation and help that has been provided by other users. This is the type of support that will help push MySql and PostgreSql into the market as potential contenders
    • The situation with Solid displays nicely that the use of non-free software provides exposure to the risk that a vendor will decide to "Change their Business Strategy."

      If Solid decides to move from selling licenses at $300 targeted at web servers to selling $10000 licenses targetted at use in embedded systems (speaking loosely of "embedded," of course), there is little that the customer can do.

      If IBM decides not to provide an upgrade next year for Linux, and push users over to running DB/2 on Monterrey, there may be little that the customer can do.

    • On the other hand, there are some tasks such as writing documentation and building test suites to verify compliance with standards that aren't "sexy" tasks and which thus have a tendancy to suffer on "free" DB platforms.

    I suppose the given is that there are some significant risks regardless of the approach you take.

    The observation that code should be written to be, as much as possible, independent of the DB engine, is certainly true. This diminishes the extent to which you're locked in.

    This is valuable whether we're talking about Oracle or MySQL.

    Related to this, it seems to me that people should be looking into using transactioning/messaging "proxies" like BEA Tuxedo (proprietary) [beasys.com] or less proprietary things like the Isect [netcom.com] message queuing system.

  • Sybase (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am surprised that the author overlooked Sybase.

    We have been using Sybase on Linux since it came out a year ago. While not open source, we have found Sybase far more stable and much faster than Oracle on Linux. In fact, our Sybase/Xeon/Linux machine recently beat a Sybase/Sparc/Solaris machine to over 500 user connections.

    On top of better perfomance and stability, Sybase's pricing is not only fair ... it is downright great. Oracle charges by the Mhz, which quickly adds up to tens or hundreds of thousands, in comparison, Sybase on a dual Xeon was priced at under $9K.

    True, Sybase doesn't offer a lot of the advanced Object features of Oracle, but the advice of the column is clear: avoid vendor-specific database extensions wherever possible when using commercial databases. You don't know how well (or if) these will be be supported in the future.

    I am not a Sybase employee, just a very, very happy customer.

    http://linux.sybase.com
  • I will believe that the big-name databases truly take Linux seriously for real work when they listen to what Linus has to say on the subject of big files.

    If you want a database on Linux with over 2 GB in the database today, you cannot use one of the big commericial guys. Linux has a limit on file-size for 32-bit architectures and it is unlikely to go away. If you are serious about handling more data than that, Linus wants you to get a 64-bit CPU like the Alpha. He does not want to mess up a lot of code for a case that affects relatively few people. One that will be a non-issue as the 32-bit to 64-bit migration continues.

    And so, if the database vendors are serious about using Linux for databases, they have to offer us a port to a 64-bit architecture. Well Linux on the Alpha is 64-bit, here, and popular, where are the databases for it?

    Regards,
    Ben

  • This article is FUNNY! (Score:4)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday September 20, 1999 @05:43AM (#1671599) Homepage Journal
    I liked the mention of the conversation thread originator, root. Very nice to give him credit. Gosh, that "root" guy really gets around. He even has a login on my system, but I don't remember giving it out! Better check your Linux system, to see if he's been there, too!

    And then he talks about how it doesn't make sense to be religious about Free Software / Open Source when it's your business that counts, but the first thing you hear after that is how users got screwed because the product in question wasn't Open Source!

    Now, I agree that the world can hold both proprietary software and Free Software, and that the two can get along. It's just interesting that the article makes the point that you really can't trust a proprietary vendor to stay in the market, and thus you must code as if they won't.

    Thanks

    Bruce Perens

  • Just a plug for MIMER, it's 100% SQL conformant and the Personal Edition for Linux is available free of charge.

    Since that's what my univ [www.uu.se] runs, It's what i mess around with at home. (That and the fact that it's made in Uppsala [uppsala.se], where I live ;)

    Anyway, check it out at http://www.mimer.com [mimer.com].

    Don't hate the media, become the media.

  • From what I've read, IBM seems to be buying into Linux more than Oracle. Oracle seems to see Linux as simply a jab at Microsoft.

