Open Source Databases "50% Cheaper" 276
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:enterprises also want (Score:5, Insightful)
And before you say it, MySQL AG is still small potatoes compared to Oracle, Microsoft, or IBM.
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1. He does not want to risk his job if there are problems... if there is an Oracle database, he can just use the Oracle support and tell the boss that they are using the best 2. There is no monetary incentive for the IT professional to switch. If the IT professional would see a benefit to himself that would outweigh the possible problems, there might be a switch,
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Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that perhaps I have the skills that many chairmen lack, which might make me unusually competitive and well-suited for the position?
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Where are the test results? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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That's less about support and more about image.
The quality of the support (such as likelihood of getting someone to be able to fix your DB when it's fallen over
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product support is over-rated (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
PostgreSQL support rocks too (Score:2)
The issue is what sort of talent pool you can attract, not what sort of companies back it. And PostgreSQL has an awesome talent pool of developers.
Note you still don't have (and will probably never have) an equivalent to RAC, but that is something maybe a proprietary company can come in and offer? I have ideas on how this could be done but I don't think it would be doable as an open source project...
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With the kind of dollars big DB companies charge, if you're a big fish and able to solve your business problems with Open Source instead, you could pretty much steer the course of the industry for a fraction of the cost to buy from a big vendor.
With the kind of money being tossed
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One issue with comparing Oracle with Open Source solutions is the lack of feature parity. And By that, I'm not saying OSS isn't good. PostGres and MySQL are pretty good but they currently lack load-balancing and data replication across multiple data centers. Oracle also has PL/SQL [wikipedia.org]which is currently (AFAIK) has no (or short) equivalents in OSS DBs. (PostGRE hasPL/pgSQL but apparently is not feature parity.
When
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To companies delivering software as a product, you are just another customer who can be fobbed off to an offshore call centre and given the run-around for months before finally escalating your problem to the appropriate level.
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Gotta agree with you.
The simple rule of thumb is, "if it's got to be used by customers/clients, get it from a vendor."
0% savings for me (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, they're my bitter enemies whom I cant yet kill because they still serve a purpose.
But one day... their uppance will come!
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The big boys are the only ones who need the big DB vendors, and even in that c
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> and have been running open source databases from the beginning,
> this isn't news. MySQL and Postgres are your friends.
Right on. Those of us with over 16 million records in a PostgreSQL [blogs.com] database are pretty happy with what we're seeing. And we're willing to run the same database on production servers [getindi.com] as well.
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I do value my time. Unfortunately, I do not have a large bank account to draw from. I can afford to invest time into my company, while I can't afford to invest the thousands necessary to support an Oracle infrastructure. Time I have.
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I don't think this holds true for database systems.
As far as I can see, the big databases like Oracle or Sybase are targeted at big corporations that don't have any second thoughts about hiring a full-time DBA - and as a consequence you will need one to use these products. Okay, maybe not a fulltime DBA, but at least a trained professional (trained for that particular application) to invest quite some time to even get stuff going.
For Postgres, OTOH, you'll just need someone smart with general knowledge of
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Re:0% savings for me (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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What kind of administrative overhead does Oracle require for you? I set it up, takes about 20 minutes. Apply my scripts to size the server resources and I'm away. Sometimes it'll take about an hour to copy a TB of data but that's pretty damned fast. Once that is done the server is up and running and I never need to touch it. The only reason I even ever login to my Oracle boxes is to check and make sure backups are running properly and to ensure there are no sudden changes in disk space usage. Haven't had an
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How could this be? SQL Server is half the price per processor and provides most features out of the box, Oracle requires add ons. I'm not going to say SQL Server is better but it does provide more bang for the buck.
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Per Processor for the enterprise edition of SQL 2005 vs what you get with the Standard edition from Oracle which didn't require us to go per processor. With Oracle we could have a small number of named users and have access to all the 64bit addressing and processors we can shake a stick at. Plus we can cluster them which was the big fault for MS SQL. We caught Oracle at a good time, they came down a lot over the initial price quote they gave us.
The only expensive part was paying for access to the metabase
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My consulting experience holds this to be true as we
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I find SQL Server to be far more productive than Oracle, because in addition to the (weak) CLI and ODBC, SQL Server has a usable GUI.
I find MySQL far more productive than either because in addition to the CLI, there are FULL GUI apps, FULL web front ends, AND ODBC. Yeah, there's a web front end, but it's kind of weak.
The catch with the open source solution is: you have to know that mysqlcc, mysql-administrator, mysql-query-browser, and ph
DUH! (Score:2)
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SQL Server = Almost Free (Score:2, Informative)
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An experienced DBA can set up MySQL with many useful tools in a matter of minutes, too. And you can pay him more because you're not paying Microsoft.
