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Weighing the Options

The decision whether to use open source software is often clouded by ideological debates over licensing issues and the validity of intellectual property. While most developers will come to the table with preformed opinions on these matters, it's important to make business requirements the top priority when evaluating any software solution—especially one as important as a relational database. At the end of the day, what works for you is what counts.

Though the bulk of SourceForge.net's users are staunch open source advocates, so far McGovern has seen little negative reaction to the decision to use DB2. "I've only gotten just a handful of people asking, 'Why did you do this?'" he says. "I think most open source developers use SourceForge.net because of the service we provide. As long as the service is top-tier and lets them create excellent, powerful applications, then that's really what they're looking for and it's something we continue to deliver."

Microsoft's Hilwa feels strongly that commercial products will provide the best quality of service in most—but not necessarily all—cases. "If you look at most of the free or inexpensive products, they simply do not provide the broad functionality to run typical mission-critical applications. However, in some cases, they can be good choices. For MySQL, for example, we tend to find it in read-only environments where transactional workloads are very light and the data is kept transitionally, like during a Web session."

Thus, the critical step in any database deployment is to rigorously define your application parameters. If fast performance and stability for relatively simple SQL operations will suit your needs, MySQL is a strong contender. More complex SQL applications—those that call for heavy transaction loads, stored procedures, or triggers, for example—could still benefit from PostgreSQL, Interbase/Firebird, or SAP DB. In either case, the cost savings over a commercial software license will be significant.

The most important thing to remember is not to be scared off by the open source label. Today's open source databases are mature applications that rival their commercial counterparts for a wide range of applications. However, don't be fooled into believing that open source will be a panacea for the ills of expensive commercial software. Each has its place. Ultimately, the most effective developer or DBA will be the one who chooses the best tool for the task at hand.

Open Source Choices MySQL (www.mysql.com). Far and away the market share leader in open source databases, MySQL is wildly popular among Web developers. MySQL AB has also been successful at licensing the software for commercial, embedded use. It is very fast and stable, but its SQL implementation lacks many features on which commercial database admins have come to rely. Developers who need to perform complex SQL operations should probably consider competing products. PostgreSQL (www.postgresql.org). With an ancestry dating back to the University of California at Berkeley, the venerable PostgreSQL has long enjoyed a reputation for a rich and well-designed feature set. Unfortunately, speed and stability were not among its notable strengths—until recently, following a comprehensive rewrite. Today, PostgreSQL is extremely competitive in most areas. It is the second most popular open source database, and its growing developer community continues to enhance and extend it. While not a feature-for-feature replacement for Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server, PostgreSQL is worth considering for most applications. InterBase (www.borland.com/interbase/). The history of InterBase goes back to the 1980s, and it's been known under a number of different names. Borland bought it in 1994 and released version 6.0 as open source (via a spin-off company, Inprise) in 2000. Within its rich feature set are modern capabilities like support for Unicode, Java, and ANSI/SQL. Its resource-efficient, multithreaded engine offers good performance on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Unfortunately, however, Borland's relationship with the open source community has historically been poor. Firebird (firebird.sourceforge.net). Frustrated by internal politics at Borland/ Inprise, a group of independent developers forked the InterBase source tree in July 2000 and began the Firebird project. Since then, Firebird has generally evolved more rapidly than InterBase, though so far it is still largely compatible with its parent. With the release of version 1.0 in 2002, Firebird is a strong and feature-rich database, though it still lacks the level of community support of PostgreSQL or MySQL. SAP DB (www.sapdb.org). Beginning with version 7.2, German software vendor SAP chose to release the source code to the database that backs its SAP/R3 enterprise applications. The system is available under the GPL and LGPL licenses for a number of platforms, including HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, and Windows NT/2000. SAP employs roughly 100 developers on the project, and prides itself on being what it calls a truly enterprise-class database solution. That said, its installed base is relatively small—SAP cites only 800 commercial installations as of this writing. —NM

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Neil is senior technology editor for New Architect.

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