Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

BlowhardsAbound — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:41:00 -0000

"This is such ridiculous crap. I’m never clicking a link to this blog again."

I'll second that, wholeheartedly.

But then I should have known better. What's far worse is that more of the (obviously technically educated) comments don't ridicule this poser.

@Robert Finlayson: I'm leaving this "courtesy" comment in hopes that others will snap out of their haze, and wake up and smell the BS being shoveled.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Robert Finlayson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:24:02 -0000

I love it when people say "I’m never clicking a link to this blog again" and yet have enough courtesy to leave a comment describing such future actions for the rest of us to read.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Rex Wang — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:59:31 -0000

SimpleDB is not a relational database at all, and so it is very different from Oracle Database or MS SQL Server. It is a "simple" key-value database.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Montoya — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 02:45:02 -0000

This is such ridiculous crap. I'm never clicking a link to this blog again.

Just to be fair and make a real comment, though, Scoble, whatever happens in the startup sector DOES NOT disrupt the industry. Startups make up a very very small portion of the tech industry and usually run on free or low-cost solutions.

If you want to talk about "disrupting" you have to look at the enterprise market and see if anyone in any IT position will honestly consider dropping a mature and total-control option like Oracle to use a limit service from Amazon. That's where all the money is at for providers like Oracle and MS, not the punks in SF bootstrapping worthless apps.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Robert Scoble — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:22:07 -0000

dc: thanks. I will definitely be tracking this story with other players over time. What Amazon is doing is quite interesting, even if the headline I used is a bit over the top. The reason the headline worked, though, is BECAUSE Amazon IS disrupting other "platform" businesses and doing so in a major way.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

dc — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:08:31 -0000

This system of sensational headlines might actually work if done right.

I see your role as 'famous tech blogger' to focus our (those of us who don't have the time to stay in touch) attention on the news of the day. This piece does that.

What I am also looking for is well regarded opinions on the news of the day. I don't expect those opinions to come from 'famous tech blogger(s)' or the following bunch of joe schmo comment(er)s.
But this is where I would like to see you play another role. Being 'famous tech blogger' you have a really great bunch of contacts in the field. Get them to comment on the things you post. What would bring value to this piece are listening to what a architect at oracle, microsoft, ibm, mysqlab or google have to say, and of course what "real" customers have to say.
The sensational headline seems to have gotten some sensible people to leave a comment here.

Having said that, I hate the CNN stories where they stop random guy on the street, to get his opinion on the latest fed rate cut. The problem with living in a world where access to information is instantaneous, is you also have instantaneous acesss to OPINIONS (majority of which is just noise). I dont want to wade through 30 comments to find 3 insightful ones. You do that for me and I have reason to come back here again even if the headline is just sensational.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Toby Hede — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:05:38 -0000

Is the database dead?
I think the short answer is no, but the game is changing rapidly, and Amazon is at the vanguard. I've collected some thoughts: http://info-architects.net/...

PS: Facebook already a has a Data Store as part of the Platform API.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Steve — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:38:00 -0000

Scoble just keeps looking for novel ways to jump the shark.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Aaronontheweb — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:34:47 -0000

A sensationalist headline with zero content in the body of the post to go along with it? Someone's getting lazy.

Honestly, why go and buy a 60 server cluster *cough*Edgeio*cough* when you don't even have any fucking customers or revenue? I know it's good practice to prepare for scaling, but going out and buying enough capacity to serve millions large data queries a day right off the bat makes zero economic sense for the average startup.

In most cases, there isn't even a reason to invest in a VPS, let alone a cluster, unless the amount of demand the service experiences dictates that it makes economic sense to do so. Blowing a budget on establishing a huge infrastructure is stupid, and any startup that does this without any justification other than "just in case" deserves to go tits up.

While I think Amazon's service is a good offering, I don't think dedicated SQL/ORACLE/MySQL hosts have anything to worry about.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Maurice — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:34:37 -0000

Robert

Actualy to few startups are going into datacenters what about 6 apart who totaly failed with a single point of failure.

And as some one has said ACID! even small sites need that i have had to help one of my seo clients when his back end lost its referential integrity lucky for him it was only 3 or 4 orders and I was able to reassemble the orders by manualy working out which rows belonged to which order

Good job for him i spent 5 years working with orracle and 4 with sqlserver

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Diego — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:23:50 -0000

One reason? Speed. The pipe is too slow where speed matters. Sure, there'd be cases where speed is not important and having the data ase hosted by Amazon, up on the cloud, would work. But for high traffic, responsive applications, it's not the killer you suggest.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Sean McGee — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:20:36 -0000

Many start-ups pay for web hosting.

