Open-source database software maker MySQL AB has released a new, more powerful complement to its MySQL flagship database. Called MaxDB version 7.5.00.06, the latest release, which was built on database assets it acquired from SAP in May, is more robust than MySQL’s main product and also boasts such features as stored procedures, triggers and views, which MySQL lacks.
MySQL Reopens SAP’s Database for the Public
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Could Apple run their SAP system on a Mac then?!?!
If so, do you really think this database is as robust as DB2?
I think that this might be for small to medium deployments. It is very interesting, since it means that we might see Apple pushing SAP on their machines!
The interesting thing would be to have a “MySQL compatibility mode” for MaxDB. That way peoples could migrate their applications that have outgrown MySQL to a more powerful database without having to go thru every SQL query first.
I hope they made the install nicer than SAPS original install. that setup / removal system was the pits.
sap is still the bastard adabas-d child that never differentiated itself from all the other adabas-d databases.
DB2 is well above and beyond SAPDB/ADABAS-D. It is used in some large scaleouts. SAP were known for not really bothering to fix bugs in SAPDB, its stored procs had holes in its documentation and stuff.
its not a DB i’d currently pick. but it robust. Remeber also, sap hardly ever pushed SAPDB for their sap systems. mostly they pushed oracle…
why wouldnt a company push their own product?? hmmmm….
Id rather apple pushed PostgresSQL than SAPDB.
I imagine that Apple would rather deploy SAP using Oracle on Xserve G5 servers as their database.
Oracle have already officially said they will support Panther as a major platform for the Oracle Database 10g, which will be available at the end of the year.
I am not sure what plans SAP have, if any, for supporting SAP applications on Panther.
speed, stability and EASE OF USE…it’s far from SAPDB
I hear earlier version of MaxDB had an Oracle 7 compatibility mode. Has 9iR2 compatibility been introduced or is it likely to?
SQL RDBMS should be SQL92 and SQL99 compliant and then you will have almost no need for any compatibility modes.
As far as I know, the closes one to standard compliance is PostgreSQL now.
Good news, now lets see if we get a MySQL db Oracle-styled for the movement..
>The interesting thing would be to have a “MySQL compatibility mode” for MaxDB. That way peoples could migrate their applications that have outgrown MySQL to a more powerful database without having to go thru every SQL query first.
If you read further down in the announcement (http://www.mysql.com/press/release_2003_35.html), you will see that MySQL is working on MySQL Proxy, which is supposed to accomplish just that.
But, there is one major problem with even MySQL creating a MySQL/MaxDB compatibility mode: MySQL databases are usually so full of integrity violations that you will have to create your MaxDB database with almost no constraints until after the migration is done, and then you will still have a big job of data cleanup. (Meaning: a compatibility mode will only take you so far). In my experience, this is the single biggest problem with ANY migration from MySQL.
for rougly the same code (v7.3 & v7.4) that you can get for free from sapdb.org right now. The $1489.00 per processor isn’t going to attract many converts unless they have somehow managed to improve the management tools. I work with a 7.3.x version daily and would not fork over $1500 (or $3k on dual proc) unless MySQL has significantly altered the capabilities of the admin tools in 7.5. But I guess I am going to have to download it and see for myself.
With that said, sapdb runs well (on Linux .. stinks on Windows) but is hard to administer and can be difficult to setup. Once MySQL has ironed out these shortcomings then I do believe they will have a viable product that can compete with the big boys.
People, most of you talk about something you don’t know about. We have been using Sapdb in production on both Linux and Windows and it just plainly works. Yes, there are bugs, but yes, they get fixed. The mainling list is VERY responsive plus there is plenty of peoply directly from sap helping you resolve your issues.
I have no idea what are you talking about hard to install or uninstall. Maybe you don’t like the command line operation but to type sdbinst, enter 8, enter, enter, enter, enter, enter is as easy as it gets. And to uninstall just do sdbuninst -all.
With the t.4.3.30 the database manager second edition is pretty sleak as well.
How can the price be too high when itn free?
Didnt you read the part about dual licensing?
Its released under GPL and a commercial licens.
The only time you have any advantage of the expensive commercial license is when you:
1. Make changes to the source code.
2. Want to sell your modified version without supplying your modified sources.
So, any company can compile and change whatever they want without paying a single euro cent!
No way! if you WRITE software which uses MaxDB, and you don’t GPL your app, you MUST buy a commercial license! The good old SAPDB client libraries were LGPL, but the new MySQL’s ones are GPL – it’s the same business model Qt has.
I think it’s ok to start with such a business model, but SAPDB has been used by MANY people because the libraries were LGPL, and moving away from LGPL to a GPL model is a PITA for them.
