Open Source Database Systems - Performance and Scalibility

Peter Kitson

ISBN : -

Order a printed copy of this book from Amazon --UNAVAILABLE--

Cover Design - Open Source Database Systems - Performance and Scalibility

For your free electronic copy of this book please verify the numbers below.

(We need to do this to make sure you're a person and not a malicious script)

1 Introduction

Database systems have been thoroughly studied over the past 30 years and various commercial database systems implement the well investigated theories. These systems provide the user with sophisticated concurrency control and transaction management, backup, replication and recovery schemes. However, the prices of the commercial databases are thousands or even tens of thousands of euros. this can be unacceptably high for small and medium size enterprises.

As an alternative to the commercial database systems open source databases exist. The idea behind open source is that the product's source and binary codes can be obtained for free. The product's license usually says that the useage is free in non-commercial systems and in products that are published under the same license. It is a common practice to sell licenses also for commercial use. The prices of the licenses usually are a lot lower than the prices of commercial systems. Inexpensixe open source databases could be a tempting option for many enterprises if only they offered functionality and performance comparable to those of commercial systems.

The business model of the companies behind the open source databases is also quite different from the traditional one. Traditionally, software products are protected by all available means, the source code above all. the revenue comes mainly from selling licenses to use the products, whereas with open source, all the source code is available publicly. Usually the companies offer customer service and product support for a fee and sell licenses for commercial use of the products. These are the main sources of the revenue. The development of the products is global and the Internet is used as the market place and distribution channel.