    This is also the case with IBM, who have pretty good reasons to hate Microsoft themselves. In fact, I think this is the main motivation for most of these big companies - including even Corel, perhaps.
  • Now, I agree that the world can hold both proprietary software and Free Software, and that the two can get along. It's just interesting that the article makes the point that you really can't trust a proprietary vendor to stay in the market, and thus you must code as if they won't.

    It seems to me that this should be a general practice, anyways (i.e. staying vendor independent in your SQL). I'd go even further and say that it should be independent in your API calls as well. In the current project I'm working on at work, we've isolated all of our database specific api calls and other database specific stuff in a separate library, calling our wrapper functions instead. It seems like a bright thing to do anyway, as it gives you additional flexibility. Of course, this app is a $30 million dollar project, so we definitely have the time and money to do it. :-)

    Sujal

  • I'm no free-software Sandanista, but I sometimes sympathize with Richard Stallman and the GNU project. This is one of those times. Listen to this man. He's knowledgable, he's intelligent, and he influences hundreds or perhaps thousands of people directly and indirectly with his advice. And this is the message he has received about freedom in software:

    "My advice is: Don't let ideology get in the way of business. Open source makes sense when it makes business sense, otherwise not."

    I don't want to start a flame war. This is offtopic, and it should probably be moderated down. There are more interesting things to discuss in the realm of databases. Still, this is the message that people like Eric Raymond (bless him for his work) are inadvertantly spreading. Open source? User's rights? Freedom? Yes, those are all excellent means to secure a profit! But it's not as if they're important in their own right.

    I understand the message of ESR to be, "Freedom is wonderful - and you can make a buck."

    That doesn't appear to be what this man heard.

    -konstant
  • Actually I thought I saw this article somewhere else recently, and posted a followup there - this bit about business sense being the only sense really got on my wick, and it still does today!

    As I see it (and I used to work for a database company, supporting one or two linux offerings), the otherwise-commercial RDBMS vendors are all merely trying to get on the bandwagon as a way to making customers later, so the best way to keep linux "pure" is to stick with something like postgresql (for features and completeness) or MySQL (for speed at the expense of features).
  • "My advice is: Don't let ideology get in the way of business."

    That makes perfect sense. If you refuse certain products because of ideology, you're simply limiting your choices because of your emotional bias, and that's not smart if you're running a business.

    For instance, I've run across posts from physicians asking about dictation/voice recognition software. Now, if they were ideologically committed to open source, I doubt they would have a choice at all. Similarly, there are sectors of this $100 billion industry where OSS products do not exist, or exist but aren't as good as the commercial ones.

    OTOH, people who refuse to use open source products, or use only MS, or use anything-but-MS, also commit the same mistake. Ideology gets in the way if it limits your choice. (Don't mean to start a flame war either).

    L.

  • What about Sybase? (Score:4)

    by fence ( 70444 ) on Monday September 20, 1999 @06:32AM (#1671606) Homepage
    I didn't see any mention of Sybase in this article-IMHO, the author left out a very robust database solution available to Linux users.

    Sybase currently offers two different versions of their database server for Linux:

    1) an older version 11.0.3.3 is available for free and you can do anything that you wish with it. Develop, deploy, e-commerce, etc. Free.
    2) their "latest" version 11.9.2 is available free via download or $100.00 for a couple of CD's and manuals. 11.9.2 is free (or $100) for development, but if you deploy it then you need to purchase a license from sybase.

    and no, I don't work for Sybase, I'm a happy user of Sybase on Linux, Solaris and HP-UX.

    check out Sybase at http://www.sybase.com
    or the Sybase on Linux FAQ at http://www.mbay.net/~mpeppler/linux.html
  • My company (here [carscene.com]) runs ColdFusion on an NT machine, with Oracle on Linux as the real power. They couldn't be happier with it. They pound the heck out of it, and it barely notices. (Surprisingly, they have few problems with the NT box as well).

