Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

As one of the most active vendors in the field of open source databases, is MySQL ambitious?

"Don't think you can kill Oracle, we need to think about how to develop and serve a new market." The words of MySQL's current CEO Mickos seem polite, but in fact they are full of murderous spirit.

Mickos is domineering for a reason. According to a survey released by AMR Research in July 2004, 43% of the world's enterprises already used open source database products in their core business, while 37% of enterprises planned to use open source database products in their core business in the future. There is no doubt that MySQL is clearly the leader in the field of open source databases. David Axmark, one of the company's founders and now vice president, told our reporter not long ago that up to now, the global daily downloads of MySQL have reached 50, 000 times, with a total of 10 million downloads. No wonder Larry. Ellison will be ready for it, and no wonder Mickos turned down Oracle's offer of an olive branch.

However, just like people's doubts about the commercialization of all open source products, when MySQL officially launched a commercial version, people began to consider whether the open source database, which has always been known as "to make users know how to use it within 15 minutes," will develop into another complex and huge commercial database, thus becoming the next DB2, SQL Server, or Oracle.

Oracle, IBM, Sybase and Microsoft's commercial database software are overshadowed by the fact that the underlying code of an open source database product can be viewed, modified and redistributed by the enterprise downloading the product. Traditional commercial database software costs an average of $2, 000 to $3, 000 per processor, while even the most expensive open source database software costs about $1500 per processor, not to mention non-commercial versions that can be downloaded directly without charge.

As a result, the struggle between open source software manufacturers and commercial software manufacturers is becoming more and more intense. Oracle acquired two open source database companies, Innobase and Sleepycat, at the beginning of the year, each of which provided two database engines commonly used by MySQL; IBM acquired Gluecode because of the competition between Gluecode's open source Geronimo Java application server software and IBM's proprietary WebSphere, and as a result IBM now offers free Gluecode software to the public under the brand of WebSphere Community Edition, while Microsoft is the first to launch a free version of SQL Server, which Oracle and IBM have followed suit. According to Evans Data Corporation's research report on the global open source database software market, MySQL, which already accounts for 40% of the market share in the open source database field, has become the most attractive target in the minds of several giants.

However, MySQL has the consistent characteristics of open source software companies. It not only failed Oracle's acquisition dream, but also acquired Net- frastructure, a provider of Web development tools, to strengthen its strength, and plans to transfer its architecture to "firebird" to avoid the shadow cast by Oracle's acquisition on its future.

David accused commercial software companies of launching free versions: "Don't believe what they call open source." Open source and free are not the same concept, the biggest significance of open source is that the lowest source code is completely open, all users can look for bug, and then modify it. Free software reduces costs, but it can never improve quality in this way, and that's the difference between us and them. "

In addition to the aggressive sense of pressure from its formidable competitors, MySQL faces some questions about its direction. Since MySQL began to adopt the dual license sales model, that is, on the one hand, any software developer or organization can download the MySQL open source database for free and share any changes made to it with MySQL, on the other hand, business users can use the paid model to download the commercial version of MySQL database. The industry has been worried that the company, which has reached $12 million in sales in 2003, will gradually change itself. While increasing the support for enterprise applications in various aspects such as concurrent processing, storage or clustering, reducing the running speed of the database makes the database architecture extremely complex, thus undermining the idea that MySQL was based on rapid and stable development in the early years, and is no longer the famous "15-minute" database.

David flatly denied: "it's true that MySQL is getting more and more complex, but MySQL will always guarantee that it will be used in 15 minutes, and we will always maintain our own style."

"I'm not sure how many business users we have because we don't care how many business users we have. For us, non-business users are more willing to point out deficiencies in the software, while business users only make demands." This sentence of David may provide the best answer to people's questions.

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