Re: troll

Serge Rielau wrote: > Call it RAC, GRID, autonomous computing, queuing, advanced XML, > information integration. I think the commercial database vendors will > stay ahead of the open source crowd for the foreseeable future. > Comparing marketshare between the faction in this environment is another > can of worms. > I DO think you're underestimating both growth rate and capabilities of the OS databases. I honestly think those databases will gain a lot of marketshare in a very short time. We're using DB2 atm for our ASP service, but it's mainly because of the reputation and the lack of practice information concerning OS databases. We're not willing to take the risk of using an OS database that *might* not be up to the task. But a database like postgres might aswell be able to do the things we need. It *has* the capabilities we need; SQL, backup/restore, stored procedures, ODBC connectivity, schema's, tablespaces, ACID, and so on... The are a few things that are unclear: TPS and stability. The biggest things lacking for OS databases are not very technical, these are reputation (DB2/Oracle/Informix/Sybase etc. are proven technology and built a certain reputation over the years) and support (still notoriously little support for OS databases). I see a lot of young companies around me, and they all consider OS databases first. Only if an OS database doesn't fit, then and only then will they consider an expensive commercial database. Sure, the commercial databases have a solid base of customers, but I doubt the growth of customers is increasing or even stable. But one thing we can all agree on is MSSQL. I cannot place that thing anywhere. Too expensive to compete with OS, and too ..erm.. arcane to compete with commercial databases. But one behemoth of marketing :P -R-

Jurgen Haan wrote: > Serge Rielau wrote: > >> Call it RAC, GRID, autonomous computing, queuing, advanced XML, >> information integration. I think the commercial database vendors will >> stay ahead of the open source crowd for the foreseeable future. >> Comparing marketshare between the faction in this environment is >> another can of worms. >> > > I DO think you're underestimating both growth rate and capabilities of > the OS databases. I honestly think those databases will gain a lot of > marketshare in a very short time. <snip> Let me qualify what I posted. I think the commercial databse vendors will _technologically_ stay ahead of the open source crowd. Measuring Marketshare is a very difficuly thing when you add free stuff to the mix. What is the market share of ACCESS? What is the marketshare of all those build-in niche products? If we go back to the "# of books at Indigo" example ACCESS may well be market leader. For all I know the big three are already in the minority in number of installations/amount of data stored/???. Who knows? Let me spin it a different way: What is the "marketshare" of pedestrians in Toronto as part of the public and private transportation? 0! Yet the sidewalks are choked. The question for commercial vendors is: Does the market share as defined in revenue shrink or grow. So far it has been growing. And that is what is counting for teh commercial vendors. As long as the pie for commercial vendors grows there is no threat. Just my two cents not being an MBA or such... Serge -- Serge Rielau DB2 SQL Compiler Development IBM Toronto Lab

Serge Rielau wrote: > The question for commercial vendors is: Does the market share as defined > in revenue shrink or grow. So far it has been growing. And that is what > is counting for teh commercial vendors. > As long as the pie for commercial vendors grows there is no threat. > By marketshare, is this the share divided over commercial products? Because OS products cannot be calculated in this pie. no one can measure the number of OS products in use, number of downloads is no good, because the OS databases are mirrored and distributed among different Linux/Unix flavors. To illustrate, no one on the face of this earth (except the ones who work here) could know we use postgreSQL and Mysql in our company, since the medium where it's installed from is a copied slackware distro, and the databases are installed on several servers. But for registered figures, we only use DB2, because we are a registered customer with db2. If you mean that the total amount of customers is growing, then you're right, that's a good thing. Considering tech aspect, most OS products tend to surpass their commercial counterparts quite fast. Only take a look at desktops. I know it's a dark unknown area and you need a good amount of knowledge and time to customise a X desktop, but atm I have a desktop on my Laptop which outperforms (and at least out-eycandies windows) both windows and MacOS-X and which uses techniques which are to be introduced in the upcoming Longhorn/Vista. But most people just don't know about it, or think it's just a collection of toys or beta libs, there's no marketing behind those products, but still they exist. Take a look at the progress on the linux kernel, quite impressive. Other examples; Openoffice, Mozilla, Apache, Samba (yes... samba 3 is technological superiour to the SMB implem in both win 2003 & XP), where windows CE was a nice mobile solution, more and more companies are using linux for embedded and mobile solutions, DVD players, sattelite decoders, pda's, mobile phones, navigational systems. But nobody knows... No one tells the public: we're using OS software in our products. Why do I take those Microsoft products as an example? Microsoft is a major competitor in the general computer market, they have an enormous amount of marketshare, but that does not mean their products are good. Back ontopic: anyone noticed MonetDB? A new (registered @ sf.net in 2002) OS DB product built by the Dutch CWI institute. It uses some new storage techniques and a transparent interface which enables the database to use any type of language to access data. Both SQL and XQuery are default supported. The database is lightspeed compared to both Mysql and PostgresDB and already it has an UnixODBC interface, and new features are added every day. -R-

