Thursday, 11th March 2010.

Future of MySQL

Written on Friday, 1st January 2010 by Neeta

I received a mail today which asked me to sign a petition on “Save MySQL” campaign. No doubt databases are very important for knowledge based industries and help web developers & custodians of knowledge management groups in handling, organizing and archiving the data. MySQL has a deadly combination with Linux. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) or WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL,PHP) are two most commonly used platforms which are employed for dynamic website hosting. MySQL is the most popular Open Source database suite which is employed by web developers all over the world. April 2009 was the month last year when Oracle announced that it is going to take over Sun. Sun incidentally had acquired MySQL an year back. Now that Oracle will have full control over MySQL, it may mean end of the road for MySQL and any further developments and refinements in MySQL which are always an integral part of any software product. If Oracle stops supporting MySQL, the move will also indirectly help MS SQL. Oracle and MS SQL are the two database solutions are not open sourced and comes with heavy price tag.

On the other hand MySQL is free, at least for the limited editions/small applications. MySQL’s sheer presence is enough to put some kind of sobering influence amongst MS SQL and Oracle sales groups. There are many firms who have migrated from Oracle to MySQL. Oracle’s taking over of Sun may have sent fears of rolling back their databases to earlier options but web developers need not worry. For future of our web world the open source products will in all probability co-exist with paid products.

There are many web developers who rely heavily on Linux-MySQL combo for developing some excellent applications. This bunch of web developers/freelancers strongly feels that present structure of MySQL should be maintained. And the indications given by Sun indicates the MySQL will continue to remain a open source product. But what future beckons only time will tell. Yes, I have signed that petition.