    I've used MySQL on Linux quite a bit at my previous work place, and I have to say that would feel more confident with it. Oracle offers many features that MySQL doesn't (rollback, sub-selects, sequences, triggers, etc) but the support issue is questionable. I have little evidence, but I would say the main reason we haven't had troubles with Oracle support is that it worked out of the box (RedHat 5.2, following the install directions that came with Oracle). Certainly the interface of MySQL is more userfriendly, but this is coming from someone who learned SQL on the fly.

    Based off of my experiences, Oracle on Linux can deliver very well, but it isn't immune to the problems that will plague any and all closed-source projects. Even if the company is "serious" today, they may not be so tomorrow. [This on the heels of Oracle's announcement that NT may no longer be a primary platform [vnunet.com]] If something goes wrong, you are at the mercy of that company.

  • We have been using Oracle8 on our production systems for about seven months now. It's rock solid, and we have never came across any major problems. IMHO, Oracle is the way to go; you get extensive documentation and design tools, talent is easy to find, there are lots of high-quality books on the market(O'Reilly Oracle series). If you run into a problem, help is readily available from the friendly gurus at various online communities of very high caliber(RevealNet comes to mind)

    Oracle is also hard-core on Java, and although we haven't tried Oracle8i, I believe being able to write stored procedures in Java is a major plus (other RDBMS vendors offer this, too. I believe IBM was the first with DB2)

    I believe in Oracle and its commitment to Linux, but a potential problem is the rapid changes in Linux kernel and libraries. Lots of Linux people are used to using the latest kernel and system libraries on their systems-this is not a very good practice for your production servers, since obviously big software development companies will not modify their software as often as the Linux kernel. Oracle8 requires a patch to resolve the glibc issue with RedHat6, for example. It is best to stick with a tried and true configuration with these closed-source database solutions, especially when the system is mission critical.
  • It is fair to say that, in the "Free software" arena, you have a choice of
    • PostgreSQL for "heavy-duty-functionality" versus
    • MySQL for "speed."
    What is unfortunate is that neither of these are really strong with regards to reliability even in the wake of hardware problems.

  • Eh? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oracle does *not* charge by the MHz. Where did you come up with that? They charge by number of connections to a server. BTW, Web license = 20 users.
  • Commercial databases have their place in linux. Closed source software has its place in the business world, right beside the open source offerings. Open source is not (yet) always the "right answer", even though it is becoming the "right answer" more and more often.

    Sybase/Oracle/DB2/etc servers running on linux are good for linux, and it's good for the open source movement, too.

    "How is a commercial source database good for the open source movement?" you ask...

    Well, view it as a two-pronged approach. First, it gets people using linux/apache/perl/etc to tie together interfaces to that commercial backend. Secondly, it provides an incentive for the MySQL and Postgres crowd to make their products better and better. Linux flourished as an alternative to Microsoft, and the competition and race to add features and run better than the competitors is what keeps it vibrant, alive, and growing. Commercial databases have the same effect on open source databases.

    There is room for both. This isn't an either-or situation, and yes, sometimes it does make business sense to go with a closed source option, at least until the open source alternatives are (like linux) better suited for the task at hand.

    -- Gary F.
  • linux has bigmem patches in the kernel so it can address upto 4 GB on a 32bit x86 system.
  • Things I miss:

    Command line interface.

    The glow of a green phosphorus screen

    Byte Magazine in my mailbox

    In a day when PC rags are nothing more than Microsoft marketing, Byte magazine and it's team of insitefull, knowledgable tech writers have insipred, and instructed countless programers around the world. Long live the amazing Jon Udell and Byte Magazine.

  • The best thing that freely available (MySQL) or OSS (PostgreSQL, older version of MySQL) databases can do is to fully support SQL. Then they can worry about going after the big boys. It's annoying when your database system doesn't support referential integrity (PostgreSQL) or subselects (MySQL), to give an example of two very useful SQL features that are missing from free databases.