I took the liberty to adjust the subject to the topic Jurgen Haan wrote: > Serge Rielau wrote: > > >> The question for commercial vendors is: Does the market share as >> defined in revenue shrink or grow. So far it has been growing. And >> that is what is counting for teh commercial vendors. >> As long as the pie for commercial vendors grows there is no threat. >> > > By marketshare, is this the share divided over commercial products? Correct. That's how it's commonly counted. > Because OS products cannot be calculated in this pie. no one can measure > the number of OS products in use, number of downloads is no good, > because the OS databases are mirrored and distributed among different > Linux/Unix flavors. To illustrate, no one on the face of this earth > (except the ones who work here) could know we use postgreSQL and Mysql > in our company, since the medium where it's installed from is a copied > slackware distro, and the databases are installed on several servers. > But for registered figures, we only use DB2, because we are a registered > customer with db2. Right. To gartner you are true blue and as long as your IBM rep doesn't feel mySQL is eating into space that should better be owned by DB2 IBM doesn't care. > If you mean that the total amount of customers is growing, then you're > right, that's a good thing. Absolutely, and as long as the total amount of customesr grows for both commercial and OS then that's good enough. > Considering tech aspect, most OS products tend to surpass their > commercial counterparts quite fast. <snip> I think we largely agree. Not sure I agree on the technological surpassing. I do not see Linux desktops (yet) outside of the geeky area and I don't see how Linux has knocked teh commercial OS vendors over technologically. Note however how Microsoft is struggling to incite customers to upgrade. There is little to be gained technologically by going from one version of Windows to the next for the vast majority of desktop users. To most Windows 2000 was good enough. The moment Linux desktops environment catch up with W2k and that is widely known I'd expect MS #installations to tank unless they go free themselves because MS has no where to go with the desktop. If you look at DBMS again vendors are trying to avoid the trap by moving upstream into "Information Integration" and "Content management" (see IBM's shopping spree) and Apps (Peoplesoft, Retek). Not moving upstream to provide value means getting clobbered by the mySQL et al. Cheers Serge -- Serge Rielau DB2 SQL Compiler Development IBM Toronto Lab

Serge Rielau wrote: > I do not see Linux desktops (yet) outside of the geeky area ... Unfortunately that is true, it's very pleasant to work with linux desktops, I use it al the time at work and even in private. But no marketing means (nearly) no customers. > ... and I don't > see how Linux has knocked teh commercial OS vendors over technologically. There a number of implementations in the linux OS which are yet to be announced in future versions of other OS's. Furthermore some implementations are better handled in The OSS than in the commercial counterparts. Again I use the example of Samba. Samba has all the abilities of the microsoft SMB implementation, and then some. Next to that Samba outperformed win 2003 SMB with a factor 3 in speed. (this is just one example) > Note however how Microsoft is struggling to incite customers to upgrade. > There is little to be gained technologically by going from one version > of Windows to the next for the vast majority of desktop users. Yes.. this is again obvious in the upcoming Windows Longhorn/Vista. Compared to the first announcement, a numerous of new revolutionary parts have been dropped (one of them was bash-like scripting). If you subtract that from the initial presentation, you'll get a polished XP. > To most Windows 2000 was good enough. The moment Linux desktops > environment catch up with W2k and that is widely known I'd expect MS > #installations to tank unless they go free themselves because MS has no > where to go with the desktop. This will most likely never happen, at least not through linux. Almost no one I know has even heard of linux (or they have and don't even know how to pronounce it, or even call it lunix (c64 unix)) Without marketing, linux will stay what it is; a geeky os. > If you look at DBMS again vendors are trying to avoid the trap by moving > upstream into "Information Integration" and "Content management" (see > IBM's shopping spree) and Apps (Peoplesoft, Retek). Not moving upstream > to provide value means getting clobbered by the mySQL et al. It would be ludicrous to use a vast system like DB2 or Oracle for use of a CMS which displays some newsitems. Talk about a waste of potential. The fact is that the OS db's are shifting towards OLTP (this is the hard one) and Data warehousing. (another fact is that they are not there yet) > Cheers > Serge -R-