Computer Associates International plans to widen the
field for open-source alternatives to commercial databases with the
general release of the Ingres r3 database on the Linux and Windows
platforms.
Although MySQL has had its open-source database on the market,
CA believes it offers a more enterprise-ready alternative with r3
which, unlike MySQL, provides features such as triggers, stored
procedures and views. MySQL plans to add those to its product next
year.
“We believe that MySQL has proven that there’s a market for
open-source databases, but we don’t believe that they have the
technology to meet all the needs,” said Emma McGrattan,
vice-president of development at CA.
CA also anticipates it can take on established commercial
databases such as Oracle's products, IBM's DB2, and Microsoft's SQL
Server with the Ingres offering. CA will seek to generate revenues
through selling support services.
“If we compare Ingres r3 with Oracle9i, we have matched them in
terms of features, functions and performance,” said McGrattan.
“Now, Ingres for the first time is providing an alternative to
the enterprise-class database,” McGrattan said.
“The difference between [Ingres] as an open source possibility
and most of the other options is that CA is already an established
supporter of enterprise-level products,” said analyst Robin Bloor,
president of Bloor Research and research director at Baroudi
Bloor.
The possibility of organisations considering Ingres as a
replacement for databases such as Oracle or DB2 “is very strong”,
Bloor said. CA with Ingres r3 is pursuing enterprises, ISVs, and
specific target markets, he said.
CA is indemnifying users against any intellectual property
issues should they arise. “We’re really mindful of the SCO lawsuit”
against IBM pertaining to Linux, McGrattan said.
Ingres formerly was a commercially shipped product. When it was
sold as such, Ingres lost out to Oracle over the lack of row-level
locking, a feature Ingres now has, said McGrattan.
Major features of r3 include high availability clusters, for
maintaining uninterrupted performance; table partitioning and
indexing for large database implementations; parallel query
processing; online table and index reorganisation, to boost
availability; and 64-bit environment support
Support costs for r3 vary in pricing, ranging from $250
(£136) per month for developers to $1,995 per processor annually
for production support, with site licences also available.
Premium-level support is priced based on the customer
environment.
CA plans to port the open-source Ingres product to Solaris later
this year and to HP-UX and AIX early in 2005. Other platforms will
follow.
Paul Krill writes for Infoworld