The easy-to-administer database is a developer favorite and a required ingredient for Web 2.0 start-ups. But MySQL still isn't breaking into the glass house.
Last April, MySQL AB’s CEO Marten Mickos, kicked off the opening day of the 2007 MySQL Conference and Expo by stating “open source is simply a smarter method to develop and distribute software — a way to promote software users’ freedoms in addition to protecting its creators’ rights.”
This is a long way from yesteryear, before the dawn of open source technology and the birth of MySQL.
The big three proprietary suppliers of database software – Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, compete in multi-billion dollar market, at one time snubbed their nose at the arrival of MySQL. After all, they all had mature, sophisticated products with advanced features, analytics and core database software – and their products are not “open” or free for a reason. The times are a changing. Now, as reluctant as they are to admit it, the momentum of MySQL is indeed something to worry about.
MySQL is owned and sponsored by the Swedish firm MySQL AB, a for-profit firm. It holds the copyright to most of their code base and touts more than 11 million installations of the software worldwide. The company profits by developing and maintaining the system while selling support and service contracts, and proprietary-licensed copies of MySQL. The company brought in some $50 million in revenue in 2006, up from $34 million in 2005, and $6.5 million in 2002, and it touts some 50,000 downloads per day — even though many users can skip downloading because their Linux distributions and hosting plans already include MySQL bundled and ready to run. Developers use MySQL for its reliability, scalability, simplicity and big cost savings in total cost of ownership.
“I don’t think other database vendors are doing anything to make it easier for MySQL to interact,” says Dirk Elmendorf, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Evangelist of Rackspace.
Elmendorf makes the point though that in many cases, MySQL isn’t fully replacing proprietary database technology, but supplementing it. “I have seen MySQL used in situations where you needed to take load off of the main Oracle database servers. The licensing structure can make this very cost effective assuming you don’t mind allowing multiple database engines in your deployment. I think in many cases people look at MySQL from a cost perspective first. The reality is that in some cases you pay for features you don’t need with some of the larger database engines.”
“The past few years have brought maturity to the platform, especially in the areas of enterprise features – from the addition of the InnoDB engine providing transactions and referential integrity, to the addition of stored procedures and triggers,” explains Craig McElroy, CTO of Contegix – a provider of managed Web hosting and application services offering dedicated servers running on Linux and Mac OS X.
“While its roots and original strengths were strictly in performance, this often came at the expense of a lacking feature set,” he adds. “MySQL has managed to grow to fill those once gaping features [that] set holes while maintaining the focus on performance and scalability.”
These gaping holes still stand out despite its long and rich history, and some prejudice still lingers in the mind of many. Many have had the perception that MySQL was introduced as a niche database, yet its adoption is proving it to be more than that. Before its 5.0 release, critics complained that it lacked many standard relational database management system (RDBMS) features. There had been complaints that MySQL isn’t “robust” enough for many uses and applications. Still the company defends its technology and says that often a critic still refers to an old release, or that their comment represents a “matter of taste.”
Their best defense of their product is their customer list, which includes YouTube, Yahoo, Cisco, The Associated Press and Cox Communications among other Internet giants. Google runs MySQL and even released a set of open source software, called google-mysql-tools, to help manage large MySQL installations.
McElroy maintains that one thing that sets MySQL apart in the open source database market is its highly flexible, integrated replication. “I believe this is one of the key elements which has propelled MySQL to be the database engine of choice for so many high profile Internet sites,” he says. “Judging from the road map and current development lines, replication will become more and more robust in future releases.”
Craig Thomas, CTO of GroundWork Open Source, a California firm that uses open source solutions for its systems and network monitoring and management software, says his firm uses MySQL for its deployments.
“There are several key components to our application’s database design, including a high-speed transactional store for status, event, and performance information collected from a series of monitor data sources,” Thomas says. “We use a variety of open source components, including Spring and Hibernate, as the platform for this tier. Our architecture and implementation are designed for database independence, but at the present time all of our deployments are on MySQL.”
