Drizzle plans to wash away DBMS past

A new database management system (DBMS) designed for web applications and cloud computing could be the start of a new direction in DBMS development and, indeed, in software as a whole. Drizzle - unveiled recently at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) by MySQL director of architecture Brian Aker - is described as a " …

[A J Stiles]

Hmm

So basically they want to omit all the things that never used to be in MySQL (because, you know, if you really needed them, they could always be dealt with at the application level) ?

Sounds like a nice straightforward array persistence layer.

And if it's successful, I don't doubt that in a few years' time, they will be talking of adding foreign keys. And maybe stored procedures. Then triggers .....

[Adrian]

Stoopid is as stoopid does

mySQL has only now got embedded procedures etc since they are faster to process than sending a SQL comand which then has to be parsed,checked for correctness (integrity etc) and then run.

Seems they are going back to mySQL's old claim that it is faster to run it on the fly but if it was then why have they changed to a stored procedure system?

nerds, who needs them ?

[Richard Cottrill]

Back to the future

"Specifically, Drizzle does not have stored procedures, views, triggers, query cache and prepared statements." - Sounds like the MySQL v3.22 that I cut my teeth on.

Back when men were men; a LAMP was a thing in the corner of the room; Wired was sage; Napster was naughty; 56Kb Internet connections were considered "quick"; and Java was not yet boated (but didn't exactly zip along either).

Back when I started reading El Reg...

[Henry Wertz]

I think he's right...

I haven't done enough work with MySQL to know if he's dropping vital features, but from what I've seen from the webapp end of things, probably not. Increasing performance at the cost of features (that will slow the implementation down) makes perfectly good sense for a database just being used to back a web site (or cloud). SecondLife (a.k.a. Sadville) has a database at it's heart to track users, invetory, etc.; if Drizzle's not missing features SL needs it could probably help it too.

Windows: Right there too. Microsoft can bluster all they want that they aren't irrelevant, but for cloud computing they are. Why would ANYONE building a cloud pay $x *per machine* for Windows (or even worse, having to pay per machine per month like Microsoft's looking to do), when they can pay $0 for Linux, or pay a Linux vendor $y for tech support (with $y still not being per-machine.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun does nothing that won't sell hardware,

or was it a dream.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another great name in the world of OS

What is it with these people?

Drizzle - in my mind sums up a miserable,forgetable, damp day.

What next?

New super all singing, all dancing Open Source Software called...Fanfare!

Turd!

[Unlimited]

prepared statements

are bad for performance now? well i guess i just learned my new thing for the day.

[Nicholas Wright]

But... why?...

PreparedStatements are so important when dealing with web applications. There's a huge potential for crap (illegal characters, SQL injection, etc) to get through to the database, and a PreparedStatement gives a lot of protection (by no means complete protection) against this kind of stuff.

Not sure why they're bothering. Free websites will use whatever the ISP gives them. People who own their websites, or small-medium companies, will use MySQL as a minimum. Large companies will have spare Oracle licenses down the back of the sofa.

So.. why?

[Philip Kilner]

"SQL relational model" - WTF?

What the hell is the "SQL relational model"?

We have the relational model, which is fundamental. Oh, and it's a model.

We have SQL, which is the language aspect of a dubious partial implementation of the relational model. It's not a model.

Conflating the two is unhelpful, especially in this context.

<grrrr>

PhilK

[Anonymous Coward]

No prepared statements?!?

Given that prepared statements are touted as one of the best defences against SQL injection expect to see a lot of insecure webapps appearing on the horizon.

Seriously, who thought that dropping prepared statements, instead of making them mandatory, was a good idea? Considering they can also be more efficient and faster for repetitive tasks than ordinary queries this has to be a mis-quote.

[Anonymous Coward]

X-Get-A-Life: pending

Performance is soooooooo overrated. I mean, if you can't afford hardware upgrade, your business model is probably worth reconsidering. And, if you make your developers wasting time using inferior technology, you should probably step down.

[Daniel B.]

Deja Vu

"Specifically, Drizzle does not have stored procedures, views, triggers, query cache and prepared statements."

Oh great ... it seems like the mastermind(s) behind Drizzle seem to be the bad lot from the MySQL team. You know, the ones that said "We don't need no steeeenking transactions!" and proceeded to give DBA wannabe's a broken mindset for years to come.

The "transactions are for losers" mindset from the MySQL team was precisely what made me back off and return to PostgreSQL for serious apps. Of course, there are worse "creations" out there, like MUMPS...

[James Anderson]

Need a small footprint fast database?

Look no further than SQLITE.

Full ANSI 92 SQL support, blinding fast, runs on any hardware/OS combination you are likely to blag or buy.

A truly excellent pice of software!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another step in the wrong direction.

I'm sorry to say it but I don't think they've got a clue what they're talking about. Sybase is much faster than MySQL, for example and has a lot more features.

I've heard that Postgress is pretty fast too. If you've worked with different RDBMSs for a while it's pretty obvious the problem isn't with stored procedures or prepared statements!

I'm very disappointed with the way MySQL is going these days.

[Charlie Clark]

Too much kool aid...

If you want speed but don't want relational integrity go with the Berkeley DB.

As for performance - I thought the cloud wasn't about that but about resources on demand. There is a big difference in the software in the on-demand containers and the large infrastructure required to support them.

Anyway let the fuckwits sign-up for this shit so they don't pollute the Postgres world with all they stupid ideas ("native" XML support, shudder). Just been doing my first work in InnoDB - error 1005 all the time with no further information available. What a pile of shit!

[The Mighty Spang]

no query cache?

of course, web site index pages never have the equivalent of this

select * from news order by post_date desc

so there would be no point caching it... and really, the qc is probably the simplist bit of code in mysql, the query string has to be an exact match, its not doing anything clever.

