Enterprise applications Toolkit

Story: 'Most important ever' MySQL reaches beta

Posted by: Anonymous (Friday 1 April 2005, 4:39 AM)

A year and a half ago the scene was very different on the open source database front. We needed a suitable SQL backend for our product and MySQL was the first one we considered. After about half a day of investigation, three things were its downfall (for us and back then).

* Commercial Use License
* Cascading constraints
* ACID compliancy

Well you could argue that cascading constraints is simply part of ACID, but the point is they didn't work. We were coming from Paradox, and there was no way we were going to put the effort into switching if the data consistency issues were not addressed.

PostgreSQL looked great, but at the time, no released windows port.

Firebird took us a bit by surprise. We chose it based on the features it had, alongside the reputation of Interbase which was its ancestor. There is somewhere around 20 years of database experience there.

In recent surveys, Firebird and MySQL have been neck and neck in terms of "enterprise" use. I am glad that MySQL is taking this step. It should lead to higher quality MySQL programs as the full benefits of ACID compliancy kick in.

Postgres now has a windows release build, and there are lots of features and enhancements on the horizon for Firebird.

What will happen is really anyones guess. One thing that will not happen overnight for MySQL is the reputation of the ACID implementation. Certainly those who currently use MySQL will be interested in this new power and confidence in the data, but it will take at least a year before users of another ACID compliant dbms will take it seriously enough to consider it.

At the end of the day, it is us the users that win out.