Ingres Database 9.3 released
| From: | Jessica Swain <jessica.swain-AT-atomicpr.com> | |
| To: | "lwn-AT-lwn.net" <lwn-AT-lwn.net> | |
| Subject: | Ingres Database 9.3 takes aim at MySQL | |
| Date: | Wed, 7 Oct 2009 11:31:13 -0500 | |
| Message-ID: | <46052292BBD9FD4DA1C25960445962BC04E3D99E@AUSP01VMBX07.collaborationhost.net> |
INGRES DATABASE 9.3 TAKES AIM AT COMPETITORS WITH EASY MIGRATION PATH Latest Release of Leading Open Source Database Enables Easy Migration from MySQL and Proprietary Databases REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - October 7, 2009 - Ingres Corporation, the leading open source database management company and pioneer of the New Economics of IT, announced today the availability of Ingres Database 9.3, the latest version of the company's flagship open source database product. Ingres Database 9.3 offers easy migration from MySQL, as well as from proprietary databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase. Ingres Database 9.3 boasts a number of key features to help java application developers be more productive and is specifically designed to help meet the demands of a rapidly growing partner community with Liferay certification. Ingres Database 9.3 also highlights the importance community contributions play in the innovation of open source software by including features to the database engine that were added by its community members. To download the latest version, please go to http://esd.ingres.com/. "As the fate of MySQL is currently in the hands of the European Commission, open source community developers and our global business customers and partners are seeking a more stable, reliable open source database," said Deb Woods, vice president of product management, Ingres. "Ingres Database 9.3 is designed to meet their needs with an easy migration path to Ingres and we encourage anyone looking for an alternative to consider migration today." Easy Migration to Ingres Ingres Database 9.3 also provides easy migration for business critical workloads from proprietary databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase. Ingres prides itself on support for open standards, but has seen a de-facto standard emerge alongside the industry standard SQL, and in this release Ingres adds features commonly used in applications written for MySQL and Oracle to enable a smooth migration to Ingres. These features include improved accessibility of table procedures from within the query and the support of positional parameter notations that makes database procedure invocation more flexible. "We have just executed a successful migration from both a Microsoft SQL Server and an Oracle database to an integrated Ingres solution for a client in the healthcare sector running our VIP-application. We had less than three months from the start of the project to our go live date. We met this goal and all systems are now running smoothly and robustly," said Ralf Kipper, managing director, VEGA Software GmbH. "For our clients, being able to run this application centrally on one database has many benefits - for example, a significant cost reduction due to the open source business model, as well far less administration needed because we are working with proven Ingres technology." Ingres Database 9.3 also provides support for pluggable authentication modules (PAM) which enables the database to support more authentication mechanisms than previous versions. PAM also makes it easier to support one program that supports multiple security services than the various operating-specific users' authentication schemes. PAM also provides lower security exposure because the authorization program can run either with no special privileges or with shadow group privileges. Partner-Enablement and Liferay Support Ingres Database 9.3 is certified on Liferay, a leading open source portal and social collaboration solution. The Liferay portal is easy to customize and handles large organizational structures, such as giving each business unit a unique look and security permissions. "Rivet Logic applauds the feature enhancements in Ingres Database 9.3 that put a laser focus on the application developer," said Mike Vertal, president and CEO, Rivet Logic. "Large object support (lobs), long name support, as well as support for the Liferay portal are key for us in further enhancing our work with Alfresco, JBoss, and Liferay solutions. Our consulting services and solutions enable our clients to streamline operations, enhance partner and supplier relations, build social communities, and improve customer loyalty by enabling self-service capabilities. Ingres Database 9.3 gives us the necessary edge to meet these goals." New and Enhanced Application Development Tools Ingres continues to support the latest standards including open database connectivity (ODBC), Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), and .Net Data Provider. Ingres Database 9.3 adds the ability to automatically start multiple Data Access Servers to improve scalability in environments where large numbers of .Net and JDBC applications are connecting to Ingres. In addition, Ingres Database 9.3 simplifies the setup of JDBC driver properties with the addition of the Ingres JDBC Driver Properties Generator. The utility runs