MySQL didn’t escape the Sun acquisition unscathed… hopefully Oracle doesn’t make the same dumb mistakes.
I took (what I thought would be) a few minutes this afternoon to upgrade a group of production MySQL servers at Applied Trust. I started by following the same process I have followed for at least four or five years: browse to mysql.com, click on “Download”, and follow the links to the latest RPMs for my Linux distributions.
The download went as expected, with the consistent MySQL branding lulling me in to a false sense of ease – this was something I’ve done dozens of times. I shouted down the hall that I’d be ready to start grilling dinner in a few minutes. Next, I scheduled downtime, did the necessary change documentation, and brought one of the slave MySQL servers down – I was ready to upgrade the database. I typed sudo rpm -Uvh MySQL-*-5.1.34-0.rhel5 and my pleasant ride through upgrade-land came to a screeching halt:
Seriously? Sun had to make changes to installation locations, log files, and startup scripts? These changes are completely unnecessary… technically. Someone’s ego or self-esteem was responsible for this decision. This is the software packaging equivalent of guys comparing muscles on the beach.
This cost me an extra 20 minutes and set me behind on my grilling duties… no big deal. But for enterprises that are patching lots of database servers, this upgrade will require significant unplanned expense/effort – tens or hundreds of wasted engineer-hours for a large organization.
Here’s hoping that Oracle can resist similar “branding” changes that break the upgrade process!!!
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One Response
June 13th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
A lot of government sites have taken JPL’s initiative to transition away from Oracle in favor of various turnkey-hardened versions of MySQL over the last “n” years, benefiting both their performance and budget constraints. While no one will argue that MySQL has all the bells-and-whistles that Oracle does, the bulk of the added-value is illusory: many of the calls are either little-used or can be constructed easily out of modified SELECT, JOIN or other comparable components of MySQL.
This overhead has historically added other benefits as well: installing Oracle 10g in a “Best-Practices” configuration requires a week and and stack of manuals; installing a hardened version of MySQL – maybe an hour. [All exaggerations can be attributed to the lack of lucidity in the Oracle manuals].
Sun’s acquiring MySQL was bad enough – a partnership would have fulfilled the same business objectives without compromising the expectations of the GPL crowd, but Oracle? That’s like selling the American Cancer Society into bondage to Phillip Morris; and the penalties are to be felt on both sides of the fence.
As long as MySQL was a free-agent in the marketplace Oracle was kept under the gun to accelerate the performance of its own products, streamline the packages to be slightly less memory hoggish, and generally provide a tighter end product. Now, with their major performance competitor tidily wedged in their hip pocket, Oracle can return to its former state of dormancy and relax the QA frenzy that resulted from a little honest competition.
This is of course a gross over-simplification: MySQL retains at least a vestige of an existence outside Sun/Oracle, and I’m sure stock options have been generously exchanged under the table. Never-the-less, the public’s expectations of a real and substantial counter to Oracle’s excessive and Draconian licensing strictures are at lest temporarily dashed.
Darth Vader finally won thru.
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