12 ms·

Oracle is killing MySQL. On purpose. This has been going on for a while, and they're not doing it because they're stupid, it's in their best interests. Thankfu

Oracle is killing MySQL. On purpose. This has been going on for a while, and they're not doing it because they're stupid, it's in their best interests. Thankfully Maria is such a nice clean replacement.

mjhea0 13y ago
So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. However, by blatantly damaging the product, more and more users moved (and continue to move) to better alternatives. Thus damaging the company's reputation. However, MySQL is hardly a competitor to Oracle. Oracle 11g is meant for use at completely different type of company. I don't get it. Time to donate to Apache. Sound familiar?
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  Most likely explanation is that they acquired Sun for their hardware line to directly compete against system integrators like HP. MySQL, Java, etc. just came as part of the package.
  - vorbote 13y ago
    Fact is that Oracle bought Sun to have control of Java. As many know, all the middleware and development tools that Oracle sells for its database are written in Java. They even tried to replace with some success Pro*C with some sort of Java from hell in the late 90's.
    - snowwrestler 13y ago
      Interesting, thanks.
- ams6110 13y ago
  So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. Which is pretty silly, because MySQL doesn't really hold a candle to Oracle's RDBMS.
  - gcr 13y ago
    There is one metric where MySQL far surpasses Oracle's RDBMS: Developer mindshare in open-source projects. If I'm starting out learning PHP, you can bet that I'm going to be learning Maria/MySQL and not Oracle. This has the side effect that not many open source projects support Oracle. (Wordpress? Drupal? PhpBB?) In fact, I'm not aware of any PHP projects that do support Oracle's RDBMS. There is another metric where MySQL shines: Ease of installation. On any server I come across, I can install and startup a new MySQL/MariaDB instance by just asking for `apt-get install mysql`, or whichever package manager my distribution is using. You can't install Oracle in a single command like that. I'm not aware of any distributions that carry Oracle in their repositories, making it a pain to update and manage.
- ilaksh 13y ago
  I have used MySQL and Oracle and I have found MySQL to be more reliable, more performant, easier to configure, and easier to develop against. I believe that in 80-90+% of the cases where Oracle is deployed, it is only still being used because business executives are out of touch and don't want to admit that the massive investments they committed their companies to are no longer required.
  - cmccabe 13y ago
    MySQL's query optimizer is a joke compared to Oracle's. If you don't do joins and just use it as a key-value store, that doesn't matter. MySQL also doesn't enforce most SQL constraints like "can't store a string in an int field" etc.
    - ilaksh 13y ago
      Wow, that's interesting if the SQL constraints are all completely ignored.. seems doubtful. My experience with Oracle's query optimization was that it was non-intuitive to configure to work correctly especially with the way that the optimizer statistics config works. MySQL will do quite useful query optimization (for joins) if you have appropriate indexes. So I think that in 80% of cases that is what matters in both Oracle and MySQL -- creating appropriate indexes. Honestly I don't think you know what MySQL is capable of.
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    >I have used MySQL and Oracle and I have found MySQL to be more reliable, more performant, easier to configure, and easier to develop against. Then you're simply not an enterprise level developer. Oracle is, to this day, one of the most powerful databases out there. Granted, they have absolutely awful interface tools (which is why most people are reduced to using a buggy 3rd party app to do common DB work on Oracle), but the Database itself is world class. MySQL isn't really a competitor. It competes better with things like SQLight.

mjhea0 13y ago

So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. However, by blatantly damaging the product, more and more users moved (and continue to move) to better alternatives. Thus damaging the company's reputation. However, MySQL is hardly a competitor to Oracle. Oracle 11g is meant for use at completely different type of company. I don't get it. Time to donate to Apache. Sound familiar?

snowwrestler 13y ago
Most likely explanation is that they acquired Sun for their hardware line to directly compete against system integrators like HP. MySQL, Java, etc. just came as part of the package.
- vorbote 13y ago
  Fact is that Oracle bought Sun to have control of Java. As many know, all the middleware and development tools that Oracle sells for its database are written in Java. They even tried to replace with some success Pro*C with some sort of Java from hell in the late 90's.
  - snowwrestler 13y ago
    Interesting, thanks.
ams6110 13y ago
So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. Which is pretty silly, because MySQL doesn't really hold a candle to Oracle's RDBMS.
- gcr 13y ago
  There is one metric where MySQL far surpasses Oracle's RDBMS: Developer mindshare in open-source projects. If I'm starting out learning PHP, you can bet that I'm going to be learning Maria/MySQL and not Oracle. This has the side effect that not many open source projects support Oracle. (Wordpress? Drupal? PhpBB?) In fact, I'm not aware of any PHP projects that do support Oracle's RDBMS. There is another metric where MySQL shines: Ease of installation. On any server I come across, I can install and startup a new MySQL/MariaDB instance by just asking for `apt-get install mysql`, or whichever package manager my distribution is using. You can't install Oracle in a single command like that. I'm not aware of any distributions that carry Oracle in their repositories, making it a pain to update and manage.
ilaksh 13y ago
I have used MySQL and Oracle and I have found MySQL to be more reliable, more performant, easier to configure, and easier to develop against. I believe that in 80-90+% of the cases where Oracle is deployed, it is only still being used because business executives are out of touch and don't want to admit that the massive investments they committed their companies to are no longer required.
- cmccabe 13y ago
  MySQL's query optimizer is a joke compared to Oracle's. If you don't do joins and just use it as a key-value store, that doesn't matter. MySQL also doesn't enforce most SQL constraints like "can't store a string in an int field" etc.
  - ilaksh 13y ago
    Wow, that's interesting if the SQL constraints are all completely ignored.. seems doubtful. My experience with Oracle's query optimization was that it was non-intuitive to configure to work correctly especially with the way that the optimizer statistics config works. MySQL will do quite useful query optimization (for joins) if you have appropriate indexes. So I think that in 80% of cases that is what matters in both Oracle and MySQL -- creating appropriate indexes. Honestly I don't think you know what MySQL is capable of.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  >I have used MySQL and Oracle and I have found MySQL to be more reliable, more performant, easier to configure, and easier to develop against. Then you're simply not an enterprise level developer. Oracle is, to this day, one of the most powerful databases out there. Granted, they have absolutely awful interface tools (which is why most people are reduced to using a buggy 3rd party app to do common DB work on Oracle), but the Database itself is world class. MySQL isn't really a competitor. It competes better with things like SQLight.