    The next best thing that would make these databases more popular is to have better admin tools. There are a lot of independent admin tool/interface builder projects out there (Pgaccess, Kmysql, etc...) that are showing a lot of promise so I'm hopeful that this shortcoming will be solved soon.
  • Most DBs that support a remote admin tool can be administered from any client OS. As noted Sybase on Linux or HP/UX, etc. can be administered from the Windows based tool. I have found that its really more important what version of the tool and DB are involved, versus the OS on client and server. There are also several third party tools like Platinum's Desktop DBA that can support multiple DBs on the backend, and on multiple platforms. You usually just have to run a SQL script on the backend that installs some stored procedures to facilitate the front end tool.
  • Use PostgreSQL. The world's most advanced Open Source database. www.postgresql.org
  • Just ask which is the better software for the job, given all the factors.

    In the case of OSS, one of the factors would be likely long term support and development. But that is not the ONLY factor.

    If you had to develop a new game, you'd probably license the propietary Quake engine instead of using the open source Golgotha. If you had to build a giant database, DB2 would probably be more viable than MySQL.

    In the case of SOLID, you could reject it on the grounds that it is a small company which could pull the rug. That doesn't mean IBM's DB2 (which is EQUALLY closed source) is going to go under as well. If you are evaluating long term support, look at the facts, not the ideology. (Again, the advantage of something being OSS would be one of the facts in its favor, I'm not against open source - I use linux).

    The problem with ideology is that people believe things based mainly on their principles, not on reality. So you'll end up making a decision based on ideals, not sound judgement. Just look at the diehard fanatics who claim that Linux has more apps than Windows, or the MS fans who claim NT is more reliable than anything, or the COBOL fans who believe its the most advanced language there is.

    Again, I know if it's open source, it has many strengths. Include them in your judgement. But don't preclude everything else simply on ideology - you'll only reduce your own choices.

    L.
  • The ONE tool I recommend to anyone for administering any kind of DB is Embarcadero DBArtisan 5.03.

    It can administer Sybase, Oracle, and DB2 databases running under Linux. I've done it.

    You can administer MS SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0, Sybase 11.0.3.33 (my old Linux Sybase box), Sybase 11.5 and up, Oracle 7.3 and up, and DB2 on it.

    You can even share schemas between the multiple versions, and copy tables across different DBMS's.

    And yes, they use "cartridges" for different DB types. This is quite good if they want to support the other Linux databases out there.

    However, I don't work for Embarcadero, but I recommend their tools highly. I've never had it so easy administering DB's across AIX, Linux, and NT/98 before. If you do any DBA work, you know what a pain in the butt it is!
  • On the very first page, the author says "My advice is: Don't let ideology get in the way of business," and then he's promptly abandoned by a vendor who changes the licensing model. Amazingly, he can't seem to put this together to realize that open-source ideologies often make good business sense. If he hadn't gone proprietary, he wouldn't have been left in the cold by the controlling vendor. A mildly interesting article, but he misses the most obvious lesson.
  • Closed-source software is fine as long as it doesn't try to prevent the creation of Open Source software, doesn't try to pass it off as Open Source software, and it isn't a critical part of the Linux infrastructure. These databases are none of that, they're fine. I objected to Qt (before they fixed their license) because it was being positioned as an infrastructure component. I object to StarOffice because it is being passed off as Open Source. I object to software patents because they act to prevent the creation of Open Source software. If you don't want to do any of those things, we can get along just fine.

    Bruce

  • And then he talks about how it doesn't make sense to be religious about Free Software / Open Source when it's your business that counts, but the first thing you hear after that is how users got screwed because the product in question wasn't Open Source!
    I'm not sure that's a fair interpretation of Udell's point. Certainly he makes the point that it's a bad idea to code exclusively for one DB, but that falls under the "putting all your eggs in the same basket" brand of conventional wisdom. The sentiment you seem to be picking up on - "Commercial software should be treated with some suspicion" - was voiced by one of the newsgroup contributors, and not by Udell, who seems much more amenable to closed source DBs.
  • Some IS people from my Uni. approached me at our LDD to ask about moving their databases from NT/SQL and Linux/miniSQL to solely Linux/*insert commercial database*. They want out of the NT world due to cost, stability, and security. But the major gripe they had with most of the DBs they had tried with Linux was that there were no tools to add tables, occasionally modify the schema, and do other administrative tasks from a Windows client. Currently, when the guy in the warehouse needs a table added he has to go talk to the Systems Programmers and have them write a Perl script to do it. They want to give him a way to add that table from a GUI so they can do other things and make his life easier. And no they don't want to write the GUI themselves.

