Open source
Discussion of relational database management systems that are offered through some version of open source licensing. Related subjects include:
High-end MySQL use
To a large extent, MySQL lives in two different alternate universes from most other DBMS. One is for low-end, simple database applications. For example, of all the DBMS I write about, MySQL is the one I actually use in my own business — because MySQL sits underneath WordPress, and WordPress is what runs my blogs. My largest database (the one for DBMS2) contains 12 megabytes of data in 11 tables, none of which has yet reached 5000 rows in size. Read more
| Categories: Google, MySQL, OLTP, Open source, Parallelization | 1 Comment |
Infobright update
In connection with the announcements that:
- Infobright is open sourcing its analytical DBMS product (which is a really good idea)
- Infobright raised a $10 million VC round, with Sun as a new investor
I got my first real Infobright update since January. Highlights included: Read more
| Categories: Data warehousing, Infobright, MySQL, Open source | 2 Comments |
Infobright’s open source move has a lot of potential
Infobright announced today that it’s going full-bore into open source – specifically in the MySQL ecosystem — with the licensing approach, pricing, distribution strategy, and VC money from Sun that such a move naturally entails. I think this is a great idea, for a number of reasons: Read more
| Categories: Columnar database management, Data warehousing, Infobright, MySQL, Open source | 4 Comments |
Infobright goes open source — sound bites
As has recently become my custom when there is industry news, I herewith provide quotable sound bites about Infobright and its move to an open source strategy. Weather permitting, I’ll be on a plane to the Netezza conference this afternoon. And I’ve only slept about 10 hours since Thursday. So I hope these suffice, although if they don’t and you email me I’ll try to respond by some time Tuesday morning.
- For almost anybody in the MySQL world who needs high-performance analytics, Infobright is the first good solution.
- Infobright’s product strengths and use cases are a great match for open source.
- Most leading analytic DBMS have open source roots, but they generally haven’t been open sourced themselves. Infobright immediately becomes one of the premier open source analytic database offerings. The only serious open source rival that’s coming to mind is MonetDB.
- Storage engines are MySQL’s achilles heel. Each good MySQL storage engine is precious.
- Infobright has enough production references to show that it can get the job done for many data mart uses. It won’t meet everybody’s needs, but it’s well worth an experimental download.
- If you want to build a little data mart and run it yourself, most good products are too complicated or expensive. But in the right use cases, Infobright pretty much runs itself, and there’s no arguing with the Community Edition price (free).
- So Infobright is a great fit for the individual downloader – i.e., for the stereotypical open source user.
- Netezza, DATAllegro, Vertica, ParAccel, Greenplum, and Aster Data are all based in one way or another on PostgreSQL (even though Vertica includes no PostgreSQL code). DATAllegro was based on Ingres. Infobright and Kickfire are based on MySQL.
- If Infobright doesn’t get the job done, try downloading Vertica, which – while closed source – is also free for download and development.
- The “rough set” part of Infobright’s story is a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but the “knowledge grid” part is more real.
- When you compare Infobright to Teradata, Netezza, Greenplum, or even Vertica, it’s kind of a toy. But when you compare it to generic MySQL, it’s more like rocket science.
- Infobright was too little, too late in the mainstream analytic DBMS market. They had to do something different. Kudos to them for recognizing that.
- The Infobright product has some serious limitations. If you want a market that’s willing to adopt a DBMS with serious limitations, the MySQL world is the place for you.
Posts today on open source DBMS
- Infobright’s smart move to open source
- General Infobright update
- Infobright sound bites
- The many faces of open source DBMS
| Categories: Data warehousing, Infobright, MySQL, Open source | 3 Comments |
Introduction to Jaspersoft – the actual business
There were so many numbers in my introductory call with Jaspersoft that I’ve split them out in a separate post. With that out of the way, here’s what’s really going on, per Nick Halsey.
The Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite is BI technology designed to be integrated with operational apps. Thus, Jaspersoft says that operational BI is the core of its business. In particular: Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, Jaspersoft, Open source | 3 Comments |
Jaspersoft numbers
I chatted Friday with marketing VP Nick Halsey of Jaspersoft, which is probably the most successful open source business intelligence company. (That’s based just anecdotally, on mentions. I’d put Pentaho #2, with Talend commonly getting mentioned along with the two BI vendors for its ETL.) I’ll go straight to the numbers, per Nick, before talking in a separate post about what Jaspersoft actually sells.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Jaspersoft, Market share and customer counts, Open source, Pricing | 7 Comments |
EnterpriseDB update
I had lunch today with CTO Bob Zurek of EnterpriseDB, who turns out to live in almost the same town I do (they technically separated in 1783, but share a high school today). DBMS-related highlights included:
- EnterpriseDB thinks PostgreSQL training and certification are a big deal for increasing PostgreSQL adoption.
- EnterpriseDB’s business focus right now (at least, one of them) is moving developers from interest to download to deployment and payment — i.e., the standard funnel for open source and open-source-inspired products.
- EnterpriseDB finds it important to be a good PostgreSQL community citizen. This makes a lot of sense, as EnterpriseDB doesn’t control the core PostgreSQL engine, even if it does employ some of the core PostgreSQL developers.
- But “open source” is not the same as “free”.
- I got the impression that the GridSQL technology EnterpriseDB acquired is being used to go after general read-mostly, horizontally-scaling applications (i.e., MySQL’s sweet spot). I did not get the impression, by way of contrast, that EnterpriseDB is out to play catch-up — e.g., with GreenPlum — in MPP data warehousing.
- Bob pointed out that something like “Vacuum” to clean up the database periodically is needed in a MVCC (MultiVersion Concurrency Control) engine. He thinks PostgreSQL’s autovacuum is good but not ideal.
- Bob draws this as yet another two-dimensional positioning graph, but in essence he thinks PostgreSQL and Postgres Plus are well-suited for a large space that’s above MySQL and below Oracle. I don’t think he really contradicted Kee Kwan’s opinion that there are good times to use PostgreSQL and good times to use MySQL.
- I was wrong when I previously said EnterpriseDB now offers MySQL portability. It just offers MySQL migration.
- The Elastra/EnterpriseDB cloud offering isn’t generally available yet.
- Stay tuned for developments in replication/high availability.
| Categories: EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Mid-range, Open source, PostgreSQL | 1 Comment |
Pushback on the PostgreSQL vs. MySQL comparison
It should come as no surprise that not everybody agrees with EnterpriseDB’s views on the PostgreSQL/MySQL comparison. In particular, the High Availability MySQL blog offers a detailed rebuttal post, with more in the comment thread. According to MySQL fans, EnterpriseDB got its facts wrong on several matters regarding MySQL and InnoDB, especially in the areas of triggers and locking. And of course they disagree with EnterpriseDB’s general conclusion. 🙂
| Categories: MySQL, Open source, PostgreSQL | Leave a Comment |
How is MySQL’s join performance these days?
In a comment thread on a recent post comparing MySQL to Postgres, Jonathon Moore chimed in based on experience with both products. His characterization of some MySQL problems: Read more
| Categories: Infobright, MySQL, Open source | 8 Comments |
PostgreSQL vs. MySQL, as per EnterpriseDB
EnterpriseDB put out a white paper arguing for the superiority of PostgreSQL over MySQL, even without EnterpriseDB’s own Postgres Plus extensions. Highlights of EnterpriseDB’s opinion include:
- EnterpriseDB asserts that MyISAM is the only MySQL storage engine with decent performance.
- EnterpriseDB then bashes MyISAM for all sorts of well-deserved reasons, especially ACID-noncompliance.
- EnterpriseDB asserts that row-level triggers, lacking in MySQL but present in PostgreSQL, are the most important kind of trigger.
- EnterpriseDB claims PostgreSQL is superior in procedural language support to MySQL.
- EnterpriseDB claims PostgreSQL is superior in authentication support to MySQL.
| Categories: EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Mid-range, MySQL, Open source, PostgreSQL | 17 Comments |