database

SQL Server 2008 delayed until third quarter

Microsoft said on Friday that it has pushed back the delivery date of its SQL Server database until the third quarter of this year.

The company is planning to have a launch event, called Heroes Happen Here, on February 27 that will be a public coming-out of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008.

Rather than release the final product at that time, Microsoft will have a "feature complete" preview, according to a Microsoft employee blog dedicated to SQL Server.

A release candidate for SQL Server 2008 will come out in second quarter with final … Read more

InfoUSA to acquire Direct Media

InfoUSA, which got a boost last year from its Super Bowl ads, is planning to bulk up its marketing database business again, the company said Wednesday.

But this time it's looking to add a little heft to its mass-mailing business with an acquisition of Direct Media, a Connecticut-based direct marketing company. The companies have signed a definitive agreement and expect to close the deal by the end of the month. Terms were not disclosed.

InfoUSA plans to take Direct Media and operate it as a wholly owned subsidiary. And apparently, InfoUSA has run this game plan before. Over the … Read more

A conversation with Marten Mickos (MySQL) and Rich Green (Sun) about The Acquisition

The Open Season team got on the phone with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, and Rich Green, SVP of Software at Sun Microsystems, shortly after the announcement of the acquisition was made. You can listen in here.

As Matt and Dave see it, Sun may well become the center of the open source universe, acquiring a bevy of companies. Are Matt and Dave jealous of Marten's riches? Yes they are.

"It has been like walking around in a candy story," Mickos said, after looking over Sun's vast computing labs.

Enjoy the podcast. We did.

Sun + MySQL in just five weeks

Dave Rosenberg, Ashlee Vance, and I are doing an emergency Open Season podcast with Marten Mickos, CEO of MysQL, and Rich Green EVP of Software at Sun Microsystems, and they've said some things that blew me away. You'll get to hear them all when we publish the podcast later, but I can't resist on one particular fact.

Guess how long the entire process, beginning to end, took? Five weeks. From the first phone call to today's announcement, the deal took five weeks.

You can't get a partnership going with Sun (or anyone) in that time … Read more

Customs agent took bribes to access Fed police databases

A recent court case demonstrates, once again, the dangers of assembling massive police databases and trusting that law enforcement officers with access are paragons of virtue.

In this case, the unvirtuous Fed is named Rafael Pacheco, an agent with the U.S. Customs Service in Florida. And the database in question is the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS, which contains more than a billion records used by Customs and other federal police.

Pacheco was, to put it bluntly, a corrupt cop. He sold access to TECS for money.

He got caught when a Mexican man named Fidencio Estrada was … Read more

What Sun+MySQL says about open-source business models

On the heels of yesterday's Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld, Apple may be the tech company that's top of mind for many readers. However, from an enterprise computing perspective, Sun Microsystem's announcement that it is acquiring MySQL is far more pertinent. News.com's Martin LaMonica summarizes the announcement thusly:

Sun Microsystems will pay $1 billion to buy MySQL, the provider of a popular open-source database.

Sun said Wednesday that it will pay about $800 million in cash for MySQL's stock and take on about $200 million worth of options. MySQL CEO Marten Mickos will join … Read more

Sun buys MySQL for $1 billion to take centerstage in the web economy

Sun Microsystems announced today that it will be acquiring MySQL for $1 billion. Sometimes the good guys get exactly what they deserve.

At first blush, it seems an odd acquisition for Sun. Sun, after all, is not (or was not) in the database market. But Sun's historical strength in the web economy, and MySQL's current role as the heart of the web, makes it an interesting, important step for Sun to make. Said Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz:

Today's acquisition reaffirms Sun's position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world's largest traditional enterprises. MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network innovation. And most importantly, this announcement boosts our investments into the communities at the heart of innovation on the Internet and of enterprises that rely on technology as a competitive weapon.

Bingo. Perhaps most importantly for MySQL and its employees, an acquisition by Sun means that MySQL gets to continue being a pureplay open-source company and won't need to sacrifice the ideals or the benefits of open source to suit a halfway (and half-baked) stance on open source.… Read more

Closet Assistant attempts easy Web wardrobe management, social networking for turtlenecks

I once had a French teacher in high school who--legend has it--purchased about a hundred pairs of the same shoe in the same size after deciding it was the best pair of shoes he had ever worn, and calculating the wear rate combined with his life expectancy. For him, my guess is that picking out what pair of shoes he wanted to wear each day was not an issue, but for everything else, maybe he could have benefited from a service called Closet Assistant, which as the name suggests is a system to help you pick out what clothes to … Read more

The enduring allure of Stonebraker's ideas

Michael Stonebraker may have already secured his place in database history, but that doesn't mean he's used up all his ideas. The man behind the Postgres database, database specialist Ingres, and more is puttering away at not one, but two start-ups: StreamBase Systems, founded in 2003, and more so Vertica Systems, which is younger still. And he's reportedly brainstorming about his next concept. Venture capitalists and Wall Street CIOs alike are keen to hear what he has to say.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe: "Software pioneer is 'Johnny Appleseed' of start-ups"