Ingres: We’re Gaining From The MySQL Meltdown

None of the explanations of the deal make sense, says Burkhardt. “They acquired a company whose whole reason for existence is hardware, and then talked about Java. Sparc revenue is in the billions. Java revenue is $250 million.”

MySQL is just a bit player in all of this. “It came along with the bundle,” says Burkhardt. While MySQL was at Sun, there were concerns about investment, but not any more. Some have tried to suggest Oracle might invest in MySQL as some sort of open source on-ramp for Oracle, but he dismisses that: “It’s not a possibility. No one believes Oracle will expand in MySQL. We’re convinced Oracle is not going to invest in it.”

“The key developers have already voted with their feet,” says Burkhardt, noting that most of the important ones had left already, while MySQL was at Sun – and admitting ruefully, that none of them have chosen to come to Ingres: “But we welcome anyone who wants to work on Ingres.”

Ingres expects a MySQL exodus

MySQL did have a higher profile than Ingres in the open source world, he admits, but that’s because it’s had fifteen years of evangelising – while Ingres has only had two years since it emerged from CA and found its feet.

With the writing on the wall for the MySQL development team employed by Sun, he reckons there’s been a significant upsurge in approaches to Ingres: “We’re getting a lot of people coming to us who originally chose MySQL and now want to talk to us.”

Even before the news of the planned Oracle acquisition, he says MySQL users came to Ingres: “Some started with MySQL, to build a first generation website, quickly with exciting content. When they needed a second generation site, supporting e-commerce, transactions, and credit cards, they’ve evaluated Ingres.”

Ingres has been an open source alternative for users who might otherwise have added an Oracle instance to add reliability and business-grade transactions, says Burkhardt: “At this stage on the web, most people are adding e-commerce and transactions. MySQL doesn’t support them well.”

The move towards Ingres has accelerated as MySQL has hit problems he said: “They’ve experienced a meltdown in support from what they knew.”