Pretty much all paid web hosting plans come with MySQL or equivalent support.

The only way I can see someone using this, is if they have limited databases with their plan.

(For example, my plan allows up to 10 MySQL databases. If I need more than 10, this service from Amazon would be a great solution.)

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Christopher Coulter — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:33:42 -0000

Tell you why? My 5 minute spec-sheet analysis, if that.

Hrrmph, not relational with a convoluted byzantine pricing structure, all in the "clouds". Nix on query, nix on cost, nix on data retention.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

socialcoop — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:24:09 -0000

Simple answer: MySQL is free!

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Wesley Williams — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:22:23 -0000

This is the first time I've been glad that IBM hasn't got any press. Thanks for not mentioning DB2.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

wannalearnjapanese — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:05:08 -0000

It wont happen soon but it's interesting, very interesting! Except for that eBook thing they released Amazon seems to be on a roll.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Mr_Simple — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:58:29 -0000

It's simple Scoob - their datasheet says the first use case is for real time apps and they limit the query time to 5 seconds.

Hardly something you would use for an enterprise app.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Pop — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:52:21 -0000

Very exciting stuff from Amazon.

It's a game changer, no doubt, but don't rule out all the other players (especially MySQL whose architecture would allow for its use as a query engine on top of SimpleDB).

Expect Oracle to provide a driver as well if they see SimpleDB getting off the ground.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Krish — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:47:47 -0000

I will be writing a post related to this in the next few days. But there is no way these databases are going to die. There are two approaches to cloud computing. One is the closed approach followed by Google and Microsoft where they create a proprietary system to store data. The second one is an open approach taken by Amazon's EC2. In my opinion, much like the proprietary-opensource war in the traditional software world, the open approach to cloud computing will win over the proprietary formats to store data. What we need is raw computing power and not proprietary systems. MySQL and other open source database systems will be relevant even in the cloud computing era dominated, at present, by proprietary systems.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

technoticau — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:35:59 -0000

But what about Kindle Scoble? Tell us more about Amazon , all day every day! Something going on there behind the curtains maybe? Either way you should tell us more about Kindle I think.... Kindle, Kindle, Kindle! Amazon! Isn't S3 amazing tho?

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Edwin Khodabakchian — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:33:24 -0000

I think that this is a great news for widget and mobile application developers. I would not be surprised if Facebook was to announce something similar soon.

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Karim — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:17:38 -0000

Interesting, but hardly a SQL Server killer.

Where to begin...

It's not relational for one thing. You can't query across tables. So instead of having a Colors table that's RELATED to your Products table, you have to append a color to each item in your Products table. This sounds great until right up until you want to change the description of "sky blue" to "light blue."

It also sounds great until you realize that Amazon is charging you by the BYTE and, d'oh! "light blue" has more text than "sky blue." Hey, do we really need to make that change...?

The pricing is a mess. Didn't Steve Jobs show us that people love simple pricing models? Even Microsoft offers per-processor SQL Server licensing if you can't be bothered to deal with CALs. Instead Amazon offers you a complex, in-bytes vs. out-bytes. vs. the first 1/4 mile surcharge vs. phase of moon pricing scheme that makes orbital mechanics look like an episode of Dora the Explorer "Can you help Boots find his Amazon SimpleDB bill?"

And charging people for CPU usage? Didn't that die with punch cards? 1974 called and wants its pricing model back.

Cloud-based database services are going to be big -- they won't ever completely take over, but they are going to increase in importance -- e.g. Microsoft Astoria, which they've just given the catchy name of "ADO.NET Data Services," or GData, which has the equally catchy real name of "Google Data APIs." Microsoft is at least giving away their stuff for developers right now and not charging by the pound for it... :)

SimpleDB is too simple... it is not even Microsoft Access...

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Boris Popov — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:15:03 -0000

Two more words for you: regulatory compliance

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Denis Gobo — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:11:19 -0000

For simple stuff maybe, for complex stuff and perhaps SOX dependent data I don't think so

Denis

Re: Is MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server dead?

Tim — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:04:00 -0000

wow, a lot of shortsighted people on the comments. This is totally the future of DBs on the web. but not in 6 months, more like 20 years. in the long run the vast majority of sites are going to be offered much better security by big players than anything they can set up on their own.