Office applications Toolkit
Story: MySQL and Firebird battle for database top spot
The results do not really surprise me now I have had time to consider it. MySQL is not really aimed at the same market as FB and PG. Lack of ACID compliancy, and for a long time lack of stored procedures and triggers made it too primative to be used with mission critical data. It does plug really nicely into LAMP, so I do see a great future for MySQL. There are also some licensing rules that affect how developers can bundle MySQL.
PostgreSQL until recently had no windows build. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out that this is going to limit its market. Many small businesses do not have a linux box. Some would argue windows isn't the best environment for a dbms, I am not going down that path though. The latest version has some features that FB lacks, so I expect PG to increase its market share now Windows software developers can realistically use it.
Contrary to some peoples belief, Firebird was a popular dbms well before Mozilla named their project. It is a bit of a shame really, because now people question the motives of FBs reaction. To be honest, Firefox didn't exactly suffer as a result of the name clash either. FB has a tiny footprint (3MB), yet is surprisingly powerful. It shares a lot with its ancestor (Interbase) particularily with respect to ease of integration into the Borland tools.
Both FB and PG are serious threats to SQL Server and Oracle. I imagine that the big boys will always be around, but their marketability will shift from superior product through to legal indemnification for IP. I don't include MySQL in this list because it is a different market, although if MySQL introduces ACID compliancy, it may still be a three horse race.
I think it is great that there is not just an open source alternative, but several open source alternatives that we can judge on technical merit rather than simple licensing style.
Full Talkback thread
Story: MySQL and Firebird battle for database top spot
-
These statistic figures are almost meaningless wit... Lupa -
I doubt these results, I wonder which 400 database... steve -
I've had a few conversations about this surve... Anonymous Coward -
The results do not really surprise me no... Anonymous -
MySql is still a peice of trash. Any database tha... Dick Goulet -
id they do this survey on the firebird site? In my... Anonymous






