Re: Replace Oracle with Open Source DB?

Michael Austin wrote:
> Lee wrote:
>

>> 
>>            <SNIP>
>>
>> Adding everthing togather there's less than 4 or 5 GBytes of data and 
>> 70KSLOC of pl/sql code in the whole ORacle portion system.
>>
>>           <SNIP>
 >>
>>
[Quoted] >> Does it make sense to port the application to "something" else.
>>
>> If so why so, if not why not?
>>
>> What options does the group think are viable?
>>
>> How would we recreate the beauty of the XNL DB  features in mySql or 
>> berkely DB or INNODB or whatever?
>>
>>
>>

Somewhere on the web there are estimates of how many LOC in language A are equivalent to how many in language B.

PL/SQL is a big plus and I would not enjoy losing it, BUT:

Many of those 70K SLOC are in fact just pushing out the forms and are full of htp.p( 'blah blan') and such. PHP or soemthing for that part of the application would not be so bad.

There's no question that doing the processing in mySql will be longer, harder, and uglier. For one thing, the application has a fairly large table organized as a recursive tree (Each record has the FK of its parent). We'ld need to completely rething all that because there's no "Connect By" in mySql.

Before version 5 and before the availability of the berkely DB engine or the (oracle owned and supported) innoDB engine, I would say mySql is just out of the picture. But now ..... ?

  Keep in mind that MySQL is
> not free for commercial use. (Why do you think SUN bought it?) Any code
> that uses the "free" version must be under GPL and made publicly
> available (See the ToC for further explanations). I know of a couple of
> places where they spent more than if they had used Oracle. As for Oracle
> licensing, only you and your sales rep know what you paid for it. (like
> negotiating with a used car salesman - sometimes you "feel" like you got
> a good deal - sometimes you don't :-) )
>
> Support - the ability to log a call and get immediate (well sometime
> today anyway...) help. I logged a bug with MySQL and it took almost 2
> years to get a work-around *not really a fix* in place.
>
> If you could keep your total user data size to < 4GB you could go with
> Oracle XE (Windows/Linux only, as is, no support, no patches, < 4GB user
> data, but Free). Maybe this could be used for development to reduce
> license fees (see licensing above).
>
> To "recreate the beauty..." you would rewrite everything... is it worth it?
>
Our brave leaders may be entranced by the "romance" of open source. Do it youself, but have all the world as your helper, be able to share it with others, have total ability to control the internals, ..... sounds good the them. Received on Tue Mar 17 2009 - 13:53:12 CET