Thinkovation

Two major announcements to comment on today (Sun and MySQL, and Oracle and BEA)- but they both merit separate posts.

Sun has acquired MySQL AB the Swedish software company behind the eponymous (well without the “AB”) open source database. for what the press release describes as “approximately$1 billion”.

This move is of real interest to me since I’m currently writing a “MySQL and VB.NET” how to guide (see my development blog for the first installment).

I think that on balance this is good news. Of course there are caveats - Sun has a mixed record when it comes to acquisitions - but provided that they keep faith with the user base (and I think that they will) and can keep a few of the key MySQL engineers (and I think that they can) MySQL will continue to prosper.

There are couple of other “wrinkles” two key database vendors own bits of technology that are pretty “core” to MySQL; Oracle owns InnoDB (one of the core database engines that MySQL uses), and IBM owns Solid (another storage engine). But both Oracle and IBM should be smart enough to know “not to go there” when it comes to horsing with something as popular with the community as MySQL.

Some people have asked me whether this makes MySQL a “contender” - in other words should Oracle and IBM be scared by the threat that MySQL poses to their databases? My answer is that MySQL was already a “contender” in many respects - Sure, banks haven’t flocked to use MySQL as the data store for their core systems - but gazillions of web-sites and “Web Two-do-Oh” businesses are built on MySQL.

Where it comes to existing applications, and the data that resides in them, people don’t just “swap out” one database for another - As a general rule, databases only get switched off when the apps that use them get switched off - And here’s the long-term “gotcha” for the existing DB vendors - As new applications emerge MySQL will increasingly be the database that runs them. Whether it’s SugarCRM, dotProject or WordPress… the next generation of CRM, Collaboration, and publishing applications all (more or less) use MySQL.

Some of my colleagues are still sniffy about MySQL - one past colleague even refused to call it a “Database” - insisting on referring to it as a “data-store” - And, indeed, I would have said the same right up until the end of 2005 when version 5.1 was released (which added vastly improved support for transactions, along with cursors, stored procedures, triggers and views).

MySQL is out there - in production. It sits behind millions of websites (including mine), and it’s increasingly finding itself used as the data store for custom and ISV applications.

I’m developing a client-server application for a client, they’re an all windows shop, and the client will be written in VB.NET (so that they can maintain it themselves) and I’ve chosen to use MySQL rather than add to my client’s cost by licensing SQLServer or another database.

Wouldn’t it be cool if Sun were to capitalise on this - Add a few simple API’s to make it easy for a third party application to administer a MySQL database (not that it’s that hard to do today) but with a small investment on embeddability - MySQL could be even more attractive to ISV’s.

Another commonly asked question relates to MySQL’s scalability. MySQL’s scalability isn’t really in doubt - it’s sitting behind some massive applications already - and the work on improving the performance of the different core “engines” that you can choose continues.

So.. MySQL’s adoption will grow, surely and steadily - and in a couple of years from now, some of the bigger database vendors will notice some eating away at the edges of their market share - Their choice will be to carry on competing in a market that will be essentially commodtised, or to carry on adding value over and above the core database - IBM didn’t buy Cognos for $5bn just for laughs, let’s face it.

DB2 and Oracle will retain their blue chip client-base - residing at the top of the market in terms of scale and complexity - They’ll just begin to notice that the number of “little apps” that are deployed on their technology will first stop growing as quickly as it once did and will then begin to slow.

The biggest potential loser, I reckon, is Microsoft’s SQLServer - SQLServer is a tremendously sophisticated, scalable and fast database and for 99.99% of applications it’s every bit as good as DB2 and Oracle… but Microsoft hasn’t been able to get past the “toy database” stigma - which is really very very unfair - and now there’s a free database that can also cater for the vast majority of applications - MySQL.

This is the key point - So what if MySQL can’t, yet, scale to a gazillion writes/second… the number of applications that require that kind of scale is so low that it can almost be written off as a statistical error. Steve O’Grady at Redmonk blogged on this topic this morning and produced a quote that I’ve never heard before - Apparently someone at Oracle once said “MySQL is a Toyota Corolla to our 747″ in order to disparage MySQL… what an utterly stupid thing to say - As Steve points out - there are many many more Corollas kicking about than there are 747’s and very very few of us would choose a 747 to nip down to the shops or to deliver goods to our clients - And just as the corner shop is far more likely to choose a Corolla over a 747 for the delivery - it seems that the budding e-commerce and social networking sites are choosing MySQL’s Corolla over Oracle’s 747 to build their businesses on.

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