The important question is whether you've bought an application that requires a specific database. As I look at various enterprise apps, they don't come stand-alone, but come in versions tailored for specific databases. If more people said "Do you support MySQL?" we'd see greater use. C
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In small businesses when you have one person who is your network admin / systems admin / dba / tech support it is important to have products that are easy for a (skilled) tech to figure out.
Sure, a MySQL expert can script and use the Open Source tools faster than a Microsoft Exper
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Let me introduce you to a friend of mine: phpmyadmin (cost: $0)
Then you even be sitting on your tractor out in the corn
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Not to be an ass, but phpFlashMyAdmin is not $0, but $5.
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http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator / [mysql.com]
I still find Microsofts' Enterprise Manager to be excellent, very intuitive.
I had to use Oracle's Java equivalent at uni a few times, and it was painfully slow and ugly (I've been told it has been re-done).
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In the grand scheme of things - the amount of money that goes to MSFT is insignificant compared to the revenue of a business. 5K for SQL Server standard edition - and "free" developer tools to support the DB. Almost every other database platforms packaged tools (i.e. provided with the default install) are insufficent to effectively manage AND develop for a no
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As with any Microsoft product, it is POSSIBLE to do a lot of things without full knowledge of all of the functions. However, it is always better to have knowledge of what
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Second, unless you're doing something out of the ordinary, simply installing mysql or postgres in the same way you usually install programs (be that apt-get, rpm, MS Installer, etc). is all you need to get the database up and running. The same is true of the GUI tools to manage the database -- the Windows installer for postgres includes PgAdminIII in the same package as the database itself.
I'm not bashing
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PLSQL is also somewhat nicer than TSQL.
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What are you talking about. MySQL can be installed by a monkey and is well documented. Often you don't even have to do anything to install it but check a box on your Linux installer.
If you must have a GUI here http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/mysqlgui/ [mysql.com] is one of many.
I am glad that you like SQL Server. If it fits your needs more power to you. However MySQL really isn
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Maybe it's more difficult to set up if you don't like to edit the pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf files, but other than that...
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Editing pg_hba.conf is nothing compared to having to configure a TNS Listener instance and names files on all the clients, even with (or perhaps in spite of) the "help" of the wizard.
PostgreSQL is an absolute breeze to install and configure.
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Oh god, those two words give me the shivers, now I will have nightmares.
I love my pg_hba.conf.
Re:SQL Server = Almost Free (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Um what do you mean about the lack of command-line features? SQL Server has only one interface and that interface is SQL text sent to it from a client. The only thing that all the GUI tools do is write SQL statements for you and send them to the SQL engine. Anything that the GUI tools can do, you can do as well from the command line (ISQL / OSQL / Query Analyze
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Re:SQL Server = Almost Free (Score:4, Informative)
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.msp
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.
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me = totally sorry (Score:2)
> Most open source database products, including MySQL, seem to require quite a bit of digging and cobbling together to set up and maintain.
Not on linux IMO. Of course if the windows port of postgres used to require, IIRC, cygwin it's not really a db fault is it? Never had problems with a couple of local and remote installation of Postgres. And the fcgi app connecting to it survives live updates of the OS and the db code.
>Microsoft SQL Server has fantastic tool support, no comm
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Actually, that's just MySQL, the others are comparable to SQL Server as far as the complexity of a "basic" setup goes. Of course one could say that the time needed for a new installation is just not important in the long run.
I've heard mostly good things about the newer SQL Server versions from people, unfortunately you can't use it alongside a free/open application
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Has anyone done any tests lately to see if that is still the case? EULA be damned, post as an AC if you have to
I hear SQL Server 2005 finally got MVCC and did away with row locking. Hard to believe even 2003 still locked rows for every write, but there it is. Even without that edge I'd like to believe PostgreSQL will still kick ass on complex queries, but haven't done any empirical testing against the new MSSQL engi
SQL Servers can be pretty expensive (Score:2)
Microsoft SQL Server is indeed cheaper than Oracle for commercial use, but it requires you r
you must be kidding (Score:2)
There are standard GUIs for administering MySQL, probably for people like you, but most people I know prefer the command line. The command line is easier even for non-DBAs, because it's far easier to write down and document what needs to be done.
An experienced DBA can set up a new installation [of Microsoft SQL Server] in a
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I have done mySQL, hard to get 'right' as you need set all the options right for locking and data types for example.
