Sniptools

MySQL has released a souped up, heavy-duty, SAP-certified open source database that offers high availability, scalability and a comprehensive feature set for enterprise-level functionality that MySQL’s flagship database lacks (triggers, stored procedures, and the like)

MySQL had already announced a partnership with SAP earlier this year. Now Business Wire reports that MySQL has finally formally launched MaxDB as the first souped-up, enhanced version of the SAP’s open source DB.

Phew, indeed. Now the naysayers of MySQL, who usually denounce it based on its lack of enterprise class features such as triggers, stored procedures etc, or its somewhat sluggish full-text searches (especially on millions of rows), have something to chew on.

MySQL is not a state-of-the-art RDBMS, contrary to what the hype would have you believe, but it kicks ass if you know its limitations. Due to its light-weight moorings, it’s best used in applications and electronics devices, without end-users having much awareness of the underlying database. An embedded MySQL database is ideal for use behind the scenes in Internet appliances, public kiosks, turn-key hardware/software combination units, high performance Internet servers and self-contained databases distributed on CD-ROM.

But with this release of the first fruit from its partnership with SAP DB, I’m not sure how MySQL intends to further the Version 5 of its flagship namesake product, which was targeted at the enterprise market anyway and was to include a lot of such functionality, not the least of which was stored procedures, replication etc.

Well, two parallel paths of development for powerful, robust yet solid code cannot be all that bad. MySQL says on its main MaxDB page:

With PostgreSQL 7.4 recently released (detailed changelog here) and Firebird 1.5 getting very close, the open source relational database market is getting pretty interesting. Both of them have less restrictive licenses for commercial close-source application developers, but perhaps neither has the popularity and momentum behind MySQL.

From your perspective and mine, the best thing about all this: since SAP DB itself was an open source database already, you can download MaxDB for free as well and play around with it! As Mike Hillyer said: More power to the dolphin!

This post is tagged Musings