Andrew Sullivan wrote:
Note the slide at the beginning of that from "PostgreSQL" to "open
source database products". That trick is consistent with several
other things I've seen from Oracle, including Ellison, on this topic.
The idea is to lump everything into the "open source" class, and then
attack the technically weakest member of that class. It's good
rhetoric, so I don't think anyone should believe, for a second, that
this is some kind of know-nothing answer from Oracle. It's a good
strategy.
Ok. but it is still a lazy approach and indicates that Oracle has not
singled us out for special treatment. Again, this was not the case with
MySQL as of 2000 at the latest.
I'll also note that I've spoken to people inside IBM's DB2 division
who have, as part of their job, keeping tabs on PostgreSQL.
I am sure of that. I *do* see evidence that IBM has singled PostgreSQL
out for special treatment. Their attacks are much better informed than
those of Oracle and tend to the specific case study of Sourceforge.
This is not the "lump all FOSS RDBMS's together" or even "lump all
mid-range competitors together with lower end RDBMS's and attack them as
a group" strategy that they seem to be applying here. That is also part
of the reason why I predict that IBM will start marketing PostgreSQL
before Oracle does ;-) But this may be a few years off....
This being said.... I see very little evidence that PostgreSQL is
mostly deployed in the embedded device market. And while it is true
that there are a few transactional features (such as savepoints) that
were missing as of 2002, these were fairly minor and usually limited to
very complex applications (and reasonable to code around in most but not
all cases).
This is why I think we should avoid worrying about MySQL: it gives
others an opportunity to lump us into the "open source" pile, and
dismiss the whole thing on the basis of the missing features in
MySQL.
I think it is important to eventually capture the image of PostgreSQL as
*the* FOSS RDBMS (which MySQL currently still holds among too many
developers). But that is the extent of my concern with them.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting
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