automatically during installation but can also be run at any time. "The added functionality in Ingres Database 9.3 makes writing java applications easier," said Fima Katz, CEO, Exadel. "Just recently, we worked with Ingres on ways in which developers and ISVs can use open source and the cloud to write java applications with Ingres, JBoss, and Red Hat Linux as a way to drive down deployment costs. As a leading provider of professional services for developing customized Web 2.0 applications for our clients, we are pleased to put our support behind Ingres Database 9.3 and look forward to taking advantage of the improved functionality." Innovative Community Contributions Ingres Database 9.3 is also the result of powerful open source community contributions from around the world. "Unlike other open source database technologies, Ingres doesn't lock out outside contributions that truly enhance the product," said Emma McGrattan, senior vice president of engineering, Ingres. "We encourage outside community developers to participate - all great ideas for new database features are welcome and many of the suggestions we've received in the last year are part of Ingres Database 9.3." For example, Roy Hann of Rational Commerce and chair of the UK Ingres Users Association offered contributions to Ingres Database 9.3. During the "UK Code Sprint" last year, Hann developed 32-bit and 64-bit unordered sequences which are useful for applications that use the sequences to generate value for a B-tree indexed column which can expand gracefully, without the overhead associated with continually adding entries at the end of the value range. In addition, Ronald Jeninga of IndependIT Integrative Technologies GmbH contributed source code changes to make Ingres running on various flavors of UNIX/LINUX platforms PAM aware. PAM provides applications greater flexibility to use different security services without re-compilation of the application itself, providing a single API for the application. A system administrator can then reconfigure PAM to access shadow passwords or any of various supported security mechanisms without having to change or recompile the application. Download Ingres Database 9.3 Today Ingres Database 9.3 is available for download today at http://esd.ingres.com/. For more information on Ingres Database 9.3 please go to http://www.ingres.com/products/ingres-database-9-3.php. To learn more about Ingres Database 9.3, please join us for a webinar today, Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 6:30 a.m. (PT). To register, please go to http://www.ingres.com/about/webcasts.php. About Ingres Corporation Ingres is the leading open source database management company. We are the world's second largest open source company and the pioneer of the New Economics of IT, providing open source solutions at dramatically reduced cost than proprietary software vendors. As a leader in The New Economics of IT, Ingres delivers low cost and accelerated innovation to more than 10,000 customers worldwide. Ingres is a registered trademark of Ingres Corporation. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Posted Oct 7, 2009 19:19 UTC (Wed)
by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
[Link] (16 responses)
Is that a typo? Shouldn't it be "Deb Woods, Queen of Marketing Droids at Ingres Corp"?
Seriously, though, despite MySQL's status as FOSS Database poster child, PostgreSQL, Ingres' kindred competitor, is the one to beat. The MySQL *projects* handle their user base very nicely and are in no immediate danger. Certainly not from the EC. And, in fact, the EC is looking out for MySQL's welfare. Perhaps a little too enthusiastically, regarding the official Sun branch.
This reminds me a bit of IBPhoenix's publicity stunt when they attacked Mozilla some years ago. Sometimes this sort of nonsensical stunt actually works. Firebird Database was unknown before. But after their Mozilla attack, the articles about Firebird DB really started flowing. Though to this day I still turn a jaundiced eye to that bunch, and to the then Queen of their Marketing Droids of the time.
But it is interesting to note that the press release does not mention PostgreSQL at all.
Posted Oct 7, 2009 19:39 UTC (Wed)
by deltaray (guest, #51384)
[Link]
I wouldn't mention it either if I were them. They are trying to keep their customers and potential customers from knowing about PostgreSQL.
Posted Oct 7, 2009 19:59 UTC (Wed)
by hingo (guest, #14792)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Oct 7, 2009 20:12 UTC (Wed)
by stumbles (guest, #8796)
[Link]
Posted Oct 7, 2009 21:40 UTC (Wed)
by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
[Link]
Even in retrospect, it is hard to know who to root for. But none of that changes the fact that IBPhoenix's marketing department managed to pull off a major publicity coup, relatively speaking, by exploiting the situation. And I have no doubt that they knew exactly what they were doing at the time.
Posted Oct 7, 2009 22:45 UTC (Wed)
by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624)
[Link]
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-01.html
Posted Oct 7, 2009 20:13 UTC (Wed)
by ncm (guest, #165)
[Link] (10 responses)
Me, I'm a little bit surprised to learn Ingres still exists.