    So here is my question:

    Which DB available for Linux has the best support for administration from a Windows GUI? They would also like the Linux box to handle authentication to the DB thru Samba. I told them that I wasn't sure if that was an samba issue of something that the DB vendors would handle. So I guess that's two questions then. ;)

  • Sybase (Score:2)

    by Matts ( 1628 )
    I've had great experience with Sybase's beta product. I can't really see anything beta about it so far, and I've been using it for nearly a year now. It's blazingly fast for most operations, very stable, and the documentation is amazing - the full Sybase documentation set ships with it (albeit in Postscript format - not great for searching/indexing - sybooks would have been nicer). And at a price that's right. I just wish Sybase would get off their butt's with their full support behind the product - Sybase have a long history of not going headlong into technology that could put them a step ahead (hence Oracle overtook them in the market ages ago). That and the fact that it's not their latest version of Sybase (which therefore lacks row level locking) are the only dissapointments.

    I guess I've just always had a soft spot for Sybase (I think because of the excellent docs) and it's not let me down on Linux yet.

    Matt.

    perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-: ,hacker Perl another Just)'
  • You've nailed it on the head! Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond are probably slapping their desks while reading this and exclaiming "See...do you see what I was talking about!"

    I wonder whether the initial advantages of choosing Solid will outweigh the cost of choosing a new DB? I guess it depends on how he designed his application. If he was doing anything funky with Solid's API he may have created a headhache for himself.

  • Allaire tells me that they will have a Linux version of Cold Fusion out in November...can't wait!
  • I don't rate most commercial software I have seen for Linux - most seems to have only been tested on the latest Red Hate. You are lucky to get it installed, let alone running on any other dist.

    Oracle have done an intelligent port to Linux. It runs fine on Debian, which practically no other commercial software does. I would have no problems recommending Oracle on Debian to anyone for developing any sort of business applications. Oracle tech support has been really knowledgable and helpful the one time I needed them.

    The only worry is that I think Oracle licenses have recently gone up in price. I am not so concerned about their technical excellence as about greed and the fact that we are now locked in to proprietry SQL. Still I must admit we are getting a good product for the dollars.
  • nothing is completely reliable...
  • love it or leave it!
  • Let's try another example: remember the O'Reilley interview a little while back? They heard a bunch of wonderful things about some NT based web tools, and they went "Well, let's not be blinded by ideology on this", and then they discovered that the NT "solution" was grossly oversold. Now they've backed away from it and they're going with open source. A little commitment to "ideology" in this case would have saved them a lot of pain.

    The point of all the ideological debate is not adherance to a religion for the sake of the religion, the point is to try and discover a general set of principles (or at least some rules of thumb) that might save you from making some mistakes. It's a lot of work to try and carefully evaluate every option. Maybe it's flat out impossible: you can't develop a project using every combination of available software before deciding which is best. You *have* to "reduce your choices" somehow. So what shortcuts are you going to use?

    It's looking like "stay away from proprietary software if you can" is a pretty good shortcut.

  • Well, O'Reilly made a bad choice. I didn't say every closed solution is the best. I said pick the best one available, and it appears they weren't blinded by ideology but still picked the wrong one.

    I agree about the general set of principles - normally it's stuff like compatibility with your existing software, quality, etc. etc. And sure, if it's open source, it's a point in its favor.

    All I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense to make a business decision based on ideology. Sure, a personal decision is fine, because the whole point is personal satisfaction. But if you're using it for running your business, then that's your main goal, not the ideology.

    Actually, I think a lot of people who make purchasing decisions for IT tend to have a pro-MS or pro-big-corporation ideology. It gives an illusion of safety. But again, I think it hurts them in the long run.

