On Tuesday 18 October 2005 23:44, Chris Travers wrote: > Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > > With no disrespect to PostgreSQL, MySQL has 100x our downloads and > > installations... > > > > Oracle is simply going after by far the biggest open source database > > player... > > As I said, Oracle demonstrated in 2000 that they had already singled > MySQL out for special competitive treatement. They did this by starting > to offer db conversion utilities in order to help people migrate from > MySQL to Oracle. It is not about technical merit, it is about market > share. We could have the best RDBMS in the world but if we never get wadda ya mean "could"?" :-) > enough users to directly threaten them to the level that MS SQL Server > or DB2 does, we are not the threat that they are, and we are not worth > the time and expense that research, competitive strategizing, etc. would > incur. Therefore, I suspect that we are sort of on the back burner > competitive strategy wise. I.e. competition is on a project-by-project > basis, and not coordinated as of yet. > > There are some things on the horizon that could change this quite > quickly, however: > > 1) Sun is talking about packaging PostgreSQL and distributing it with > Solaris. This would bring us directly head to head with Oracle in a > large number of potential installations. > > 2) EnterpriseDB's efforts and awards may have attracted some > attention. This may reinforce the idea that we are a threat. > > If this is the case, I bet that Oracle is probably pressuring Sun not to > distribute PostgreSQL, and if they do anyway, we need to be concerned > about the beginning of a high-level coordinated strategy targetting us > specifically. IMO, it is likely to start with one of two things: > > 1) PostgreSQL to Oracle database conversion utilities released by > Oracle (unlikely given extensible languages in PostgreSQL). they need to "reverse" engineer enterprisedb :-) > 2) Some sort of FUD campaign on the part of Oracle directed > specifically at us and not tied to any specific project (fairly likely). > look for pointers to lack of benchmarks, patent issues, and great bridge... those seem to be the most common rehash of fud. -- Robert Treat Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend