Oracle VP on MySQL

Interesting read at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1567752,00.asp

It's an interview with the Oracle VP product strategy. Interestingly, in five pages, there's no mention of PostgreSQL. I've got to say that I agree with some of his analysis of MySQL, however, particularly these four paragraphs:

"MySQL production releases have typically been two years apart, and the time from alpha [first release] to production is about 1.5 years. They released Version 5.0 in alpha status in December 2003, so a reasonable expectation for production release of Version 5.0 is mid-2005.

It should be noted that MySQL Version 5.0 introduced stored procedures but not triggers or views, both of which are essential for significant enterprise applications. It appears unlikely that MySQL could introduce these critical features much before mid-2007. A whole wide range of additional capabilities including but not limited to XML and analytic—i.e. business-intelligence—features do not appear to be on the MySQL radar.

Furthermore, the low level of resources available to MySQL to fund development and the very small size of their development team raise questions about the viability of the MySQL business model and technology development path going forward.

It is unlikely that MySQL can rapidly accelerate development of their core product while acquiring and integrating disparate database technologies like the SAP DB (now called MaxDB) or MySQL Cluster. Indeed, this sort of 'engineering by acquisition' is a distraction and fragments their development efforts."

ned(at)nedscape(dot)com (Ned Lilly) writes:
> It is unlikely that MySQL can rapidly accelerate development of
> their core product while acquiring and integrating disparate
> database technologies like the SAP DB (now called MaxDB) or MySQL
> Cluster. Indeed, this sort of 'engineering by acquisition' is a
> distraction and fragments their development efforts."

I'm more than half-expecting them to start a "campaign" to deprecate
MySQL in favor of MaxDB.

There are, after all, only two real choices:

1. They can disperse their efforts by trying to support and enhance
both, and thereby do the "divide and conquer" thing where all
they conquer is themselves;

2. They can pick one as the "way forward," and hang their hopes on
it.

Seeing as how the place where the VC funds came in was in support of
SAPDB/MaxDB, so since their bread was buttered that way, it would seem
surprising for that not to win the day...
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