Is this SQL databases or No-SQL? [LWN.net]

Is this SQL databases or No-SQL?

Posted Mar 11, 2014 16:51 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
In reply to: Is this SQL databases or No-SQL? by Wol
Parent article: A discussion between database and kernel developers

My view is more from the FOSS side, so the *company* politics behind a lot of it isn't that interesting to me. I'm guessing the legal stuff is why FOSS Pick-like databases don't exist today[1] (are there any packaged in Debian?) and why I have yet to see an application support one as a backend? This is a FOSS-oriented website, so if I can't use a Pick-like data store without paying gobs of money…why would I care?

[1]I see that OpenQM is dual-licensed like MySQL (and has a fork ScarletDME, but that last saw activity 9 months ago), but it isn't packaged for Debian. Do you have any example FOSS applications which can use it as a backend?

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Is this SQL databases or No-SQL?

Posted Mar 11, 2014 17:06 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

MaVerick was a previous attempt to write an MV database that died - I started it in C, somebody else morphed it into Java, and it just faded away I think.

Be very wary of OpenQM - I don't think the copyright owners *get* the GPL. ScarletDME is still supported, I think, but yes it is very quiet.

If you don't want to use a "free as in beer" version, then yes I don't know what to suggest as a "free as in freedom" version. The problem is getting people (a) to even look at it, then (b) to realise that it is in fact a very good solution.

I think also Cache is beginning to steal Pick's thunder. While not a member of the Pick family it's actually very similar in concept, and one of the well known Pick guys has written a Pick compatibility layer that sits above the Cache data store. Apparently it's that close that you can port between Pick and Cache as easily as between two different Pick implementations (which is pretty close to the ease you can port between two SQL implementations - in theory a pushover, in practice plenty of sharp corners to bite you!)

(as an aside, how's this for a VALID statement in Pick BASIC:

REM: REM = REM( 6, 2); REM calculate the remainder of 6/2

That's four - yes *four* different syntactic meanings for the lexical symbol "REM" in one statement!!! That bit us in a port as different BASICs support different versions...)

Legally, there wouldn't be any hassle with a FOSS version today, I don't think, and I doubt it's why there aren't any FOSS versions. The problem is that most Pick applications were written by end users, so most Computer Science guys don't know much about it, and as I've said they mostly don't want to know, either :-(

Cheers,
Wol