April 20, 2006 (Computerworld) MySQL AB plans to wean itself from dependence on erstwhile rival Oracle Corp. by building a data storage engine to work with its open-source database and will encourage other firms to create compatible storage engines, MySQL CEO Marten Mickos said yesterday.
Mickos said the storage engines, which users can swap in and out depending on their requirements, should appeal to customers moving to componentized, service-oriented architectures (SOA). “We’ll let users switch between a V-4 engine and a V-12 without having to get out of their car,” he said.
Cupertino, Calif.-based MySQL next week plans to announce at its user conference in Santa Clara, Calif., the release of an application programming interface (API) for its pluggable database storage engine.
MySQL is unusual among popular databases in that it allows users to easily switch between storage engines. Mickos said it offers a more flexible alternative to database vendors such as Oracle and IBM, which sell several versions of their flagship databases with different prices and limitations.
"Sure, stored procedures and triggers and what else is nice and gives a tremendous performance and usability boost, but it comes at a price that easy switching is not possible," said David Krings, a Web developer with industrial conglomerate, Ingersoll Rand.
Krings, who uses the default MyISAM storage engine with MySQL, said he welcomes more storage engines since he values "platform flexibility over ultimate performance."
Solid Information Technology Inc., a maker of embedded databases for telecommunications equipment, has already confirmed that it plans to release an open-source storage engine that will work with MySQL. Several other vendors and community projects are expected to announce their plans next week to build a storage engine, though Mickos declined to name them.
The most popular storage engine now for MySQL is InnoDB. InnoDB’s parent company, Innobase OY Inc., was bought by Oracle last October, sparking fears that Oracle might cut MySQL customers off from using InnoDB. That didn’t happen, and MySQL even renewed its contract earlier this month for Oracle to continue developing Innobase for MySQL users for an undisclosed number of years.
Jeremy Cole, who oversees about 8,000 installations of the open-source database at Yahoo Inc., said the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Web firm uses MyISAM for applications mostly requiring the reading of data -- and InnoDB when many users may be writing data simultaneously.
Cole called InnoDB "great," but also said it is "somewhat poorly integrated" with MySQL, lacking several common features such as full-text search and online configuration changes, while poorly supporting "referential integrity," which keeps the relationships between data tables consistent.
Furthermore, the only way to do "reasonably fast online hot backups" with InnoDB is a closed-source tool called ibbackup, which is now owned by Oracle.
"If a new storage engine offered InnoDB's current feature set without the above problems, and was stable, I would switch in a heartbeat," Cole said. However, he doesn't expect any of the unnannounced storage engines "to really be ready for use for another year or so."
Boyd Hemphill, a database administrator in Austin, Texas for an educational agency affiliated with the state of Texas, uses both InnoDB and MyISAM. He said that "unless somebody shows me a storage engine that really blows my socks off, I've got too much invested in these storage engines already to switch."
Nonetheless, Mickos said customers are still seeking alternatives to InnoDB. Mickos declined to release details about MySQL’s own in-development storage engine, Falcon, apart from saying it will enter public beta testing later this summer. Falcon is designed “to excel for very modern, some call Web 2.0, types of applications.”
The conference, co-organized by O’Reilly Media, is expected to draw 1,500 attendees. MySQL will also preview new server functionality in MySQL 5.1, now in beta testing, and MySQL Workbench, an upcoming graphical database design tool.
Confirming that he had recently turned down a buyout offer from Oracle, Mickos said he is amused by the current mania among vendors with acquiring stacks of open-source software, as exemplified by Linux vendor Red Hat Inc.’s recent purchase of JBoss Inc. and Oracle’s buying spree in the open-source space. He said the frenzy is at least partly being whipped up by investment bankers looking for business.
“Customers definitely want to concentrate their buying and have ‘one throat to choke’ for support, but they don’t necessarily want monolithic stacks with no moving parts,” he said.
Regarding his competitors, Mickos said that free “express” editions offered by the large database vendors “don’t give customers any value.... Their only purpose is to eventually force customers to switch to a more expensive database.”
And he hit out against those same competitors that characterize MySQL as a featherweight in a heavyweight world, unable to handle heavy enterprise applications. “I love it when my competitors are misinformed,” he said. “We run some of the heaviest, real-time, mission-critical applications around.”