With the last post out of the way, I can go back to my geeky ways. I had a post a while back discussing the problems with Oracle buying InnoDB storage engine out from under MySQL. Well, today Slashdot has a story about how MySQL has convinced Solid Storage Engine to open source their storage engine and attach it to MySQL.
Well, the advantage of this is that they do not need to allocate resources to maintain InnoDB. The disadvantage is that they still do not have any control over the storage engine itself. They could get stuck in the same situation as before. Oracle could just come by and snatch up Solid and walk off again without breaking a sweat. When you have gigabytes of data in InnoDB tables, you do not what to be forced to migrate again just because someone has bought up technology. If your database is well constructed and logical, it should not be too difficult to move. However and unfortunately, most database systems that I have encountered in the wild were at one time logical and well constructed and then you can see all sorts of business pressures take over, which causes the database to go to hell in a hand-basket.
In the long term, MySQL is going to have to either buy the tech outright or develop its own. Their customers cannot continually stand on sand as their storage engines are continually bought out from under them. I can only hope that this is a stop-gap measure while they are still working on their own storage engine. The problem is that they are going to lose more customers if they have to switch yet again when they finally produce their enterprise level storage engine.
posted by Chris #10:57 AM | 0 comments |