If the libraries had been GPL before, many people currently using SAPDB would have choose another RDBMS – now they have to pay or move to a more free database (postgresql? firebird? ).
i have been using sapdb for 2 years now. at that time, sapdb had way more capabilities than postgres or mysql, having user schemas and full transaction support were the biggest pluses. i know postgres has transaction support but no user schemas.
anyway, sapdb compared to DB2 or oracle? i think it’s close. and especially because it’s free. and with MaxDB, the only time you would pay that expensive fee is if you modify the source code, and re-sell the product for profit. like turning maxDB into superDB and selling it. if you just use MaxDB as a RDBMS for your application, without modifyingthe source code, it’s still free.
who wouldwant to modify the source code for sapdb anyway, i heard it’s one of the oldest and undecipherable codebases around, i could be wrong though.
even though, the business pricing isn’t that high. you people know nothing, DB2 costs 10k up front, than and extra couple grand for each processor. Oracle is much higher priced.
so just use postgres? use mysql? if it does the job 4 u then use it. stop whorring it around like it’s the solution for everyone. some people need the features of sapDB, like my company. postgres and mysql wont cut it for my needs.
i see this mysql / SapDB affiliation as a good thing, this means that the thousands of MySQL apps out there will be compatible with MaxDB, and that more attention can be thrown at the often overlooked sapdb, so more applications can be written for sapdb, and everyone is a little happier.
anyway, sapdb compared to DB2 or oracle? i think it’s close. and especially because it’s free. and with MaxDB, the only time you would pay that expensive fee is if you modify the source code, and re-sell the product for profit. like turning maxDB into superDB and selling it. if you just use MaxDB as a RDBMS for your application, without modifyingthe source code, it’s still free.
Wrong. Please read the licensing description in MySQL site.
i see this mysql / SapDB affiliation as a good thing
It could also lead to a lower quality SAPDB with a different name.
By the way, I have already tryed MaxDB 7.5. It’s just plain SAPDB 7.4 gone through s/sapdb/maxdb.
>i have been using sapdb for 2 years now. at that time, sapdb had way more capabilities than postgres or mysql, having user schemas and full transaction support were the biggest pluses. i know postgres has transaction support but no user schemas.
Well I have been using Postgres for years and I can tell you that it does have user schemas and has had them for at least a year. In fact, I have been able to find only one capability of SAP DB that Postgres does not have: nested transactions, or savepoints (yes, this is an important one, I’m not belittling it here– I hope Postgres finishes nested transaction support this year). However, it seems that there are a few interesting things Postgres has that SAP DB does not have, such as user-defined datatypes, multiple procedural languages, rules, etc… Plus, browsing the online documentation, I find that SAP DB has ye olde 8K table row limit.
I will say, though, that SAP DB has the nicest online documentation of any DBMS I have seen yet. I wish the Postgres docs were this well laid out.
i apologize for my error in the lack of user schemas in postgres, like i stated though, it was two years ago, and sapdb had the features i needed, i was actually using postgres first, but we found that it wasn’t powerful enough at that time. i’m happy to see postgres evolve so quickly.
yes, MaxDB 7.5 is just a rebranded 7.4, one thing that suxors is that 7.3 and 7.4 will not be supported or developed after some time next year, so everyone will have to move to MaxDB, or two another database.
moving to a new DB would be a big PITA.
as for the licensing issue, if this is the case for enterprise applications using MaxDB as a backend, then i guess we will have to fork over the money when the time comes to upgrade, because changing over to a new DB will be more costly. (time to change our existing codebase, although we do use the unix odbc drivers, so maybe porting to postgres wont be so bad, it’s just the issue of our table schemas, and the sapdb specific loops and hoops we jumped through to get things working. firebird looks like a nice option too.
How about such a little useful thing in JDBC such as scrollable result set. Jaybird doens’t support it the last I heard because of limitation in FB 1.5.
“if you WRITE software which uses MaxDB, and you don’t GPL your app, you MUST buy a commercial license!”
That is incorrect. From http://www.mysql.com/products/licensing.html:
“As long as you never distribute (internally or externally) the MySQL Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under GPL or other OSI approved license or not.”
So, for example, you could build a proprietary (closed source) web application that sits on your own server. You could also distribute a proprietary application as long as you require the users to acquire the MySQL database on their own.
First, there’s no need to make public an internal app, as long as your internal users can take a peek at the source if they’re curious. The rest of this message applies only if the GPL applies.
If you connect to the MySQL or MaxDB database servers, rather than embedding them in your products, then you are just bound to the license restrictions of the client libraries (drivers). This means that you would only need to GPL your app if you linked your app with those drivers.
Note that using ODBC drivers through the driver manager does not constitute linking – in that case, the drivers are plugins to the manager. In particular, if your app provides a generic ability to connect to databases through the driver manager and is not specific to MySQL or MaxDB, then the plugin rule applies.
You can also use third-party drivers: As long as those connect through the wire interface instead of direct linking, the only license restriction is that of the drivers themselves.
This means, for example, that you can use the GPL’ed ODBC driver with MS Access (plugin rule), and that you can write REBOL apps (commercial support through /Command or BSD-licensed driver from DocKimbal) to connect to a MySQL database without license restrictions.
Not a problem at all, unless you are stuck programming apps for public distribution in C on a platform with no ODBC manager. Write your own driver then, or charge for your app.
of course you can always code your application to make use of any database (or a set of certain db software) so that it doesn’t work exclusively on MySQL classic or MaxDB. that way you’re not required to fork over cash for the licensing thing.
and designing apps for database independence is a good thing too