For network analysis, MySQL’s cost, reliability and computing horsepower are key attributes. Scott Haugdahl, CTO of WildPackets, whose firm produces network analysis technology says, “a robust, low-cost, proven database like MySQL is the obvious choice a network analysis platform.” WildPackets uses MySQL in their OmniAnalysis Platform, which may be used as a network data repository.
“MySQL clustering is most commonly used for node failure and load balancing, according to Haugdahl. “In this context, clustering is not that useful to network analysis applications,” he says. “But because the [WildPacket] Omni Analysis Platform is a distributed solution, it is common to have many OmniEngines deployed throughout an enterprise. With each OmniEngine creating its own MySQL packet database, and future versions of MySQL clustering which support distributed databases, it will be possible to execute a single query against all of the databases simultaneously, returning a single result set.”
Haugdahl adds that this type of network analysis, known as multi-segment analysis, is desired by customers who need to understand more about the network as a whole, rather than just the activity of a single network segment.
Others feel that the typical application for a MySQL cluster is still limited because clustering works only with in-memory databases. Elmendorf of Rackspace says the community has been waiting for the release of MySQL 5.1 in which the in-memory only limitation will no longer be an issue.
“We do see customers using MySQL clustering for Web carts and session management, and the typical size is about 2GB or less” Elmendorf says. “The attractiveness of MySQL clustering is that it offers something to compete with Oracle’s rack at a much lower price even if you do subscribe to the MySQL support package.”
For large-scale deployments, the scalability of MySQL has not posed problems to firms such as Contegix. Incompatibility issues haven’t scared them away either. “My SQL’s scalability has been proven in large-scale deployments as the database supporting sites for our customers and others, such as Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube,” McElroy says. “While MySQL may not be directly and fully compatible with other commercial database solutions such as Oracle, it can be used alongside it, leveraging the economics of an open source solution where appropriate. This is a different approach than EnterpriseDB which has expanded PostgreSQL capabilities in order to directly compete with Oracle – such as the ability to run numerous Oracle applications unchanged.”
“MySQL is a powerful agent of change in the market place,” says Paolo Lubet, a former Oracle executive and current vice president of Marketing and Business Development of Solid Information Technology – which provides a storage engine for MySQL. “They have opened the door to growth and innovation in the database market by turning the database market upside-down,” Lubet adds.
“How have they done it? First, by gaining a broad adoption of their database technology among developers and [small to midsize businesses]; second, by splitting the database architecture in two: connectors and SQL parsing/optimizer functions on one side, and specialized storage engines on the other side.”
From a pricing standpoint, MySQL doesn’t seem to present a model that is problematic or even unique. “It is a logically tiered pricing model” McEleroy says.
“It adds additional management utilities and enterprise grade services as the tiers progress. It appears to be in line with other commercial editions of open source databases, such as EnterpriseDB. I wouldn’t consider their pricing model to be overly unique, but then again, I don’t see that it needs to be.”
Rackspace’s Elmsford concurs. “I can say that the pricing follows a fairly reasonable path of per server licensing. This basically means that as individual servers grow your deployment costs don’t go up.”
Most or our respondents believe that the MySQL community is a rich solution, formed by a combination of businesses and individuals.
“MySQL provides a fertile ground for community members to organize and take the lead in a variety of ways,” Lubet concludes. “For example, MySQL’s recent decision to significantly reduce the number of builds for their community edition has led to the creation of the DorsalSource.org community site where Solid and other community members are now automatically building and posting binaries of MySQL builds for developers to take advantage of.”
MySQL AB’s Mickos’ words to his audience may be bits of wisdom to hang on to as MySQL forges ahead on the open source terrain. “By lowering the cost of entry for start-ups, and removing the obstacles to explosive growth, open source software is also having a wonderful impact on empowering users to build a new generation of more agile products, Web sites and companies. Perhaps the next Microsoft, Yahoo, Google or YouTube is sitting in this audience today.”
