Oracle kills low-priced MySQL support

Oracle has hiked up the price of MySQL, killing low-priced support options and more than doubling what it charges for the commercial versions of the database. A MySQL annual subscription on a server will now start at $2,000 for standard support, after Oracle's killed Sun Microsystems' basic and silver packages, which started …

[vegister]

oracle are doing their best to destroy any remaining goodwill.

every time oracle do something like this, they are shouting 'we hate our customers'

people will start choosing alternatives very soon. they are in my top 3 companies to avoid if at all possible.

[Matthew Barker]

Not Oracle

It Isn't Oracle who sold MySQL and walked away with a cool $1B. They're just getting the blame for exercising their rights over something they bought. The folks responsible for the end of the MySqueal love-fest are the neo-millionaires who sold it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Couple of mistakes

Whilst I agree with the general outline of the article there are a couple of mistakes:

1. MySQL before Oracle had a cluster edition that was more expensive than Platinum. Its prices were not published before I believe.

2. Its per CPU not core.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cluster edition

Also note that for the cluster edition users will typically have a minimum of 5 servers (1xmgm, 2xndbd, 2xsql), so that's $50,000 for a typical basic setup.

[Bruno Girin]

s/mysql/postgresql/g

Of course, you'll have taken care to code your web apps in a DB-agnostic way to make the change painless?

[CD001]

Show...

Show me a PHP framework that doesn't do this already - they pretty much all do (with varying degrees of success) or you could use PDO.

Switching DB server isn't exactly a huge headache any more (well, if you'd written your SQL in a server-neutral kind of way in the first place... and aren't relying on stored procedures/triggers) - probably the "trickiest" bit is compiling the new DB server into your *nix of choice.

[Matt Bryant]

Ho-hum?

So, if you want some monitoring tools and the nice feeling of a megacorp support structure, pay the extra. Otherwise, if you're happy to hack your own monitoring scripts and just want support on the core stuff then go with the cheaper, probably less-polished but knowledgeable third-parties like SkySQL (or do it yourself "for free" if you've got the ponytail and sandals). Pretty much the norm in the OSS industry. The interesting bit will be what M$ does to steal those customers that want the megacorp support but may want a more polished product. After all, if Larry makes it too pricey for them then they may start wondering why they don't just go drink at the Redmond bar.

[Anonymous Coward]

MariaDB

It'd be good if they also offered transfer to the MySQL successor ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said it before

Why the hell would anyone buy mysql support from Oracle?

There's so many better, more personal companies out there. OpenLogic and Percona spring to mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really that bad

Can one provide a real look at what was included before and what is included now? To make a blanket statement that price is hiked without full details is bad reporting, jumping to a conclusion based on few data points, that may or may not be relevant, or being biased. If the car no longer has a v6 but a v8 and the price went up is that hike? not really b/c it is a different product. seems like someone is just wanting something bad to say about someone else. someone should really make a full comparison of what was provided before and what is provided now using all the facts. the article is wrong in that pricing doesn't not count cores, it is for a servers up to 4 physical sockets regardless of number of cores. how is the price doubled? the article states that price starts at 2,000, basically same as silver at 1,999? and doesn't explain that the type of support and monitor at each level was different, IMHO important distinctions when making a comparison.

[Matt Bucknall]

Can you say...

PostgreSQL?

[alien anthropologist]

Big deal...

This is not a "personal thing" of Larry-wants-to-screw-mySQL as some want to make it out.

Oracle canned many of Sun's old support options, and now provides so-called premium (aka expensive) support only. This includes h/w support for the Sunfire product range.

Now I can get p'ed of with that as we have truckload or three of Sunfire blades.. but with hiking mySQL support? Come on! High time you get a real friggen database product!!

Mine's the one with the mySQL-is-crap flamethrower in the pocket.

[proto-robbie]

Rubbish

I've been using it for eight years in enterprise systems without issues. It's certainly not crap. Or do you shit bits?

[alien anthropologist]

Rubbishing the rubish...

> "I've been using it for eight years in enterprise systems without issues. It's certainly not crap."

We have a single database table that alone deals with more rows per day (100's of millions) than what several large mySQL databases will deal with in total per year.

Yes, we actually did try mySQ, and the orginal beta version of our s/w was running on it. Due to lack of scalability of mySQL and inflexibility of its architecture, we went Oracle instead.

> "Or do you shit bits?"

No.. just 0's and 1's.

[Anonymous Coward]

uh oh, internet tough guy

You mad?

[maclovinz]

E-Commerce

Not all are easily transferred.

osCommerce won't probably be until 4.x or 5.x Others have asked, with no real response. I sincerely HOPE that they allow Postgres sometime soon though!

Oh, and the management tools I really need, already exist on Mac anyway! :D

Grenade, because that's what i typically feel like taking with me into a room with a bunch of users.

[Uwe Dippel]

What is the problem, please?

I mean, I could hate Oracle as much as you (or I myself) wanted. But still they decide 'how much'.

I hate them, and I think for good reasons, once the Free part is removed from MySQL. It actually is, so I hate them. And still, they can decide their prices for MySQL support as long as they so desire.

[opensourcedb]

EnterpriseDB's PostgreSQL Support

Yet another reason to move to PostgreSQL. With EnterpriseDB able to provide worldwide support and services, oh, and by the way, Oracle compatibility, now is the time to move.

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Hmmm...

Now let me think, what is it that Oracle make? Their main business, they sell a certain type of software, now what is it? Oh this is going to annoy me....

Oh yes....RDBMS SOFTWARE!

FFS! They see another database product being used for all sorts of things and you don't need to pay for it. So Larry thinks, tell you what, if we could just replace 10-15% of those paid for MySQL setups with Oracle, we'd all own boats and jets, not just me!

Not rocket science is it. Push the price up for MySQL, then send in the account managers to offer cut down deals on buying Oracle core software not the stuff they got from Sun during the buyout!