SQL Server vanilla flavored installs are easy, but properly securing it, i.e., having it run as a user with lower privileges than 'System' is *hard*. You usually end up having to give it SysAdmin like powers which is wrong wrong wrong. Then there is the upgrade and patch tread mill and for any DB of any moderate size (greater than a
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Of those, SQL Server's the easiest to use. Followed by MySQL (with phpMyAdmin), Informix (with gui) and Ingres. SQL Server and MySQL are simple enough that even someone who's not too familiar with databases (they'd still need to understand the relational model, mind) can use them.
If you're using your database as a simple datastore, with all of the logic being
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With MySQL, forget it.
PostgreSQL has "redo logs" (it calls them Write Ahead Logging). You can do log archiving as a form of incremental backups, or you can copy the WAL segments to another server for hot standby -- we have an HA cluster at work that uses this method; more reliable than a SAN-based cluster as there's no single point of failure. You can do point-in-time recovery and switch between different timelines if necessary.
There's al
So in other words... (Score:2)
How is this a surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Therefore personnel costs probably don't vary that greatly.''
Except that there may be a lower entry barrier to becoming an expert at one of the Free databases than to becoming one at a commercial database. I've worked with MySQL 3 and various versions of PostgreSQL, and, while I'm by no mea
Depends how you define business (lottery is not?) (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article
And their application is not critical either, just win or lose.
CC.
60% of.. (Score:2, Funny)
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 (Score:2)
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?
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Don't tell that to the Russians [windowsitpro.com]...
In all seriousness, I think what the OP was referring to is MySQL's tendency to silently change input data rather than aborting the transaction with an error. Examples include things like invalid dates, or out-of-range numbers being truncated. It's been a major MySQL gripe for a long time. The latest version (finally
your mileage may vary (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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2. Blatantly untrue. Oracle will scale better on multiple machines, but on a single machine Postgr
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Unpredictability seems to be ingrained deeply into the MySQL psyche. This always makes me chuckle: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/mysql.html [ex-parrot.com]
Anyway, I don't think anyone is actually seriously pushing MySQL for the whole "Enterprise with a capital 'E'" thing...
I agree with the other stuff, Postgres does have extremely rudimentary partitioning abi
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All of the commercial database software packages (that I know of) have a specific part of the license which forbids publishing benchmarks. You'll never see head-to-head benchmarks of MS SQL, Oracle, DB2, or any others, because they don't feel that any benchmarks would reflect the results of their product fully optimized.
In a sense, they're right. The "speed" of a database depends on many variables-- disk speed, network speed, CPU speed, contention from other processes, OS overhead, and countless configura
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fluff piece. (Score:2)
"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,
To be fair... (Score:2)
...it was based on interviews. You'd have to read the original report for the methodology. TCO savings can be calculated by project or enterprise function. You can't dismiss the conclusion as fluff without knowing the background of the study.
I can say on a project level OSS database products are almost untouchable on a cost basis. At least every one I've been involved in.
Well its obvious... (Score:2, Interesting)
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
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Summary (Score:2)
quantum: "Actually, Oracle has a demonstrably worse security record"
kiwi: "Security doesn't matter. Also, I'm rubber; you're glue."
Lesson: STFU when the facts pwn you.
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Fact : Enterprises don't like open source because it has been insecure, isn't proven, is developed by possibly dubious people and doesn't have the features they need. End Fact.
Deal with it. Abusing people doesn't change the fact!!
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It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
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Again... just because you think MS's product is poor doesn't make Open Source any better.
I think it's fair to say (Score:2)
Remember kids, if it's expensive - it must be good right?!
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Except that if you chat to MySQL (the company) they'll tell you that they do have high performance scalability, fail-over clustering and all the other things. However, they're also keen to charge you a licence fee for that stuff, and support costs at the level you'd expect for qualified professional support staff.
So TCO pretty rapidly does become an issue.
Oracle lost a sale to us because despite having a product that would give us far better performance the TCO argument didn't work out. Frankly we'd rather
Read the article (Score:2)
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.
Smells like utopia (Score:2, Funny)
"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..... (Score:2)
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 v
Free versions from the "big guys" (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Re:This just in! (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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PostgreSQL has query rewrite and updatable view thanks to its rules system. the others are missing (to my knowledge).
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Access sucks balls, but then nobody with a clue uses Access anyway.
And don't get me wrong - there are *plenty* of good things to bitch about as far as Microsoft goes. Like the disorganization and inconsistency of Office 2007 RTM...
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As someone who has used SQLServer, Oracle, DB2, PostrgresSQL, MySQL and several other smaller DBs on various projects over the past 20 years I've been in IT, and has been DBA on some of those too, SQLServer is most definatly my favourite. It's absolutly solid, runs itself largely and has excellent features. I also like Postgres, which can s