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

Don't really have a clue...

What this story is on about but the bloke in the photo looks like Francis Dollarhyde, the psycho killer in Michael Manns' movie Manhunter.

[Grant]

@Don't really have a clue...

Yeah he kinda does. although that guy was bigger. Awsome movei too bad the sequels sucked

[Anonymous Coward]

@Aristotle

I thought he looked like the bad guy out of last action hero, the on screen one with the axe and yellow rain coat.

Anyway stoopid name for software but I like that they are drawing a line against M$

[Ishkandar]

Sounds like a typical sour-grapes NIH statement !!

"...went on to compare it to Sony as a "non-innovator"." Oh, WOW !! He seems to *NOT* have heard of the Walkman, Discman and a whole host of Sony "non-inventions" !!

Reading between the lines, what this guy is saying is "I'm not a good enough techie to challenge the techies of the big companies, so I'll win by declaring their good features as useless" !! Meanwhile, I'm taking *MY* ball home so you can play by yourselves !! He's not the first I know of with this attitude !!

I shall pay absolutely strict attention to any spectacular success of this new product !! Til then, please don't wake me for anything less !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I've missed something

These people are idiots, there is no way that anyone running commercial computing is going to use a database that is waaaay open to SQL injection attacks (indeed anyone who processes a card transaction would be specifically prohibited from using this database by the card companies).

Not offering Windows support because 'Mircosoft is irelivent to the future of software development" gives them away as FOSS zelots, again someone anyone with a large infrastructure isn't going to trust. Also, almost anyone with a large infrastructure is going to have a shitload of Windows servers.

The OSes supported gives this away as Toytown, Fedora, not Redhat, Solaris Express rather than proper Solaris and Mac OSX. An odd section of consumer OSes.

The final nail in the coffin is the name, would you install something called Drizzle? Maybe in America where (AFAIK) it doesn't have the grey, misty, weedy rain implications, but the fact that they couldn't be arsed to look up the proposed name for their database in a dictionary suggests a lack of attention to detail.

[Luther Blissett]

@AC @Aristotle

Looks like Professor Eno to me.

Just this is bound to happen when you get a Reg database item with implicit ontology - you can't tell the sheep from the wool. But it most definitely sounds like Web 2.1 (at least). Do I hear a hurrah from somewhere?

[Jodo Kast]

Comical Noobs

My favorite was "Given that prepared statements are touted as one of the best defences against SQL injection expect to see a lot of insecure webapps appearing on the horizon."

Oh I see, you pushed off security to your DBA and now you think you are secure.

Please... step away from the keyboard.

[Robert Hill]

@Davis

"Not offering Windows support because 'Mircosoft is irelivent to the future of software development" gives them away as FOSS zelots, again someone anyone with a large infrastructure isn't going to trust. Also, almost anyone with a large infrastructure is going to have a shitload of Windows servers."

Not offering Windows support because MS is "irrelevant" is pretty stupid, but not for the reasons you mentioned. Sure people with large infrastructures have a shitload of Windows servers, but I highly doubt that they are paying MS license fees to run an entire cloud of processing like this is designed to run on. Most likely candidates are Fedora or other free Linux. Anyone that would put a large DB installation on cluster or a cloud of Windows servers, IMHO, just doesn't get it. Is Win Server OK for a mid to large server? Yep. But for a cloud of whiteboxes, paying more in Windows licenses than the hardware costs is indefensible...

[John]

MS is irrelevant in the cloud

Damn straight they are,

I've been using remote farms and Grids for years now. Never ever seen them run on anything but Linux / UNIX.

Had a look at SUNs latest cloud - compile your code to run on Solaris 10 and then submit it to their batch farm. Pay-per-CPU-hour. Way of the future.

[A J Stiles]

@ Fraser

SQL injection attacks are actually trivial to defeat. All you need to do is perform -- in the application layer -- a regular expression substitution on any incoming form data to ensure that nothing in there can be mistaken for a closing speech mark.

PHP actually used to do that by default ..... until some people started changing their local defaults not to be the same as the default defaults, and what should have been secure by default ended up insecure by default.

I guess dat's default of de one dat changed de settings .....

[Charlie Clark]

@A J Stiles

What a pile of cock!

PHP's "magic quotes" do not prevent SQL injection but they do fill the database full of \shit (please check some manuals on quoting strategies in different (R)DBMS - MySQL MyASM doesn't qualify for the R). But please stick with it if you like it and don't drag your ignorance into our systems.

For anyone else still reading: prepared statements don't entirely remove the threat of SQL injection, as the DB still has to quote the parameters properly and this is open to attack (at least this means that only the DB has to worry and not the client), but it does allow th DB to cache the compiled statement which can bring significant performance improvements particularly on long statements.

[A J Stiles]

@ Charlie Clark

Tut, tut. Blaming the programming language for your own inability to read the manual pages for stripslashes() and addslashes().

With that attitude, you are obviously management material. Get yourself some subordinates at once -- it feels even better to blame *people* for your own shortcomings.

[Charlie Clark]

@A.J. Stiles

haha. Unfortunately I didn't put the shit it their and I'm my client isn't PHP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Drizzle - how miserable, unless it's olive oil on your salad

Relational Databases and ANSI SQL use two proven branches of mathematics: relational algebra and set theory. Thus you know the end result is always going to work from the outset.

Throwing this away is like building a brick wall out of columns of bricks - it will simply fall over.

I'll stick with a rugged and reliable RDBMS any day. As for Microsoft - how many years will it be before we say "Micro who?" or "windows?."

[Midnight_Voice]

Non-Innovator?

I suppose this guy thinks BluRay invented itself, then?

Paris, because she gets Akers of news coverage for not very much as well