It isn't at all surprising that IBM and Microsoft would "reject" MySQL. They're competitors, after all. Expect them to throw up a lot of FUD about MySQL. That said, they do have some valid points: The bigger players have a better transaction and data integrity story, though MySQL is (slowly) catching up.

A truth that IBM and Microsoft would prefer to ignore, though, is that many applications don't need a heavy-duty, full featured RDBMS. A really fast, fairly reliable data access method with SQL support is sufficient for a lot of applications (such as much of what Yahoo does, or discussion boards, or...). For a fairly large set of problems, MySQL is good enough.

I have to agree with perrin here...I especially don't understand the title, "IBM, MS Reject MySQL". It's quite lucid that they would not embrace an Open Source DBMS when MS SQL Server and DB2 are doing fine on their own. In truth, I thought it was more like an educated version of a flame-war you might find on some other site. With incendiary comments on both sides, such as ,'"If Oracle or DB2 is the Cadillac, then we are the Ferrari," Mickos said.' by a MySQL associate, I felt that while articles like this one bring OS into the light, they also put a negative spin on the story often enough.

I tend to agree. I think the opportunity for a much more interesting piece was overlooked. I wasn't too interested in what either had to say. It would have been much better if the author had focused on what the non-competing vendors had to say. I was somewhat surprised by the closing of Great Bridge though, and hope that it won't have an adverse effect on PostgreSQL. Not that I use it, but the more open-source competition, the better.

--Jim

Plus, I wonder if InfoWorld is having a "slow news era." With very few changes (just the players), this article could be a template for almost any Open Source vs. Commercial Vendor piece.

The purpose of their article eludes me...

However, I left the article thinking the OS products got the better end of the coverage. ("just spell my name right, and often.") lol

Enterprise database sales must be down...

No duh! There's only one Enterprise. And it's on Wednesday nights on UPN.

Mr. Muskrat just noticed Preceptors remark but doesn't want to change his own so hits submit.

As people have said you don't talk-up a free product that competes with your very not free product, if you want to make money. It's hardly surprising that MS and IBM would both knock the MySQL.

When you don't have something to sell in that category, then you can talk-up the open-source product so you can sell support for it. Both Oracle and IBM now use Apache, and Novell have gone one step more now distributing PostgreSQL as standard with Novell - press release.

What is, or is not enterprise is very much down to end-user interpretation, but I'd say if I was paying top-dollar, I'd expect good up-time and a nice engineer arriving eating humble-pie if it doesn't work. With good quality open-source software, I think enterprise class software is a bit bogus thesedays, but enterprise class-support is stil a valid term.

Abigail

:-) Of course, the first thing on it in big bold letters says

NOTE: This Document was written in May 2000. Thus, it is outdated and does not represent the latest data concerning MySQL. I will attempt to find time to rewrite this with more current information soon (August 10th, 2001)

Nevertheless, I do agree that mySQL is a toy database, even though it has learned a couple of tricks in the meantime. It isn't necessarily a bad choice - many people need little more than a .dbm can offer, and mySQL is a nice lean option. It seems to mainly run web-based messageboards these days anyway, and that it's okay for.

Makeshifts last the longest.