

Is MySQL Doomed to Extinction? - silkodyssey
http://opensource.sys-con.com/node/1386279

======
mdasen
The problem with this new product is that their business model seems to be
selling the software with hardware and there are no indications that the
software is open source. As such, it's really more a competitor for other
proprietary products since their pricing starts in the $100,000 range.

I know that it's become fashionable to write of MySQL or SQL in general and
many large sites are migrating away from it to non-relational data stores.
However, for many sites, MySQL does a wonderful job and relational features
cut down development time. The founder of Flickr spoke to this at a Django
conference saying something to the effect of, "ever since there was more than
200 sites on the internet, it has been better to target a framework at the
rest of the internet than at the top 100 sites". Specifically, he was speaking
to sharding and other highly scalable techniques that Django doesn't deal with
natively and saying that the vast, vast majority of sites will never have to
deal with those questions.

Relational technology definitely has its place and does offer developers
advantages. And relational technology does scale for some high-traffic
operations. Look at Wikipedia. It's the 6th most trafficked site in the world
and backed by MySQL. Granted, they do use caching and other techniques as
well, but it's a highly available, highly trafficked site. In fact, I can't
remember the last time I heard about Wikipedia going down.

New technology directions are great. I'm really excited about Cassandra. Do we
really have to declare something dead and something else the winner?

------
johna
"Is <specific technology> doomed to die?

Mr. Someone, who just started a business competing with <specific technology>
says yes!"

~~~
pg
To be fair, that doesn't imply that Mr. Someone is merely claiming so out of
self-interest. If he started a company to compete with the technology, he must
really believe it's going to die.

Which means you can't simply dismiss his statements; you have to look into
them and judge them on their merits.

It's a bad sign for HN that this facile dismissal has (as of this writing)
twice as many points as this much deeper but also critical analysis:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1332039>

~~~
reitzensteinm
Actually, I think in the hypothetical case it would be fair to write what Mr.
Someone is saying off as FUD, and ignore them, unless false negatives are of
serious consequence (eg, you're an investor).

Self interest aside, it's such a trollish statement that adds nothing to the
real discussion, which is a) what's wrong with product x, and b) what my
product y does to fix this. Such behaviour correlates reasonably strongly with
incompetence, at least in my experience.

My problem with the grandparent post is more that the question was actually
posed by a journalist, which is night and day different. They're sexing up the
content to sell a story. So reframing the quote as being from the Clustrix
guys is quite dishonest.

Had the quote actually been theirs, I'd have no problem laughing at their
expense, although I realise such behaviour is not encouraged here.

------
spudlyo
It's going to take a lot more than an expensive, closed source, hardware
integrated, clustered database that talks the MySQL protocol to even make even
a tiny dent in MySQL's popularity. Outrageous headline used to draw people in
to an annoying article that reads like marketing copy.

~~~
mcav
It's going to take ... Postgresql.

~~~
mmt
..an oft-overlooked option, sadly

That and cheaper hardware used more intelligently.

Even more sadly,I have found these topics, RDBMSes and hardware, to be areas
of great ignorance and, perhaps therefore, fear among software folk.

More importantly, it will probably take a substantial effort to de-mystify
these two.

------
ck2
Not when the product they are talking about is query compatible with it.

Kinda reminds me of how Litespeed built a httpd.conf/.htaccess compatible
apache replacement - it's drop-in ready but many times faster in comparison.
But it's very pricey so you won't see Apache going away anytime soon (and
people also switch to nginx for free if they don't need the compatibility
factor).

------
Shorel
This particular product not only can not doom MySQL, but it actually requires
MySQL success in order to have customers.

Only PostgreSQL or a similar more featured database can doom MySQL, and I
don't see this happening soon.

In fact, this product even strenghts MySQL in the market, by making it scale
up for enterprise customers.

------
amix
On a long enough timeline the survival rate for anything drops to zero - - and
as _why put it "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become
replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."

------
goldham
I tried to read this article but gave up because the pop-up ad took up my
entire iPhone screen and scrolled when I tried to get to the 'close this
window' link. Anyone have a quick work-around for this?

------
elblanco
Yes. At least in my own company.

We were picking a vendor and had gone deep in talks with the MySQL folks to
license their technology, and then Oracle stepped in and we picked somebody
else.

Following the technology since then, it's clear that Oracle doesn't really
know what to do with this thing. I think it would be a mistake right now for
any company to pick MySQL for any major work without plans on moving it out of
their product at some point in the future, it's simply on far too unstable
ground as a database to rely on anymore.

------
varjag
Well I'll tell you what deserves to die: that website with popup ad so huge
that its close button is out of bounds of netbook screen.

Text obstructed; didn't read.

------
rbanffy
Sure it is. So is everything we run on our computers, as well as the computers
themselves. We don't run dBase II on CP/M anymore. The same way msql was
replaced by MySQL, MySQL will be replaced by superior software at some point
of the future.

Just don't bet on these guys.

And, BTW, isn't this the Maureen O'Gara that wrote that "exposé" about
Groklaw?

~~~
mcantelon
Yeah, Sys-Con are a sketchy company.

<http://aralbalkan.com/2022>

~~~
rbanffy
Three banners stood out. One very annoying from Microsoft, two other banners
from them and one, smaller, from Oracle.

I wasn't going to buy anything Microsoft for the foreseeable future. Oracle
got one more penalty on my book.

------
njharman
That writing style was so annoying I could not finish article.

~~~
jkmcf
I love news outlets that don't include a single link to any of the company
websites they mention. (Yes, guessing clustrix.com was pretty easy.)

------
jcnnghm
Oracle has been extremely hostile to former sun customers. I can't even
download firmware now without buying service contracts for all my servers.

If they won't even provide proper service to hardware customers, I think they
will be downright hostile to a competing bread and butter product that they
now control.

