Re: Are we losing momentum?

cbbrowne(at)cbbrowne(dot)com wrote:

> Kevin, without the "e", wrote...
>
>>I seriously think the native Win32 port of Postgres will make a big
>>difference, because it'll be a SQL Server killer. Especially if it
>>comes with a nice administrative GUI. :-)

I agree. I don't think PostgreSQL will be a SQL Server killer,
but my completely ignorant guess is that 90% of the cause of the
*initial* gap between mySQL and PostgreSQL grew out of the fact
that a Win32 version of mySQL was available. Once the gap became
present, one then had to suffer switching costs. If the
features/performance of PostgreSQL > mySQL switching costs, then
PostgreSQL wins in the long term. Without a Win32 port, the
switching costs also include those switching costs associated
with switching from Win32 to Unix.

>
> I wouldn't be too sanguine about that, from two perspectives:
>
> a) There's a moving target, here, in that Microsoft seems to be
> looking for the next "new thing" to be the elimination of
> the use of "files" in favor of the filesystem being treated
> as a database.

They ought to get their database up to speed first, it seems to
me. I agree Microsoft's view of data management is a moving
target. 6 years ago everything, including network resources were
going to be accessed strickly through an OLE2 Compound Document
interface and OLE structured storage. Then the Internet got hot
and all data suddenly had to be accessible through URLs. Now
it's XML that hot. Perhaps the Microsoft filesystem of the
future will be one big XML document ;-)

>
> b) We recently were considering how we'd put a sharable Windows box
> in, at the office. Were considering using VNC to allow it to be
> accessible. Then someone thought to read the license, only to
> discover that the license pretty much expressly forbids running
> "foreign, competing applications" on the platform.
>
> It seems pretty plausible that the net result of further development
> will be platforms that are actively hostile to foreign software.
>
> If I suggested that the licensing of Win2003 would expressly forbid
> installing PostgreSQL, people would rightly accuse me of being a
> paranoid conspiracy theorist.

I think you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist. :-)

Mike Mascari
mascarm(at)mascari(dot)com