Comments on: Oracle – the devourer of open source databases

By: kinjalkishor

kinjalkishor — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:47:51 +0000

Yes, the best part is that Open Source is like a genuine Insurance Policy. It will always be available automagically.But it should be that way and that is good too.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:47:07 +0000

I’ve had only a fleeting experience with Postgres – it worked fine, but I just tended to experience Oracle and SQL Server more in business (usually incumbent), and MySQL in web environments. If I was looking to create a serious database app now though, I’d definitely look at it.

Java’s position is pretty stable since Oracle depends so much on it already, but I agree it could use some better focus. Oracle will probably steer the focal point more towards enterprise issues than RIA, and since that’s where I think Java works best anyway I see no problems with that. It will be interesting to see what happens to NetBeans – I was always an Eclipse fan personally (the only IDE that felt more productive than Visual Studio) but even so the healthy competition between the two pushed both forwards.

By: Paul Evans

Paul Evans — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:20:20 +0000

Personally I always preferred Postgres over MySql anyway. Better licence too. Possibly a bit biased because of Ingres experiences, but Postgres performed way better on some difficult queries then both SQL 2000 and the version of Mysql that was out at the time. For what I was working on anyway (tested using the same queries and table structure on each vendors systems).
Also the Postgres community rule.

By: haffax

haffax — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:43:44 +0000

Personally I am more curious about the way Java goes now.
Oracle uses Java extensively. Hopefully they also get a few Java pros with Sun to make their GUI tools suck less, especially the Enterprise Manager.

But that’s not the most important part. It is the question in what direction Java steers. The focus shifted so often with Sun, first Browser plugin, then generic client side apps, then server side, then RIA. Just confusing. With its own business more aligned to server-side Java, what happens to JavaFX and Swing.
Sun was not very fond of Eclipse, but Oracle is on the Eclipse Foundation Board. So now owning the company that mostly contributed to Netbeans, do they still invest in both, Eclipse and Netbeans?

By: Andrew Fenn

Andrew Fenn — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:13:45 +0000

I’m pretty sure one of the founders of MySQL already forked to a project called Drizzle when Sun bought them.

I’ve used MySQL a lot however Postgres is looking more and more attractive as “the word of the street” says it’s faster, easy to setup and “better” then MySQL. I haven’t had the time to investigate though so maybe that’s all rubbish.