Posted Oct 7, 2009 21:57 UTC (Wed)
by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
[Link] (9 responses)
Well... wasn't that integral to the point I was making? You and a few other people were focused upon Firebird. The rest of us weren't. I think I was aware of it, peripherally, back before. But after the fracas... everyone paying any attention in this neck of the woods knew what Firebird was, whether we respected their actions or not. And whether we respected Mozilla Corp's actions or not.
Personally, I think that RDBMS's are RDBMS's and browsers are browsers. and that the whole thing could have been worked out politely. But that, apparently, did not suit either party's self-interest. I think less of both parties for it all.
Posted Oct 8, 2009 1:20 UTC (Thu)
by sitaram (guest, #5959)
[Link] (1 responses)
Hmm that is true if you assume that the person googling for your product will bother to add at least the word "database" after the name, if he tries it without and gets a plethora of hits for the browser.
Marketing droid or not, I wouldn't make that assumption.
I'm the author of a little known piece of software called "gitolite", and one of the reasons I chose this name among all the other alternatives I could think of (gitman, gitadmin, gitamin, and a dozen other combinations) was that this word got me exactly 3 results, and none of them in English.
I'm not selling anything, it's GPL, and the whole thing is less than a few hundred lines and expected to remain that way -- it's pretty much feature complete and "done" now, yet I bothered to do that.
That's the world we live in I guess :-)
Posted Oct 8, 2009 12:34 UTC (Thu)
by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
[Link]
Uhhh... so? You think Firebird DB is going to lose users because it's too hard to type "database"? I've found most RDBMS admins to to more tenacious than that. ;-)
Posted Oct 8, 2009 1:23 UTC (Thu)
by ncm (guest, #165)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Oct 8, 2009 11:53 UTC (Thu)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link] (2 responses)
It seems however that 'things related to computers' is one domain now.
It's silly that two entirely unrelated software products can't have the same name, as if the field of 'software' were similar in breadth to, say, 'washing machines'. I think this is going to have to change as people realise that 'software' isn't all one thing - otherwise we'll run out of words. Posted Oct 8, 2009 12:40 UTC (Thu)
by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
[Link]
Personally, I think Firefox was a stupid name. But like "Oldsmobile", we get used to terrible names and don't really think of them as being terrible after a while.
Posted Oct 8, 2009 13:24 UTC (Thu)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (1 responses)
If they had stuck with the name Phoenix, we wouldn't have any of this Iceweasel/abrowser nonsense.
Posted Oct 8, 2009 13:25 UTC (Thu)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link]
Posted Oct 7, 2009 21:31 UTC (Wed)
by allesfresser (guest, #216)
[Link]
Why does this sort of remind me of Baghdad Bob? Someone's at least got the Hubris part of Larry Wall's Three Virtues down cold.
Posted Oct 7, 2009 22:25 UTC (Wed)
by alvherre (subscriber, #18730)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 8, 2009 16:56 UTC (Thu)
by kschendel (subscriber, #20465)
[Link]
Posted Oct 7, 2009 22:42 UTC (Wed)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link] (7 responses)
If we interpret "the fate of MySQL" to imply that there's a chance that MySQL will be killed off, there's no chance of that at least in the near term, since the EU is intervening to protect it. If the marketing droid merely meant that there's uncertainty about which corporate structure will wind up running MySQL, it's unlikely that users should care.
Posted Oct 8, 2009 5:53 UTC (Thu)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (6 responses)
Which is, of course, zero chance.
Despite what the Postgresql ra-ra brigade may make it seem there are a very
Worst case is that they will end up calling it something other then MySQL.
_that_is_it_
Posted Oct 8, 2009 6:49 UTC (Thu)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Oct 8, 2009 11:16 UTC (Thu)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (2 responses)
I prefer to use PostgreSQL and haven't seen much, if any, negative advocacy from the PostgreSQL community about MySQL going away, despite the remark up-thread - I'm sure most PostgreSQL advocates are comfortable advocating the technical superiority of their favourite database system rather than making up gossip about rival products - but amongst the many reasons for switching away from MySQL, the Free Software licensing really isn't one of them.
If you're using MySQL under a proprietary licence, you might be worried, but I can't say I have that much sympathy for proprietary software vendors. I'm sure Oracle will be quite happy to meet their every need at the right price.
