The bMighty Blog -- Open Source

Are proprietary databases doomed? The short answer, according to one noted database engineering expert, is no. The long answer is that open-source competition is about to take the world's proprietary database vendors -- and their customers -- on a wild, and very interesting, ride.

The expert in question is Allan N. Packer, a senior staff engineer with Sun Microsystems' Performance and Applications Engineering Group, and the author of . Last December, Packer authored a series of blog posts asking exactly the question I raised here. While he concludes that proprietary database vendors aren't going the way of the pay phone anytime soon, they are already in the midst of a seismic shift in the database market landscape:

By the turn of the millenium, relational databases had already pretty much met the essential requirements of end users, and proprietary database companies were either pointing their vaccuum cleaners toward other interesting money piles, or losing the plot entirely and sailing off the edge of the world. Today, database releases continue to tout new features, but they're frosting on the cake rather than essentials. No-one issues a tender for a database unless they have unusual requirements. No-one loses their job because they chose the wrong database. And it's been that way for years.

Put very simply, the database has arguably become a commodity.

Enter the open-source database, which, Packer says, can now match or beat the proprietary vendors' products at performing almost every task businesses ask them to perform:

In the past there has been no real alternative to proprietary databases. That has changed, at least for new applications that have no legacy database dependencies. The relative proportion of hardware and software purchase prices has been changing, too, and for some years software has gradually been consuming ever-larger slices of the pie. In recent times the pace has accelerated, though, as commodity-priced hardware has become much more powerful and database prices have increased.

For the most part, customers still have not entirely woken up to these trends. But if they ever do, we may see a significant shift in the database market. Is it possible that the perfect storm for proprietary databases is brewing?

When Packer writes about trends in the database market, he clearly has his focus set upon larger enterprises. The trends he identifies, however, are the sort that apply equally to smaller companies -- and in many cases they apply especially to smaller companies, which are increasingly likely to require a DBMS with precisely the features that today's open-source databases excel at performing.

No matter where your company sits on the size spectrum, if your IT requirements are likely to include a DBMS anytime soon, then perusing Packer's thoughts on the topic could save you quite a bit of time and money in the long run. In fact, Packer's blog posts make interesting reading for anyone who buys IT products for a smaller company, since the principles he describes are largely applicable to most other business-class open-source applications, as well.

Spotlight on Solutions

(Sponsored By Cisco)