EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus

Analysis of EnterpriseDB and especially its PostgreSQL-based Postgres Plus product line. Related subjects include:

April 22, 2009

DBMS transparency layers never seem to sell well

A DBMS transparency layer, roughly speaking, is software that makes things that are written for one brand of database management system run unaltered on another.* These never seem to sell well. ANTs has failed in a couple of product strategies. EnterpriseDB’s Oracle compatibility only seems to have netted it a few sales, and only a small fraction of its total business. ParAccel’s and Dataupia’s transparency strategies have produced even less.

*The looseness in that definition highlights a key reason these technologies don’t sell well — it’s hard to be sure that what you’re buying will do a good job of running your particular apps.

This subject comes to mind for two reasons. One is that IBM seems to have licensed EnterpriseDB’s Oracle transparency layer for DB2. The other is that a natural upgrade path from MySQL to Oracle might be a MySQL transparency layer on top of an Oracle base.

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April 20, 2009

First thoughts on Oracle acquiring Sun

More later.  I have a radio interview in a few minutes on a very different subject.

April 2, 2009

Ingres update

I talked with Ingres today. Much of the call was fluff — open-source rah-rah, plus some numbers showing purported success, but so finely parsed as to be pretty meaningless. (To Ingres’ credit, they did offer to let me talk w/ their CFO, even if they offered no promises as to whether he’d offer any more substantive information.) Highlights included: Read more

March 18, 2009

Database implications if IBM acquires Sun

Reported or rumored merger discussions between IBM and Sun are generating huge amounts of discussion today (some links below). Here are some quick thoughts around the subject of how the IBM/Sun deal — if it happens — might affect the database management system industry. Read more

August 11, 2008

EnterpriseDB update

I had lunch today with CTO Bob Zurek of EnterpriseDB, who turns out to live in almost the same town I do (they technically separated in 1783, but share a high school today). DBMS-related highlights included:

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July 7, 2008

EnterpriseDB’s itemized claims of Oracle compatibility

Obviously, I’m poking around EnterpriseDB’s site this morning (in connection with their status as my client, actually). Anyhow, we all know that one of EnterpriseDB’s core claims is great Oracle-compatibility — but what exactly do they mean by that? I found a fairly clearly laid-out answer, as of last year, in this white paper and and — even more simply — in this blog post summarizing the white paper.

July 7, 2008

PostgreSQL vs. MySQL, as per EnterpriseDB

EnterpriseDB put out a white paper arguing for the superiority of PostgreSQL over MySQL, even without EnterpriseDB’s own Postgres Plus extensions. Highlights of EnterpriseDB’s opinion include:

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June 26, 2008

Oracle’s hefty price increases

Jeff Jones of IBM wrote in to point out that Oracle is slathering on the price increases. I quote: Read more

May 19, 2008

EnterpriseDB survey on open source database adoption (participation time)

CTO Bob Zurek of EnterpriseDB asked me to pass along a link to a short survey on open source database adoption. He plans to release the results publicly after they are collected. Bob stressed to me that he used to be a Forrester analyst, his point being that he knows how to be analytically objective.

Looking over the 15 questions (14 of which are simple multiple-choice), he lived up quite well to the “unbiased” claim. E.g., the only Postgres option cited is PostgreSQL, rather than EnterpriseDB’s proprietary/value-added packagings. I do see one little screw-up: Several of the questions are worded as if the respondent is, enterprise-wide, running one and exactly one instance of open source DBMS. But otherwise it seems like a clean, tight, simple survey.

May 8, 2008

Database blades are not what they used to be

In which we bring you another instantiation of Monash’s First Law of Commercial Semantics: Bad jargon drives out good.

When Enterprise DB announced a partnership with Truviso for a “blade,” I naturally assumed they were using the term in a more-or-less standard way, and hence believed that it was more than a “Barney” press release.* Silly me. Rather than referring to something closely akin to “datablade,” EnterpriseDB’s “blade” program turns out to just to be a catchall set of partnerships.

*A “Barney” announcement is one whose entire content boils down to “I love you; you love me.”

According to EnterpriseDB CTO Bob Zurek, the main features of the “blade” program include: Read more

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