sql

The European Commission could delay its decision on the Sun-Oracle deal beyond Thursday's deadline to further investigate antitrust issues, reported Reuters, citing sources familiar with the situation.

Apprehensive about Oracle gaining control of Sun's widely used MySQL database, the Commission's antitrust regulators are currently debating whether to OK the deal by Thursday, the report said. If the Commission launches a full review, it could take as long as four months before a decision is reached, according to Commission rules.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently cleared the merger. But the Justice Department's concerns centered more … Read more

Microsoft has released a free trial of its cloud-based relational database.

The community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Azure Database was made available Tuesday, along with a preview of an SQL Server driver for building PHP applications for the Azure platform.

The Azure Services Platform, first announced at a developer conference last year, is Microsoft's move into the rapidly growing cloud-computing market. As with all cloud platforms, the idea is to provide scalable, hosted services on a pay-per-use basis, running remotely in Microsoft's data centers.

SQL Azure Database, a key component of the platform, is a rival to … Read more

What is the value of an open-source asset? Over the past several years, and most recently with SpringSource, we've seen a number of open-source companies acquired at valuations of 10x or better. Did the buyers get their money's worth?

It's a tricky question to answer--and likely depends upon far more data than I have at my disposal. It also depends on the acquiring company executing, which has not been the case with Yahoo (which bought Zimbra) or Sun Microsystems (which bought MySQL). No open-source company can offer a panacea for an acquiring company's failure to execute.… Read more

Though our bodies get older, our minds remain relatively young. Sure, we're scarred and matured by experiences, but our bodies age much faster than our minds. It turns out that companies are much the same.

Take Oracle, for example. We sometimes give Oracle grief for being the quintessentially Machiavellian company, with a hard-driving sales culture and bent on nefarious designs to lock in customers, but the company was founded under very different principles.

Oracle made its fortune promoting the SQL standard which, despite its problems, freed the world from mainframe lock-in, as Alfresco CEO John Powell, an early Oracle … Read more

Microsoft has delivered the next iteration of its flagship database product, SQL Server 2008 R2, to developers for review.

The company released a preview of the software to MSDN and TechNet subscribers on Monday. A community technology preview (CTP) will be available on Wednesday for general download, Microsoft said in a blog post.

SQL Server 2008 R2, previously code-named "Kilimanjaro," is the next generation of the Microsoft SQL Server database platform. The product is planned for release in the first half of next year.

The updated database software lets businesses build their own business intelligence capabilities. It includes … Read more

One year after raising many prices by 20 percent or more, Oracle is once again raising prices--by 40 percent for certain products.

Interestingly, the products receiving the big price bumps are not the core database or application servers, but instead the administrative tools used for monitoring and compliance.

I'd certainly like to say this is price gouging, but really it is just smart business. Oracle knows database sales can't grow forever and that customers will sooner or later need to have additional tooling. Strategically, it's much smarter to price non-core components higher to ensure consistent adoption … Read more

I was somewhat shocked by the stellar results Oracle recently reported, considering the sorry state of the economy. I even called an analyst friend to find out if maybe there was some house of cards ala Computer Associated that explained the consistent rise in revenue and margin. But I was reminded of two simple facts explaining why Oracle remains dominant:

Oracle's acquisition streak has given the company an enormous breadth of offerings (say what you will about quality of the software) and the attempt at offering it's own Linux … Read more

Open source backup and recovery provider Zmanda, today announced that Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) now allows MySQL databases to be backed up to a destination of choice, including a remote cloud storage service. ZRM also allows on-premises MySQL databases to be backed up to the upcoming Sun Cloud Storage Service, which enables DBAs to create disaster recovery archives of databases on a flexible, secure and open public cloud.

I've written several times in the past that backups and disaster recovery are ideal cloud scenarios though there are still issues to be addressed:

One of original authors of MySQL, Michael 'Monty' Widenius, has founded the Open Database Alliance, a consortium that aims to become the industry hub for the open source database.

The move was announced Wednesday. The two founding parties of the vendor-neutral consortium are Widenius' engineering company, Monty Program, and the MySQL services and support company Percona.

According to a statement from the Open Database Alliance (ODA), the consortium will act as a hub for MySQL and its derivative code, binaries, training, and support. Specifically, the ODA will work on the software, support and service for Widenius' branch of MySQL, MariaDB. … Read more