Is it kill or cure for Oracle's database buy?

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Again with the paranoia

This is more an attack on DB2 and Microsoft's SQLServer than on MySQL - I dont know why people are so intent on only seeing the "Oracle will kill MySQL " viewpoint. Imentioned this in another thread so here goes again.

Ok Oracle buys InnoDB. Think about this from Oracle's perspective. They need to get more license sales to Oracle DB. The vast majority of users of MySQL happen to be smaller companies which couldnt afford Oracle. When a company gets large enough where they need more capability than MySQL/InnoDB who do they turn to now? The answer is anybody really - they have no relationship with Oracle so Oracle may not be on their radar. They probably have some kind of relationship with Microsoft just due to the prevalence of its OS so they may just extend that relationship into DB's.
Or they might have a relationship with IBM for hardware so they might just extend that relationship into DB2. Oracle has NOTHING prior to this to get a relationship with a small up and coming company - the SMB business.

Now they do - they can get in on the ground floor. Not with every MySQL user - just the ones that are serious enough to need the advanced capabilities that InnoDB provides. Oh - arent these the very ones that may need to get to the next level of enterprise scalability with all the advances that Oracle has which havent even been thought of for MySQL (and yes there are plenty)? Talk about targeted marketing - this is ideal. Oracle gets to have some kind of relationship with every serious MySQL implementation!!!! Imagine if they could do that with DB2 - do you think they would throw that away???

So will Oracle kill off InnoDB - dont be silly. They want to make it the defacto standard for anyone NOT paying top dollar for an enterprise DB. They want MySQL users to see a Natural progression from MySQL -> MySQL/InnoDB -> Oracle. The only way to do this is build on InnoDB, Build the relationships and be the first choice of DB once the MySQL user grows larger than mysql can handle.

I would also argue that having mysql around is very very good for Oracle. More users finding more ways of using an SQL oriented database that they eventually cannot do without. No idea if a study has been done on this however I would bet that the existence of MySQL has helped drive the database market in general - including proprietary DB's.

ANd before anyone proclaims that there is no need to ever look beyond the capabilities of MySQL I would suggest that though MySQL is great in certain areas it is not great for everything. At the very least you should acknowledge that Oracle itself would view the capabilities and benefits of the Oracle DB as being so far advanced beyond MySQL that there is a point when you will need to move to Oracle for pure performance or reliability reasons. Regardless of what you may think - you have to agree that that is probably what Oracle thinks.

So Oracle wins only if they keep InnoDB a core / vital MySQL product. I doubt you will ever see Oracle DB developers developing InnoDB - too many copyright issues - but InnoDB will be a vital marketing tool (or openoracle or whatever it is renamed- It can't continue to be called InnoDB) and will only continue that way if Oracle pours resources into it. The community wins because they continue to keep an important piece of the architecture alive.

keep in mind Oracle knows that if they kill off innodb something else WILL take its place in the opensource world - and Oracle may have absolutely no influence over its replacement. Do you think that is what Oracle wants to see?

its win-win on this one.

Posted by: georgef   Posted on: 10/14/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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