EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus
Analysis of EnterpriseDB and especially its PostgreSQL-based Postgres Plus product line. Related subjects include:
DBMS transparency layers never seem to sell well
A DBMS transparency layer, roughly speaking, is software that makes things that are written for one brand of database management system run unaltered on another.* These never seem to sell well. ANTs has failed in a couple of product strategies. EnterpriseDB’s Oracle compatibility only seems to have netted it a few sales, and only a small fraction of its total business. ParAccel’s and Dataupia’s transparency strategies have produced even less.
*The looseness in that definition highlights a key reason these technologies don’t sell well — it’s hard to be sure that what you’re buying will do a good job of running your particular apps.
This subject comes to mind for two reasons. One is that IBM seems to have licensed EnterpriseDB’s Oracle transparency layer for DB2. The other is that a natural upgrade path from MySQL to Oracle might be a MySQL transparency layer on top of an Oracle base.
| Categories: ANTs Software, Dataupia, Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, IBM and DB2, Market share and customer counts, MySQL, Oracle, ParAccel | 11 Comments |
First thoughts on Oracle acquiring Sun
- Wow.
- And during the week of the MySQL conference, too.
- In the must-read slide presentation, Oracle’s says all the right things about being committed to all product lines and technologies. On the whole, this is believable.
- Oracle says it’s focusing Sun hardware sales on existing Oracle/Sun customers. Makes sense.
- Oracle mentions OpenStorage prominently. Makes sense. Integrating DBMS with storage is Oracle’s high-end DBMS future. (E.g., Exadata.)
- HP can’t be happy.
- MySQL and InnoDB are reunited.
- MySQL is apt to get decent, much as it would have under IBM.
- Even so, if you really believe in open source’s freedom, it’s time to look at PostgreSQL …
- … or EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus, although my recent dealings with EnterpriseDB underscore the importance of being VERY careful about counting your fingers after you shake hands with that company.
- And I wouldn’t be surprised if another shoe dropped soon on the EnterpriseDB front. (Please excuse the mixed metaphor.)
- I used to laugh at how many different app servers Sun had acquired. Oracle acquired a number too. Together it’s quite a pile of them.
- Oracle says acquiring Java is a great big deal. I’m not sure I see why that would really be true.
More later. I have a radio interview in a few minutes on a very different subject.
| Categories: EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, HP and Neoview, MySQL, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL | 20 Comments |
Ingres update
I talked with Ingres today. Much of the call was fluff — open-source rah-rah, plus some numbers showing purported success, but so finely parsed as to be pretty meaningless. (To Ingres’ credit, they did offer to let me talk w/ their CFO, even if they offered no promises as to whether he’d offer any more substantive information.) Highlights included: Read more
| Categories: Actian and Ingres, Data warehousing, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, MySQL, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Sybase | 6 Comments |
Database implications if IBM acquires Sun
Reported or rumored merger discussions between IBM and Sun are generating huge amounts of discussion today (some links below). Here are some quick thoughts around the subject of how the IBM/Sun deal — if it happens — might affect the database management system industry. Read more
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 |
EnterpriseDB’s itemized claims of Oracle compatibility
Obviously, I’m poking around EnterpriseDB’s site this morning (in connection with their status as my client, actually). Anyhow, we all know that one of EnterpriseDB’s core claims is great Oracle-compatibility — but what exactly do they mean by that? I found a fairly clearly laid-out answer, as of last year, in this white paper and and — even more simply — in this blog post summarizing the white paper.
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 |
Oracle’s hefty price increases
Jeff Jones of IBM wrote in to point out that Oracle is slathering on the price increases. I quote: Read more
| Categories: Dataupia, Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Oracle | 5 Comments |
EnterpriseDB survey on open source database adoption (participation time)
CTO Bob Zurek of EnterpriseDB asked me to pass along a link to a short survey on open source database adoption. He plans to release the results publicly after they are collected. Bob stressed to me that he used to be a Forrester analyst, his point being that he knows how to be analytically objective.
Looking over the 15 questions (14 of which are simple multiple-choice), he lived up quite well to the “unbiased” claim. E.g., the only Postgres option cited is PostgreSQL, rather than EnterpriseDB’s proprietary/value-added packagings. I do see one little screw-up: Several of the questions are worded as if the respondent is, enterprise-wide, running one and exactly one instance of open source DBMS. But otherwise it seems like a clean, tight, simple survey.
| Categories: EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Open source | 1 Comment |
Database blades are not what they used to be
In which we bring you another instantiation of Monash’s First Law of Commercial Semantics: Bad jargon drives out good.
When Enterprise DB announced a partnership with Truviso for a “blade,” I naturally assumed they were using the term in a more-or-less standard way, and hence believed that it was more than a “Barney” press release.* Silly me. Rather than referring to something closely akin to “datablade,” EnterpriseDB’s “blade” program turns out to just to be a catchall set of partnerships.
*A “Barney” announcement is one whose entire content boils down to “I love you; you love me.”
According to EnterpriseDB CTO Bob Zurek, the main features of the “blade” program include: Read more