'Open Source' Database Poses Threat to Oracle (Wall Street Journal) [LWN.net]

The Wall Street Journal looks at the impact that open-source databases are having on commercial database companies. "But now, Oracle and other database suppliers face a growing threat from below: "open source" databases, which give customers a free or low-cost alternative to commercial products. While the impact has been small so far, some analysts expect open-source software to eventually turn databases into a low-cost commodity, just as the open-source Linux operating system is posing a threat to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows franchise."

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'Open Source' Database Poses Threat to Oracle (Wall Street Journal)

Posted Jul 17, 2003 1:02 UTC (Thu) by leandro (subscriber, #1460) [Link]

This is poetic justice. Oracle gained proeminence by supporting more or less equally all OSs, thus turning the platform into a commodity; while keeping their data query language proprietary by failing to implement even basic SQL constructs such as some data types.

So now Oracle gets competition from free software DBMSs -- beware, a database is what you manage with a DBMS! -- that may not be so platform agnostic, as they tend to priviledge POSIX, and may not be so SQL-conformant, as some are still approaching the full ISO SQL 92 Holy Grail (PostgreSQL for instance) and some still haven't got the mindset (MySQL).

This will take a long time to mature if ever, because POSIX isn't (¿yet?) that dominant, lots of that living in mainframes and Microsoft systems; and because MySQL has taken lotsa wind from the standards game by getting the spotlight without being minimally SQL conformant despite its name. But the hope is that either MySQL will finally get a clue, or PostgreSQL and other will finally get the deserved popularity.

My guess is that when this finally matures, Oracle won't have gone away on the proprietary side, and really relational systems which are now appearing (Alphora Dataphor) will have begun to see real-world free implementations (The Third Manifesto). So (My|Postgre)SQL may be in for a short stardom. But all bets are off.