    L.
  • Perhaps it's time someone invented a load-balanced postgresql-running fail-over / cluster thing of some description then :8)

    Technology's the same, really - and I happen to like some of the postgresql ways of blitting data from one server to another, too.

    Just my $0.002 :)
  • the first thing you hear after that is how users got screwed because the product in question wasn't Open Source!

    To be honest the only thing thats needs to be open source in the instance of databases, is the interface... if you use an open source database interface, that allows you to change the underlying database at will (open source implementation of ODBC?) it means you can choose your database, and make sure its the best for your needs... and if things change you can reasses the situation, and change the database engine if you fell you need to...
    --

    "I was either onto something, or on something!"

  • Is 11.9.2 SMP aware?

    We run 11.5 on a couple NT boxes and the only reason we haven't upgraded them to Linux yet is because 11.0 (the only Linux version up until a bit a go) didn't support worker threads.

    I really do like Sybase,and in fact their lightweight database (Adaptive Server Anywhere) is one helluva product. It is quick, small and scales very well, especially in distributed environments. With 11.9 and better of ASE, ASA can even sqlremote with eachother.

    The only thing that sucks about Sybase is their attitude towards

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

  • Re:Sybase (Score:1)

    by ink ( 4325 )
    I guess I've just always had a soft spot for Sybase (I think because of the excellent docs) and it's not let me down on Linux yet.

    Did they port their documentation webserver to Linux yet?

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

  • I'm disappointed to see so little discussion of PostgreSQL in the article and the comments. I've just recently begun looking at PostgreSQL, as I'm looking to start developing database apps on Linux . I'm currently developing java apps on NT/Solaris with Oracle at work, and while that's a great platform, it sure would be expensive if I wanted to start up a cool database driven web-site running on Solaris with Oracle as the back end....

    One thing I didn't realize was that a lot of the nice features of RDBMS's like Oracle, the Object-Relational stuff for instance, were pioneered in PostgreSQL back when it was plain old Postgres and it was a research project at Berkeley. PostgreSQL really has a lot to offer as a RDBMS, even if it's not quite at the level of Oracle, DB2, Sybase, or Informix. For one thing, it's free, and Open Source. I looked at mSQL and MySQL, too, but I'm a SQL-weenie and I really like transactions, correlated sub-queries, etc...

    Anyway, just wanted to say that people should give PostgreSQL a look if they need a full featured RDBMS and don't have the budget for one of the Big Boys... Now if they can just add SQLJ and Java triggers/Stored Procs...
  • We're currently using Oracle 8 Enterprise Edition, running on Red Hat 6.0... pretty impressive, our first database was running under Access97 and when it reached around 200MB a simple

    select count(*) from table;

    Took minutes, we then experimented with SQL Server 7.0, but after a few weeks with that, we moved to Oracle 8EE on Red Hat.

    Pretty much beats the crap outta both previous setups... I had it on a PPro 180 with 128MB or RAM, and it was way faster than MS SQL 7.0 on a Dual PII200 with 256MB of RAM...

    Oracle and RedHat are both working very well, although Oracle 8EE was built with RH5.2 in mind, you have to patch it to make it work with GLIBC2.1 which comes with RH6...

    For those of you who want to check out a nice step-by-step install sequence for Oracle8 w/ RH6 go see http://jordan.fortwayne.com/oracle/rh6x.html

  • Yes, 11.9.2 on Linux does support SMP. I've tested it with max_online_engines set to 2 on a dual processor box, but I've scaled back to just a single engine 'cause I didn't want the box dedicated to Sybase.

    I've always been told that min/max_online engines should be set to # of processors -1

  • We too have been using Sybase. I wanted to go OSS but with half the company having just finished long-term on-site hitches at a Sybase shop, it was a no contest.

    I have been most interested in if anyone else out there is using it. I am working on porting some MySQL stuff to work with Sybase, and vice versa. In short, would anyone care? Would I get 2 hits, or should I brace my server against the /. effect?

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