Posted Oct 8, 2009 19:50 UTC (Thu)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 9, 2009 10:15 UTC (Fri)
by liljencrantz (guest, #28458)
[Link]
The only similar situations I know of are Joomla and foswiki, two projects that seem to be significantly more alive than they were before the fork.
Posted Oct 8, 2009 17:05 UTC (Thu)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Oct 8, 2009 19:45 UTC (Thu)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link]
Posted Oct 8, 2009 6:47 UTC (Thu)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link] (1 responses)
Probably it has improved a lot, but frankly I don't see the point.
Posted Oct 11, 2009 8:23 UTC (Sun)
by ernest (guest, #2355)
[Link]
Ernest.
Ingres Database 9.3 released
> Commission, open source community developers and our global business
> customers and partners are seeking a more stable, reliable open source
> database," said Deb Woods, vice president of product management,
But it is interesting to note that the press release does not mention PostgreSQL at all.
Ingres Database 9.3 released
Firebird (the database) existed well before Mozilla wanted to use the same name, and just because you didn't know about it doesn't make it unknown. Mozilla's stubborness in the case to insist on using a name that was already in use was surprising to watch. (And the lack of research when picking the name: google "firebird open source")
Ingres Database 9.3 released
(Should I put a disclaimer here that I used to work for Sun/MySQL and now work with MariaDB? Doesn't seem to have any relevance with my comment :-)
Thank you for the disclosure, and not it does not seem relevant to me. But I do agree with your observation about the um, stubbornness of Mozilla and how a simple google could have avoided the whole issue.
Ingres Database 9.3 released
Ingres Database 9.3 released
Ingres Database 9.3 released
in the way that was intended) was the fact that in 2001 someone spotted
that both it and the earlier Borland/Inprise Interbase (v4.x, v5.x and
6.x) databases had a compiled in back door account. :-(
Ingres Database 9.3 released
Ingres Database 9.3 released
Ingres Database 9.3 released
Ingres Database 9.3 released
I was not "focused on Firebird", but I had met and was impressed by the Firebird developers. They were using the name first, and the Mozilla people swooped in and tried to muscle them out with no better justification than "Eff you, we're big". It doesn't matter whether you have any practical reason to care about Firebird (which I didn't, and don't). The IBPhoenix people were right, and Mozilla were wrong, full stop. In the end, Mozilla ended up using a much better name that suggested an excellent logo, and they learned something, and Firebird was able to keep their name, so the outcome was entirely good. It's not clear whether the Firebird database is used any more than it would have been, but that's incidental.
Firebird vs. Mozilla
Firebird vs. Mozilla
Firebird vs. Mozilla
Firebird vs. Mozilla
Firebird vs. Mozilla
If they had stuck with the name Phoenix,
Or Firebird, even.
Ingres Database 9.3 released
Windows only?
Windows only?
It is deceptive to claim that "... the fate of MySQL is currently in the hands of the European Commission". The EU is investigating Oracle's acquisition of Sun because of Oracle's history of buying and discontinuing competing products; there were concerns expressed that they might want to do this to MySQL. Oracle insists that they have no such intentions, and the EU intervention is intended to protect MySQL. So either Oracle will satisfy the regulators' concerns or else MySQL will have to be spun off, but either way, MySQL is in no danger.
Classic FUD
Classic FUD
kill off the Linux kernel.
large of people that use Mysql for very important things and there is zero
chance that they will let Oracle or anybody else take it away from them.
So MySQL may end up as a database with a different name developed by different people. Sounds very much as "killing MySQL" to me.
Classic FUD
Classic FUD
A regular fork is bad enough. A hostile fork from the parent company staged by some of the core developers (with an accompanying name change) is probably disastrous. If the company is bought by its worst arch-rival -- well, I don't think the outlook is good. I also prefer postgres, but hey, MySQL has its place (and it is not as an unsupported grassroots offering IMHO).
Classic FUD
Classic FUD
Classic FUD
Ever heard of branding? Soda drinks are all very similar, but people tend to buy the one they know.
Classic FUD
A couple of years ago I had the misfortune of consulting for a company which used Ingres, the latest proprietary release before it was open-sourced. What a disgrace! Locking didn't work properly (using the Java driver), the management tools were horrid, the engine didn't scale above a few million registers.
Shivers
Shivers
Since the day that I started there I hated it, but because of the way it was used, could not be
replaced.
Fortunatly I could choose the db to use in other implementations
and have sistematically choosen an other db.